We’ve made chicken better.
Lake Geneva Country Meats has partnered with Harrison’s Poultry to bring you more flavorful, more tender, just better chicken.
Available now from our fresh meat case, our chicken, sourced from Harrison’s Poultry, is backed by their family’s over 130 years of experience offering quality poultry to their customers. Trust us when we say: this is the chicken your great-grandma enjoyed.
What makes our new chicken from Harrison’s Poultry better?
- We’ve extensively sampled this chicken and, through many blind tastings, found Harrison’s to be more flavorful and tender than our current chicken.
- The smaller sizes of these chicken breasts are easier and faster to cook, helping the chicken stay juicy after it’s cooked.
- The slow-growing birds we purchase from Harrison’s come from cage-free family farms in the Midwest and Southeast.
Starting Tuesday, May 6th, you will find Harrison’s chicken in our fresh meat case ready for you to take home and enjoy. With new packaging procedures in place, we will have an expanded selection of fresh chicken items available for you compared to what you have previously found.
Keep reading to learn more about how we’re bringing you the best-tasting chicken around.
Why did you decide to make this change?
We believe that we owe it to our customers to offer products of the highest quality and with impeccable sourcing.
We enjoyed our previous chicken, but we have wanted to find a product that matches the quality and sourcing standards our Leahy’s Angus Beef offers for beef lovers.
We also heard the huge majority of our customers who asked for small-sized chicken breasts, citing the difficulty of cooking the jumbo-sized breasts, and animal welfare concerns.
When we met the family-owned operators at Harrison’s and tried their products, we knew we had to make a switch.
What makes Harrison’s Poultry special? Why did you choose them as a partner?
As a family-owned and operated business, we understand the extra care and dedication that goes into having your name on the door, such as it is.
When we met with Kevin and Kyle, the co-owners of Harrison’s, we instantly respected their passion, work ethic, and desire to provide their customers with the best quality possible.
Their approach perfectly matches what we do here at Lake Geneva Country Meats, and this is a partnership we are excited to grow.
Furthermore, many of our customers already know of Harrison’s quality from shopping at Harrison’s retail store in Glenview. We’re excited to bring their quality to our community as well!
Why does this chicken taste better?
It’s because of the birds. Instead of the jumbo-sized birds we previously purchased, we are switching to a premium, slow-growing, smaller type of chicken. This is chicken the way chicken used to be, and trust us, it tastes like it as well.
What cuts will you be carrying?
You’ll find a wide variety of cuts available in both our fresh and frozen cases. On any given day, you can expect to find these items in our fresh meat case:
- Plain boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 1 – 3 flavors of marinated chicken breasts
- Chicken tenders
- Boneless skinless chicken thighs
- Whole chickens
- Plus a bone-in chicken option such as chicken drumsticks, bone-in skin on chicken thighs, and other items!
Our partnership with Harrison’s means that we can easily acquire any cut of chicken in any quantity. They are dedicated poultry specialists, and if you are looking for odd cuts of chicken, turkey, duck, or anything else, ask us about what we can do for you.
Expect to find a wider variety of fresh chicken as we move forward with Harrison’s!
How will you be offering this chicken for sale?
We will offer our fresh Harrison’s chicken in our service meat case so you can pick out the number of pieces or pounds you would like to take home. This will offer you more flexibility in getting exactly what you like.
We will put your chicken in a plastic bag to prevent leaking and limit oxygen exposure, then wrap it in freezer paper and label the product to protect it while you take it home.
When the chicken reaches time to freeze, we will package it the same way and flash freeze it to prevent leakage and preserve quality.
Vacuum sealing is still available upon request with 24 hours’ notice for a $1 per bag charge.
How is Harrison’s chicken raised?
Here are a few key facts to know about this restaurant-quality chicken:
- The birds are slow-growing Cornish cross birds raised by a co-op of small family farms on a swath of America from Indiana to Georgia.
- The family farmers who raise these birds do so in cage-free open-air barns with plenty of room to roam. These barns protect them from climate extremes, predatory birds, and the illnesses of migratory birds.
