Richard K. Ransom, Founder of Hickory Farms, Dies at 96

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSHAPRIL 16, 2016
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Richard Ransom, right, and Earl Ransom, his cousin, in 1959. Credit
Lloyd Ransom, via The Blade

In 1951, finding specialty meats and cheeses could take some doing if
you lived in small-town America and had no neighborhood deli. For
Richard K. Ransom, this was an opportunity.

In his early 30s, recently returned from fighting in the Pacific, Mr.
Ransom was tired of driving a vegetable truck around rural Ohio for his
parents wholesale produce business. So he started selling hand-cut
cheeses at flower shows and boat shows. Soon he added summer sausage,
then expanded to county fairs around the Midwest. He named his company
Hickory Farms.

By the time he sold it in 1980, Hickory Farms was a $164-million-a-year
specialty food business, with outlets in every state but Mississippi.

Mr. Ransom died on April 11 in Toledo at 96, his son, Robert, said. He
had Alzheimers disease, the son said.

Hickory Farms grew explosively in the early years, thanks to what was
then a novelty: free samples.

€œIt is almost impossible to enter a Hickory Farms store without tasting
something,€� Forbes magazine observed in a 1983 business profile,
describing the ranks of smiling, apron-clad women positioned at store
doorways and in the aisles with trays of food.

The women did not bother asking customers if they wanted a taste €” they
just cut off bite-size pieces and held them out to people, Robert Ransom
recalled. Shoppers felt obligated to take and eat what they were
offered, and after tasting meats and cheeses every few steps around the
store, they felt obligated to buy something.

€œIt seems so simple now,€� Robert Ransom said.

The elder Mr. Ransom also wrote an instruction manual for sales
personnel, explaining how to cut blocks or wheels of cheese in a way
that ensured that shoppers would always get a little more than they
asked for.

€œIf you magnify that over thousands of customers in 600 stores every day
of the year, its an enormous amount of money,€� the son said.

Mr. Ransom sold Hickory Farms for $41 million in 1980 to the General
Host Corporation of Connecticut. Analysts thought the price was steep
and attributed it to Hickory Farms shrewd marketing. The company has
since changed hands more than once and has shifted to catalog sales.

After selling Hickory Farms, Mr. Ransom formed a family business that
invested in commercial real estate in the Toledo area. He served on
corporate and nonprofit boards and founded what is now the Adopt America
Network, which works to find permanent adoptive families for children in
foster care.

Mr. Ransom was born on Sept. 13, 1919, to Beatrice and Chick Ransom, the
owners of a business that bought vegetables from farmers in northern
Ohio and southern Michigan and delivered them by truck to grocers.

His wife, Elizabeth Meinert Ransom, died in 2009. In addition to his
son, he is survived by three daughters, Carol Batdorf, Lynn Connolly and
Janet Sarieh; nine grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.