When Costco Wholesale set out to build its first fully integrated poultry operation, the company needed more than land and incentives. It needed a location capable of supporting a complex, high-volume food processing operation with long-term reliability.
After evaluating sites across the Midwest, Costco chose Fremont, Nebraska, just outside Omaha.
“They looked in locations in Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska,” said Jessica Kolterman, Director of Administration for Lincoln Premium Poultry. “Costco ultimately decided they liked the site in Nebraska and the partnership that they found here.”
That decision led to the creation of Lincoln Premium Poultry, Costco’s wholly owned poultry company and a clear example of how food processing can thrive in the Greater Omaha region.
Lincoln Premium Poultry was designed from the start as a vertically integrated operation capable of meeting national demand.
“We produce about one-third of Costco’s need for all their fresh chicken,” Kolterman said.
The Fremont facility includes a processing plant, hatchery and feed mill, along with a network of roughly 100 farm families supplying the operation.
“We have approximately 1,200 team members, and we produce 2 million chickens a week that go into fresh product for Costco,” Kolterman said.
The facility officially opened in September 2019 and now supplies fresh poultry products to Costco locations across the country.
For food processors, success depends on speed, coordination and certainty. During Costco’s site selection process, Nebraska distinguished itself through the strength of its partnerships.
That included local economic development organizations, city and county leadership and state agencies critical to food processing projects, such as environmental quality, agriculture, labor and transportation.
Food processing operations depend on dependable transportation and logistics. Fremont’s proximity to Omaha, access to rail and the region’s willingness to accelerate infrastructure improvements were key advantages.
For large processors shipping product nationwide, that ability to align infrastructure planning with operational needs reduces risk and supports long-term efficiency.
While infrastructure matters, Lincoln Premium Poultry’s leaders consistently point to workforce reliability as the operation’s biggest strength.
“Our COO has run operations like this all over the United States,” Kolterman said. “He maintains that this is the best workforce he’s ever had in his entire career.”
She noted exceptionally low absenteeism and turnover, critical factors in food processing where consistency is essential.
That reliability was tested during the pandemic, when many food facilities nationwide faced shutdowns.
“We didn’t miss a single production goal through COVID and we did not miss a single day of work due to. We never shut down. Not once,” Kolterman said.
Before construction began, economic impact studies estimated Lincoln Premium Poultry would generate $1.2 billion annually for the region. Five years later, that projection was confirmed.
“The Nebraska State Economic Development Association had commissioned a study done by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,” Kolterman said. “And they concluded that we were in fact generating that financial impact to the region.”
For food processors evaluating where to locate or expand, the Greater Omaha region offers a compelling combination of integrated infrastructure, workforce reliability and coordinated partnerships — the fundamentals needed to support complex food processing operations at scale.