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EGGMAN

Which came first, Tim Luberski or the egg?

Luberski’s been around eggs his entire life. Born and raised on a chicken ranch, he grew up feeding hens and roosters and collecting eggs. The chores eventually groomed him to hatch an egg business with more than $130 million in yearly sales.

It wasn’t his first choice to take over the family business.

“I didn’t get into this business because I really wanted to,” said Luberski, who had planned to go into finance. “It just happened.”

Luberski owns Hidden Villa Ranch, a Fullerton-based seller of eggs, dairy products, meats and produce.

The company sells DHA omega-3 fortified and organic eggs under license from brands Golden Circle Farms and Horizon Organic.

Customers include cafeterias and restaurants, including Denny’s Corp., and grocery stores such as Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Henry’s Farmers Market, part of Wild Oats Markets Inc.

Eggs make up most of Hidden Villa’s U.S. business. A good chunk of its dairy products, meats and produce are shipped to Asia, Mexico, South America and Eastern Europe.

The company owns warehouses in Yucaipa, San Jacinto, Escondido, the Inland Empire’s Cherry Valley and in Denver.

Hidden Villa owns chickens at various ranches around the country as well as processing plants. There’s also an egg carton plant in Louisiana. It has offices in Pomona and Boulder, Colo.

Hidden Villa counts about 350 workers and 50 refrigerated trucks.

The company’s rivals include Minnesota’s Land O’Lakes Inc., the Central Valley’s NuCal Foods Inc., Kentucky’s Sun Gold Egg Co., U.S. Food Service Inc., part of Amsterdam’s Royal Ahold NV, and Sysco Corp. in Houston.

Organic heavyweight, Horizon Organic, part of Dallas-based Dean Foods Co., taps Hidden Villa to sell eggs under its brand name.

The company gets the majority of its eggs from its own chickens, which are housed all over on ranches where it rents space. It also gets some from other farms. Hidden Villa also buys meat, dairy products and produce from independent producers, according to Luberski.

The company works with contract carriers,trucks and boats,to move products domestically and overseas, he said.


Started As Ranch

Luberski’s father, Edward Luberski, came from Poland to Riverside and bought a chicken ranch called Hidden Villa. There, Tim Luberski first started to help out with his family’s business.

He went to a private Catholic high school in Riverside and earned a scholarship to the University of San Diego, where he completed degrees in French and mathematics in 1973. He later went on to earn his MBA in finance from the University of Southern California.

Luberski said he got into the egg business by accident. He wanted to be a financial analyst for Rockwell International. He started selling eggs to support his family after their farm went bankrupt and his father died in 1975.

Luberski said he turned to the only business he knew to pay off his family’s debt,eggs.


Sold From Truck

He said he bought eggs from ranches around Riverside County and sold them out of his truck to businesses around the city. His Los Angeles apartment eventually became his office.

Some of his first customers included the Biltmore Hotel in downtown and the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

“Here I was, this guy with an MBA, delivering eggs out of a truck to businesses in Beverly Hills,” he said. “I thought I would do the egg business until all of the debt was paid off and move onto something else.”

Luberski juggled graduate school and his egg business.

He paid off his family’s debt by the time he finished school in 1976, he said.

By 1977, Luberski said he saw that his business was growing. He bought an egg route from an unemployed actor in the late 1970s. By 1980, he was renting a warehouse in Los Angeles.

He hired USC fraternity members and jocks to help him run his egg delivery business. Some still work for the company.

Within a year, Luberski’s business outgrew its warehouse and the company moved to Placentia, where it was more affordable, he said.

Luberski started using refrigerated trucks for deliveries and brought eggs from the Midwest to California and Arizona.

To grow the business, he started working with egg packagers so his company could grade and process eggs for sale nationally.

The company also started selling other products,meat, produce, coffee and soups,to developing countries.

It was easy for a small company such as Hidden Villa to get a foothold in other countries, Luberski said.

By 1983, Luberski’s company generated a little more than $7 million in sales and employed 40 workers.

Inc. magazine flagged Hidden Villa as one of the 500 fastest growing privately owned companies in the U.S.

Hidden Villa’s egg business really took off during the 1990s, Luberski said. It’s also when the company did most of its acquisitions, he said, fueling growth.

It moved to Fullerton to create a more corporate headquarters feel, unlike what it had in Placentia. The company’s based along Harbor Boulevard in the city’s lively downtown.


Slim Profits

Profits are slim in the egg business, Luberski said. The key to making money is to sell a lot of products for a low price, he said.

“You have to make your profits a penny at a time,” he said.

Much of the company’s growth has been through acquisitions, Luberski said. Hidden Villa has bought 10 to 15 companies since it began, he said.

“Acquisitions are our growth strategy,” Luberski said. “We’re always looking to buy small niche food companies.”

Hidden Villa is focused on growing in the natural and organic food markets, he said.

Last year, the company started selling cage-free eggs under the Wild Oats Market brand. The company uses Virginia’s Humane Certified to verify its products.

Hidden Villa plans to sell organic meats and hopes to become the largest organic meat seller in the U.S., Luberski said.

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