Our story starts more than 100 years ago, in 1919, in the parlor of a farmhouse in Seaford, Delaware. Clarence Allen had an idea. He wanted to build an incubator to hatch baby chicks, which he would sell to nearby farmers who would raise them for eggs. Most families had a backyard chicken flock back then, and chickens were good for one thing: producing eggs. And after they were a little too old for that, they would make a great Sunday dinner.

But his wife Nellie worried his experiment, which involved a kerosene heater, would burn the house down, and told him to move it all out to the garage. Which he did, and them promptly burned it down. He eventually started a hatchery a few miles out of town, and became involved with broilers by World War II.

His three sons, Charles, Warren and Jack would become involved in the business and they would grow Allen Family Foods into a vertically integrated company with hatcheries, feed mills, and three production plants at its peak.

For a variety of reasons, including soaring feed costs coupled with a sharp drop in the price of chicken, the company faced bankruptcy in 2011. The Harim Group, of South Korea, purchased the company that same year, and in 2014, the new Allen Harim was born.

The Harim Group is led by Chairman Hong-Kuk Kim, a Korean businessman who when he was just 11 years old, received 10 baby chicks as a gift from his grandmother. He raised them with loving care and in a few months sold them for 40 times the value of the chicks. He reinvested that money, and bought 100 more chicks. By the time he was in high school, he was already an entrepreneur, raising chicks on multiple farms. Today he’s one of the world’s most successful businessmen, and the Harim Group is Korea’s largest poultry company.

This spirit of entrepreneurship, hard work, and dedication to quality and service is what has made this company successful, and will continue to push Allen Harim for the next 100 years.