Global Food Manufacturing in Springfield, Missouri

When global location strategies ranked Springfield among the top 25 U.S. cities for food manufacturing last year, it may have surprised casual observers—but not the local companies building national, even global, brands. For decades, companies like Kraft, McCormick and Hiland Dairy have stood at the forefront of our region’s manufacturing identity. Today, a newer generation of food companies scales from southwest Missouri, leveraging everything from a committed local workforce to a central logistics spine.

Vital Farms chose Springfield for its LEED Gold-certified egg-washing and packaging facility, Egg Central Station (ECS). “Springfield’s logistical advantages, strong infrastructure and outstanding workforce made it the right place to scale our brand,” says Mike O’Brien, ECS Director of Plant Operations. Equally important, he added, was the city’s reception: “The unwavering warm welcome from local officials and organizations like the chamber was the cherry on top.”

Springfield sits in what Vital Farms calls the “Pasture Belt™,” a fair-weather area where hens can spend a great deal of time outdoors. The city is also within a day’s drive of its nearly 600 farms, significantly reducing transport time for a product moving across the country daily. Since opening with 50 employees, ECS has grown to more than 400 crew members, supported by a “people-first culture” and newly added best-in-class egg grading system expected to increase capacity 30% this year. “Our continued growth in Springfield is only possible because of other Springfield-area mainstays,” O’Brien shares. In partnership with the Erlen Group, the company recently celebrated the opening of The Egg Basket, an above-ground Cold Zone facility dedicated entirely to Vital Farms’ production needs.

Across town, Askinosie Chocolate took a markedly different path to national scale. Founder Shawn Askinosie launched his bean-to-bar chocolate factory on Commercial Street in 2007 after nearly two decades practicing law in Springfield. “Starting out, I didn’t know anything about distribution or manufacturing but I knew I loved this community,” he laughs. Today, over 700 stores sell Askinosie Chocolate nationwide, and the company’s wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels grow steadily in tandem.

Springfield’s geographic advantages prove especially useful for manufacturing heat-sensitive products: The mild climate and central location make it just as efficient to ship, say, a chocolate bar or pallet of eggs to New York as to Phoenix. “If we can maintain the stability of the product, get it there quickly and at a low cost, that’s best-case scenario,” Askinosie says. His company had “double-digit topline growth last year”—the best in its history, despite cocoa beans being the highest price they’ve ever been—so it seems 417-land is indeed best-case scenario in terms of food manufacturing.