Frank Perdue

Frank Perdue (May 9, 1920 ’Ŭ March 31, 2005) was for many years the Chairman and CEO of Perdue Farms, a poultry empire with nearly $3 billion in annual sales and 19,000 employees. His father, Arthur Perdue, started the family chicken business in 1920 on the Delmarva Peninsula in rural Maryland. Frank Perdue was involved in the chicken business from an early age, helping his parents feed the chickens and clean the coops. After attending Salisbury State College for two years, he returned to the farm to work with his father. When he became president of Perdue Farms in 1952, it was still a small operation, with revenues of $6 million a year. In the 1970s, Frank Perdue started an advertising campaign that would make him famous. He appeared in 200 different television commercials from 1971 to 1994. It helped that he looked like a chicken. ’źIt takes a tough man to raise a tender chicken,’Ź he said in his most familiar line. It made him believable, a hard-nosed yet likeable American businessman who knew what he was talking about, and who knew how to be tender and how to be tough. The television ads transformed Perdue into the first nationally recognized brand of chicken. He revolutionized the poultry industry and created one of the largest privately held corporations in America. Frank Perdue participated in the 1983 Achievement Summit in Coronado, California, and spoke to the student delegates about his career as an entrepreneur.