A Food Giant's Big Appetite

The company's products are household names: Armour packaged meats, Banquet frozen foods and Country Pride chickens. But not many consumers have heard of ConAgra, the Omaha-based company behind those labels. Unlike such food combines as General Mills and Pillsbury, which invest millions to promote their identity, ConAgra has preferred to remain the quiet, self-effacing giant of the industry.

That tranquil obscurity is about to end. Earlier this month, ConAgra agreed to pay $1.3 billion to take over Beatrice, which owns an assortment of such familiar items as Hunt's tomato products, Wesson oils, Swift meats and Orville Redenbacher's popcorn. With combined sales that may reach $21 billion this year, ConAgra has become the No. 2 food company in the U.S., second only to the Kraft General Foods subsidiary of Philip Morris.

Even so, ConAgra doesn't like to take its rise to prominence too seriously. Known for cultivating a kind of down-home whimsy about itself, the company deflatingly titled its corporate history ConAgra Who? Chairman Charles ("Mike") Harper, 62, intends to keep things that way. "We are so simple, we're dull," he contends. Such modesty can be misleading. When Harper arrived in 1974, ConAgra was a nearly bankrupt company involved mainly in grain milling and commodities trading. He embarked on an expansion plan to place ConAgra at every step along "the food chain," as Harper likes to call it, from seed planting to retail sales.

Harper proved to be a smart shopper. After buying Banquet Foods for the bargain price of $50 million in 1980, Harper revived the frozen-dinner company by adding 90 new selections. In the Beatrice deal, Harper reportedly picked up the company for less than half the price initially sought by financiers Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Harper's management philosophy is to allow each ConAgra unit a high degree of autonomy. "We have more presidents than banks have vice presidents," he says. ConAgra's low-key style has paid off handsomely for shareholders. After ten years of record earnings, ConAgra stock that cost $100 in 1978 was worth $3,772 by the end of last year.