Fortune Fish Company to Acquire JDY Gourmet

Fortune Fish Company and JDY Gourmet announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Fortune Fish Company will acquire JDY Gourmet, a Chicago-based specialty foods and premium meat purveyor. Under this agreement, JDY Gourmet will become Fortune Gourmet, a division of Fortune Fish Company. The announcement will be made to the public today at the 2012 Chicago Seafood and Specialty Food Show at Navy Pier, a biennial trade show hosted by Fortune Fish Company. The acquisition will allow JDY Gourmet to increase their efficiency by joining the infrastructure already in place at Fortune Fish. JDY will move into the Fortune Fish facility, taking full advantage of their state of the art bar-coding inventory system and incredibly passionate sales and management staff. JDY’s distribution area will also increase with Fortune’s fleet of over 40 refrigerated trucks with direct distribution in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Michigan and nationally through their Flying Fish program. Sean J. O’Scannlain, Fortune’s President & CEO, stated “We are very excited about the opportunities this acquisition will create for our employees, customers and suppliers. JDY specializes in procuring fantastic artisan food products from smaller farms and their reputation in the industry speaks for itself. Fortune is proud to welcome JDY’s owners and staff as new members of the Fortune team.” David Yourd and Karrie Kimble, the owners of JDY Gourmet, will lead the Fortune Gourmet division with the current JDY staff members. As Fortune Gourmet, JDY will maintain their commitment to hand-selecting outstanding foods from smaller artisan farms and matching them with the Midwest’s leading chefs and retailers. Fortune Gourmet will continue JDY’s current services but will be able to provide earlier deliveries, a stronger sales presence and an increased portfolio of specialty food products. “Karrie and I love the food industry it is our life,” said David Yourd, President of JDY. “With the new developments in specialty food distribution, we recognize the opportunity to become an important part of changing the traditional food chain. While it seems like every quality driven company has been bought up in Chicago recently, we have noticed that it has usually come from public corporations or out of town companies. It was very important for us to make sure we teamed up with a local company who understands the Chicago market. We can achieve with Fortune immediately that which would have taken us years to do on our own.”