For Some Cooks This Year, the Turkey’s in the Mail

In 1963, high school freshman Willie Benedetti enlisted his little brother Riley’s help with a Future Farmers of America project.

They began selling turkeys that had been allowed to roam unfettered, grubbing for bugs, worms, pebbles (for digestion) and other goodies beneath the oak trees that studded the undulating fields of the Benedettis’ Sonoma County poultry ranch.

“Ranch fresh,” young Willie called his birds then. “Free range,” folks call them today. But that’s the only time the term “free” applies.

Indeed, Willie this year has produced the Tiffany of turkeys--the world’s first $100 hen. At least, that’s what a select cadre of Williams-Sonoma catalog customers paid for the privilege of having one of these 16-pound to 18-pound gilded gobblers delivered to their doorstep Tuesday, in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Mind you, this is just the freshly slaughtered beast for the feast--unadorned, uncooked and unaccompanied by trimmings.

The debut of Willie’s tony fresh turkeys is the latest twist in the growing business of sending meals through the mails.

The mail-order market for foods, particularly the high-end kind, is on the rise: 63 catalogs are peddling everything from jalapeno jellies to live-lobster dinners complete with bibs, according to research firm Abacus Direct Corp. in Hawthorne, N.Y. It has grown beyond such venerable purveyors as Omaha Steaks and Harry & David, the fruit people, to include such delicacies as velvet mousse cake and broccoli custard.

“People are just very comfortable ordering upscale gourmet foods by mail,” says Jo-Von Tucker, owner of Clambake Celebrations in Orleans, Mass., which ships its live lobsters for two or more in steam pots via Federal Express. “We’ve been enjoying double-digit increases in sales for three years running.” The dinner package for two sells this year for $146.

Convenience, Flair and a Premium Price

Tucker, who also has consulted on food sales with Neiman Marcus, the Horchow Collection and Williams-Sonoma, said the gourmet food by mail industry is thriving because customers are looking for convenience and flair when they entertain guests--and themselves.

The holidays are the hot season for such lavishness, and that’s where Willie Bird is carving a niche.

To be sure, the vast majority of home chefs across the land will fork over as little as 29 cents a pound for their Thanksgiving turkeys this season--or cart home a free bird if they have racked up enough spending points at big grocery chains.

Not Willie Bird devotees. By late last week, Puritan Poultry at Farmers Market in Los Angeles, which four years ago introduced Willie Bird Turkeys in the Southland, had 270 orders (at $2.19 a pound) for the Benedetti birds, and it expects to sell 700.

At Trancas Market in Malibu, dozens of customers have flocked in to order their Willie Birds; 80% were customers who had first tried the brand last year, said butcher Bruce Bader.

Despite a price premium--$2.29 a pound vs. $1.49 for a Zacky Farms fresh (but not free range) turkey--”twice as many customers want the Willie Bird,” Bader said. “Everybody likes the fact that they’re entirely natural.”

By creating word-of-mouth buzz for a custom turkey--initially in its home turf in Sonoma County and now also at a few upscale shops in Southern California--the Benedetti family is successfully bucking an industry trend toward rock-hard frozen, commodity birds that retailers practically give away at Thanksgiving.

The way Willie Benedetti sees it, breaking out of the pack with something special was the only way for an independent operator to survive against the handful of highly efficient behemoths that control the business. Industry leader Butterball Turkey Co., a subsidiary of Conagra Inc., will sell about one-third of the 45 million turkeys delivered this season, making Willie Bird’s 70,000 look like a drop in the feed bucket.

“We make money at it,” Benedetti said. “We make a lot of money.”

Benedetti thinks he knows what makes his 10- to 24-pound poultry worth the extra scratch at high-end stores--not to mention the hefty Williams-Sonoma price.

“The money is not the issue. It’s the thought. It’s the thought of giving something to somebody that costs $100.”

But what about the taste?

“It’s free range. It’s healthy. The muscles get bigger and there’s texture to the meat because the turkeys get exercise. They eat only vegetable protein.

“You know how people are changing and getting more health conscious and concerned about animal rights? Whoever knew people would want turkeys to have a good life?

“We also make it through the personal contact. [Butchers] like dealing with me. We invite all the butchers up to show ‘em the ranch.”

Yes, and the taste?

“Our turkeys are moist, juicy and extremely flavorful.” It is almost an afterthought.

