Joseph Grendys

Billionaire butcher Joseph Grendys runs a $3 billion poultry processor that slaughters, ships and sells chicken under the brands Koch Foods, Antioch Farms, Preferred Foods and Rogers Royal. Low feed costs with soaring demand mean chicken processors industry wide have been raking in big profits over the last year. Grendys got his start at Koch when it was just a one-room shop with 13 employees back in the mid-1980s. He joined the company after graduating from Loyola University, lured by an equity offer of 50% of the company from Fred Koch. At the time, its main business was taking bones out of chicken and cutting up the meat. Grendys bought out his former boss in 1992 and vertically integrated the business by gobbling up smaller feedmills and slaughterhouses.