OCTOBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 37it himself and then sell the beef, while a partner sold the hides.
The small operation grew slowly to a few animals a day. Cohen’s
youngest daughter, Florence, married Davis’ father, Pennie, who
joined his father-in-law’s business in 19 45 and soon became
president. They kept it simple, butchering the meat into hind-
quarters and forequarters sections only, which would be sold to a
butcher who would cut the meat into ready-to-cook sizes. It was
a good time to be in the business, as America doubled its beef
consumption in the prosperous years following World War II.
Families spent nearly one fourth of their food budget on meat in
195 0, according to the American Meat Institute.
Davis was born in 19 5 1 and witnessed the glory years of
Omaha’s beef industry. He grew up walking through the live-
stock auctions on the exchange floor and attending meetings
with his father and other Omaha slaughterhouse managers.
When he was 4 years old, Omaha beat out Chicago to become
the nation’s top spot for beef processing. He later spent summers
at the plant doing everything from buying cattle to butchering
meat on the assembly line.
By the 1970s, Omaha had lost its edge. Slaughterhouses high-
tailed it out of the city to be closer to rural feedlots. Davis joined
the business full-time in 197 3 after graduating from the University
of Denver with a degree in business and a minor in computer sci-
ence. At the time, Greater Omaha had 4 0 employees and pro-cessed 232 steer a day. “We were too small to have roles. Every-
body did everything,” Davis recalls.
As a young exec, Davis had big ideas. He purchased the com-
pany’s first computer, a Polymorphic System 8813 , for $5, 8 70 in
198 0. There was no software available to help the slaughterhouse
track receivables and project future sales, so he wrote it himself.
“We had a good business model back then, and I wasn’t going to
change my business to fit the software,” Davis says.
As he started to write the code in a Unix shell script, which the
company still uses today, Davis built software that would analyze
data such as how many pounds of meat were shipped and what
percentage of fat each animal had. For the first time, the company
could predict the number of cattle needed for the next week, how
much each truckload cost the company to process and how much
it would make from a sale to a meat purveyor.
Davis took over as president in 19 8 7, when Greater Omaha
was bringing in $ 13 0 million in sales a year from about 65 0 cattle
a day. He soon revolutionized the company by jumping on a
trend Iowa Beef Packers had started. IBP (acquired by Tyson for
$3. 2 billion in 2 001) had invented boxed beef, in which one cut
of beef, like loin or rib, was packed in vacuum-sealed packages
and shipped in boxes that were more manageable for a grocer
or a restaurant distributor. Previously, packers sold only larger
JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES hindquarters and forequarter cuts. More butchering meant higher
A U.S. Department of Agriculture grader examines Greater Omaha’s meat for color, marbling and texture.