Until 25 years ago, all turkeys were raised on the range. As companies such as Conagra, Zacky Farms and Foster Farms grew, they moved the birds indoors to gain more control over their diet, with a goal of producing consistent poultry more efficiently. (A common misconception holds that meat birds are raised in cages; they are not. Still, those barns do get awfully crowded as the big-breasted birds mature. By then, however, they’re less interested in--and less capable of--moving about.)

The industry, one expert says, is unlikely to revert to its old ways to satisfy the fast-growing--but still limited--demand for free-range poultry.

“I certainly can’t see the entire industry shifting back to this type of product,” said Francine Bradley, a UC Cooperative Extension poultry specialist at UC Davis. “It’s more land- and labor-intensive. People would not vote with their pocketbooks.”

That spells opportunity for California’s small free-range producers: Willie Bird, Diestel Turkey Ranch of Sonora and Shelton’s Poultry, which is based in Pomona but raises its turkeys in the Central Valley.

There is an irony, of course, to this free-range idea. The Benedettis lose about 500 birds a year to coyotes and a family of eagles that nest undisturbed on one of their three ranches near Santa Rosa. Those that are not gnawed on by predators are exposed to the elements, and some die of hypothermia. In particularly raw weather, even the Benedettis move birds indoors. But most of the time the birds are allowed to wander, seeking shelter if they wish under a big piece of metal held up by poles.

Nevertheless, knowing that his turkey could rove was important to Malibuite Kevin Jammal, who this year ordered his second Willie Bird from Trancas Market. “Free range is better for me in a spiritual way,” said Jammal, an auto detailer whose hobby is gourmet cooking and who eats meat just this one time a year. Last year’s Willie Bird, he added, was tender and tasty.

As it happens, Riley Benedetti, still an active partner in his family’s turkey business, is a vegetarian.

“I had my share of turkey growing up, a turkey every week and turkey sandwiches all the way through high school,” said Riley, 45.

“I’m not judgmental of anybody else,” Riley added hastily, “and poultry is a lot better for you than red meat.”

Riley is in the business for the long haul, steeped as he is in the family tradition.

Promoting Year-Round Sales

The Benedettis’ paternal grandfather trained as a machinist in Switzerland before emigrating in 1903 to Petaluma, Calif., where he soon followed the lead of many of his neighbors and went into the chicken business. In 1929, after the stock market crashed, he lost everything.

It’s a short hop from chickens to turkeys, and after World War II, his sons, Walter and Alvin, began raising turkeys. In the 1960s, Walter’s sons Willie and Riley sold some of their birds directly to customers at the beauty shop where their mother, Aloha, worked. One beautician’s offhand remark--”Willie Bird, spread the word”--serendipitously gave the business its name.

Willie Benedetti took seriously the idea of promoting turkey, opening a Willie Bird store and deli and later, 18 years ago, a restaurant to show cooks the possibilities of turkey ground, smoked or rolled. A company processing plant makes turkey sausages, turkey hams, turkey pastrami and the like for restaurants, airlines and other big customers.

At his restaurant one recent Sunday afternoon, a ruddy-cheeked Willie Benedetti noted that for decades, “turkey was just in the frozen meat case and was carried once a year. It took the farmers about 40 years to figure out that if they cut it up they could sell it all year round.”

Benedetti, urging the turkey club sandwich on a visitor but ordering the red snapper special for himself, credited Rocky the Range Chicken, a firm established in Petaluma in the mid-1980s, with helping to create the free-range niche.

For a time, producers successfully boosted consumption by promoting turkey as a year-round option rather than a one-holiday wonder. But now consumption is languishing at about 19 pounds per capita, far below chicken’s 72 pounds.

“Turkey has made inroads but not into the mega-fast food,” said Keith Nunes, editor of Meat & Poultry magazine in Kansas City, Mo. “They’re doing too many knockoffs like pastrami and ham. I haven’t seen any truly new products out there.”

For Willie Bird, much is riding on the Williams-Sonoma experiment.

On Nov. 14, two days before the cutoff for Thanksgiving orders, the San Francisco cataloger marked down the Willie Bird price by 20%--a sign that sales needed a goose.

Or, as the retailer’s spokeswoman Donata Maggipinto sought to explain it, the company had committed to buying more turkeys than it planned to sell.

Hoping to forestall a public relations nightmare--thousands of Thanksgiving tables with no turkeys--Williams-Sonoma plans to call every Willie Bird customer today to double-check that Federal Express delivered each bird in one piece. If not, the company will pay for a turkey at a local retailer.

As to whether the company will offer Willie Birds next year, co-founder Chuck Williams said cautiously: “We don’t know yet. We’ll have to get through it first and decide.”