- These particular Cornish crosses are meant to be smaller birds, the way nature intended for chickens to be.
- They are fed a non-GMO soybean-based grain feed without growth hormones; growth hormone use in chicken is illegal under federal law.
- Antibiotics are exclusively used in the event a bird is sick to reduce the need to kill an entire flock unnecessarily. The birds are then tested for trace antibiotics prior to slaughter to stop cross-species antibiotic exposure.
- These birds come fresh, never frozen, to us just a few days after harvest and have been chilled in a bleach and chemical-free chilling process.
Is your Harrison’s chicken organic?
No, Harrison’s chicken is not organic.
While organic certification works well for some farms, we’ve partnered with producers we can verify follow best-practice guidelines for animal welfare and quality meat production.
Organic certification can be expensive and doesn’t always reflect the full story of how animals are raised. Instead of relying on a label, we focus on direct relationships.
Our chicken comes from birds raised without antibiotics or added hormones, fed a non-GMO grain-based diet, and processed without bleach or other harsh chemicals.
We believe in researching our sourcing, not just checking a box.
What makes your new chicken easier to cook?
Our previous chicken breasts were so large that to cook them to 165º in the middle safely meant that the outside often became overcooked. Plus, it took forever to bake or grill them!
Flattening or dicing the chicken helped cook it faster, but that resulted in more work for you at home, and we heard you when you said you wanted something that worked better for a variety of servings needed.
Our new smaller chicken will cook faster and more evenly, which helps keep the chicken from drying out without you needing to do anything other than put it on the grill!
What size chicken breast will you be offering?
Our new Harrison’s chicken breasts will be available as a 7-ounce single lobe. This is a terrific option that lets you serve each breast portion as a single serving instead of needing to cut up the chicken before serving.
This size is also perfect for our meal-planning and meal-prepping customers who like to know exactly how much protein and other nutrition they’re getting per piece of chicken!
For comparison, our current chicken averages about 18 ounces per lobe, so 2 – 3 of our new chicken breasts will provide you the same amount of chicken, but with faster, more even cooking, and juicier chicken all around!
How will this change affect pricing?
Our chicken breast pricing will increase by 70¢ per pound at launch, but this change will not impact our other chicken products, such as boneless skinless thighs, whole chickens, chicken wings, and more.
We feel the quality of the chicken breast is worth the price increase, and we hope that pricing will go down as the current avian flu situation is addressed.
This change will also result in many customers spending less overall because even though our new Harrison’s chicken is more expensive per pound, you can purchase smaller quantities that better fit your needs, keeping your overall spending at a similar level.
What kind of feedback have you received on this product?
We sampled this chicken with our staff, and to say they were blown away by the quality is an understatement.
We cooked multiple product samples and could not keep our team out of the sample kitchen. From the chicken breast to the chicken thighs, the turkey breast, all of it was tender, flavorful, and absolutely delicious.
We were so thorough about this process that we even drove to Harrison’s retail store and bought product from their retail store without them knowing to try.
The “secret shopper” chicken was just as good as the samples, proving both Harrison’s integrity and the quality of the chicken!
Will you still be offering your marinated chicken breasts?
Yes, we will be offering the same flavors of marinated chicken that we have previously offered, but now, with the smaller breast size, the breasts will have more flavor absorption and cook faster, preventing any burnt bits on the outside.
Our previous chicken sizes are in our freezer in vacuum-sealed bags, and as we transition to Harrison’s, their product will be wrapped in white freezer paper as we outlined above.
Will you still be carrying Bell & Evans chicken?
Yes, we love Bell & Evans’ chicken and will continue to carry an assortment of their products for fans of this premium chicken.
You will continue to find Bell & Evans chicken in our reach in cooler for self-service convenience.
What’s happening with your current supply of jumbo chicken breasts?
We will offer our current supply of jumbo chicken breasts for sale in our retail freezer at their previous pricing. When they are sold out, we will not restock those sizes.
