A Smoking Tradition: Greenberg Turkey

Being featured as one of Oprah Winfrey's "Favorite Things" is a huge deal for any company. Many of the spend lots of money on advertising before Oprah notices them. Greenberg Turkey never spent a dime on advertising during the 70 years of its existence before Oprah crowned it as her favorite turkey in 2003. The sudden exposure changed Greenberg Turkey from a company whose reputation was built solely on word of mouth to one suddenly fielding calls from potential customers all over the country.

Greenberg Turkey began in Tyler, Texas on the dairy farm of Samuel Greenberg in 1938. Greenberg immigrated to Texas from Poland in 1903. He became the shochet, the Jewish leader in charge of killing animals and making them kosher. This ability led him to begin smoking the meats he had butchered. He used the secret mix of spices that his mother had taught him and smoked the meats at the requests of his friends.

That all changed one day in 1938. Someone in Dallas wanted six turkeys for Thanksgiving, so Samuel and his son Zelick got gum boxes from the candy store and packed them with straw. They placed the turkeys in the boxes. They sent the birds on their 100-mile journey to Dallas by train. From this point forward, the Greenbergs were a part of the mail-order turkey business.

Samuel Greenberg's grandson Sam is now in charge of the company. He has seen it grow exponentially during his tenure, despite trying his hardest to keep everything the same for the last 70 years.

"For 70 years we never did any advertising. For 70 years we never even took a credit card. Now that we are 71, I've dabbled in a little advertising. Basically we have grown all by word-of-mouth," said Greenberg.

Besides the Oprah show, Greenberg Turkey was recently featured in the New York Times and has been profiled by Southern Living, Texas Monthly, and National Public Radio. Greenberg began advertising on Facebook this year because of the relatively inexpensive cost of advertising on the social networking site. He also caved in the last few years and began accepting credit cards, a decision he said was tough to make.

"It's not something that I really wanted to do because I'd rather have that call-in and that folksy atmosphere rather than looking like we are some slick corporation," said Greenberg.

Almost all of Greenberg's 200 employees are seasonal workers. Many keep coming back year after year. The smoking season is from September to Christmas Eve. In that time they will smoke around 200,000 turkeys. After that, Greenberg Turkey becomes somewhat of a ghost land with only 10 full-time employees.

"I've got a man in the back that has been here 53 years; I'm only 52 years old," said Greenberg, noting that one of the women working the phones had been with the company for 60 years.

What keeps people coming back?

"It gets in your blood. Everybody gets along, and everybody has fun, and everybody wants to come back."