Diverse Expertise Drives Vertical Integration at Family Business

At the Aspen Food and Wine Classic in June, Michael Jurgielewicz ’13 and his team greeted festivalgoers with 5,000 portions of savory duck carnitas seasoned with guajillo chiles—and company-branded rubber duckies. Many people returned for a second taste. In keynote talks, celebrity chefs commented on the popularity of the dish.

Michael, brothers Joey MMH ’16 and Jim, and their father, “Dr. Joe” DVM ’83, own and operate one of the largest duck farms in America, Joe Jurgielewicz & Son. At their Pennsylvania and Illinois locations, they breed, raise, process, and sell more than five million Pekin ducks annually. Their products land in the kitchens of Michelin star chefs and in markets around the world.

Drawing on his grandfather’s legacy as a duck farmer, Joe founded the company in 1983 in the blue hills of Brooks County, Pennsylvania, married his high school sweetheart, Rita, and began raising four sons. Michael and Joey attended the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration at the SC Johnson College of Business; Brian ’15 graduated from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell as an animal science major; and Jim followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a veterinarian. The family attributes their business’s continued growth and success to their diverse expertise in hospitality, business, farming, and veterinary science.

Expanding markets by serving customers

The rubber duckies brought fun and levity to the Aspen event, but it’s all part of a serious market expansion effort for the company, said Michael.

While their core business revolves around fresh and frozen whole ducks and parts sold to markets in Asia and Chinatowns in major cities worldwide, their product lines and markets are diverse: Prepared food products include stock, rendered fat, sausages, snack sticks, and their new fully cooked and seasoned carnitas. They use every part of the duck, even producing pet treats and down pillows.

“We’re making duck more approachable to the everyday eater,” Michael said, acknowledging that most home cooks in America have not tried cooking duck in their own kitchens. “We’re also going to restaurant kitchens every week, meeting with chefs, showing them the duck, talking about different new menu ideas and how versatile duck is.”

Joey has expanded the company’s presence in top restaurants in New York City, emphasizing to chefs that the family still raises the original heritage duck breed his great-grandfather developed in 1933. As those restaurants expand globally, so do their opportunities: Michael is traveling to Singapore to meet with prospective buyers.

“We have the perfect meat-to-fat ratio,” said Joey, explaining that their breed is ideal for both Peking duck and new high-end restaurant menu concepts. “It’s the equivalent of having a ribeye steak versus a filet. So you have this nice fat layer that creates a really tender and tasty product. We recognize what the chef’s needs and wants are and try to make their stressful lives as easy as possible. That’s really how we became successful in that—by creating a niche inside of our niche market.”

Michael and Joey learned this orientation toward service from their father and then cultivated it at Cornell. As kids on a family trip to San Francisco, for example, they’d tag along with Joe as he checked in with his customers in Chinatown. At the Nolan School, Michael said he and Joey gained a valuable network, along with a nuanced understanding of finance, brand development, and marketing. And they learned the importance of creating memorable experiences and being able to replicate them.

“I just didn’t want a normal business master’s degree,” Joey said. “I wanted to study hospitality so we could be experts in our field.”

The family has continued their connection with the school through the Smith Family Business Initiative and Hotel Ezra Cornell. Jurgielewicz duck is currently on the menu at Banfi’s, and for fun, a recipe for “Hotelie Haute Dog” was created.

‘We identify as farmers’

Developing a quality product starts with good farming practices, said Joey, and that’s where the veterinary expertise of Jim and Joe, graduate of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, is paramount.

Keeping the flocks healthy often required off-site veterinary services, which cost time and money, so Jim established an on-site veterinary services department, diagnostics lab, and vaccine formulation process. He added a geneticist to the team and decided to move beyond ducks’ physical appearance for breeding purposes. To do so, they obtained a small computed tomography (CT) scanner originally intended for analyzing stroke patients’ heads and adapted it to monitor their ducks’ bone density. They’ve also enhanced their biosecurity measures to guard against avian flu outbreaks. The Cornell Duck Research Laboratory serves as a resource for the Jurgielewicz operation.

“It might sound funny, but we do see a correlation with Hotel School hospitality and animal husbandry,” Michael said. “You feel a lot different staying in a one-star hotel versus a five-star hotel. The same with animal care. The better housing, the better air quality, the better feed, the better care, the better the end product.”