PrimeTime_Fall_2018

French Entrepreneur GEORGIA, JAPANESE BEEF and a

BY HANNAH JOHLMAN, FREELANCE WRITER

F rançois Léger is the definition of entrepre- neurship. From a man who once worked in a packing plant carrying cuts of beef on his shoulders, he now owns a processing plant, a case-ready facility and a cattle farm, carry- ing the weight of being a businessman on his shoulders. As a young man growing up on a farm in France, all Léger wanted to do was continue his family’s legacy of farming. He pursued a degree in agriculture in France and went to work in the beef industry. He began as a “logger,” car- rying meat on his shoulders. He quickly moved up to oversee transportation and logistics. He worked in the boning room, on the plant floor, in accounting and sales – he did it all. At 26 years old, Léger was hired by Keystone Foods to produce burgers for a popular Ameri- can fast food chain in France. He would go on to work for them for more than 17 years. Though leaving France was never part of Léger’s plan, his new job resulted in spending a year in Australia, three years in South Amer- ica and then, in 2001, moving to Philadelphia to Keystone’s corporate headquarters. Never one to shy from opportunity, Léger spotted an opportunity to purchase a processing facility in Augusta, Ga., three years later. “I saw an opportunity in the Southeast,” Lé- ger says. “Looking at the location and thinking about the possibility to process fed cattle, I ac-

quired it along with the small grinding facility that was there.” He put everything he had into his new busi- ness, FPL Food, (the initials being Léger’s). As a part of the purchase, Léger was able keep all the plant’s employees, which he did, and some still work there today. As his business grew, Léger never stopped learning, attempting to understand and react to the market. At the time of purchase, the Augusta plant was a bull-and-cow plant, but Léger hoped one day to switch the plant over to include fed cattle. “I started looking into feeding steers and heifers, to upgrade the quality of beef available through our processing plant,” he says. Léger ran into some naysayers. Conventional wisdom dictated it was too hot in Georgia to successfully feed cattle (Léger, on the other hand smiles as he says he thinks it gets too cold in the Midwest to feed cattle). So, in true Léger style, he purchased a farm in central Georgia and named it Châtel Farms. He bought some calves and some silage. The resulting product was good. That got Léger ex- cited to begin further refining his process. He examined the soil on the farm and realized that the best corn in France was grown on sandy soil. His Georgia farm had sandy soil, so in

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Growing up in France, Léger (above) never imagined he would live in the United States, but hard work, determination and moderate risk-taking have helped him achieve what some would call the American dream.

Akaushi Prime Time • Fall 2018

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