The Bell & Evans Timeline
1894
Howard H. Bell and Carlton Evans started shipping fresh chicken by train from Amish Country, Pennsylvania to New York City.
1910
Bell & Evans opened a poultry plant in Bellmawr, New Jersey.
1958 
C.F. Manbeck, Inc./Farmers Pride began private labelling Bell & Evans poultry to Bell & Evans’ stringent specifications.
1984
Clarence Manbeck retired and sold his company to Scott Sechler.
1985
Sechler started disinfecting and cleaning the chicken houses between each flock.
1986
Sechler purchased the Bell & Evans brand from the Bell family and merged it with Farmers Pride and C.F. Manbeck.
1998
Bell & Evans started raising birds without antibiotics.
1999
Bell & Evans introduced chicken nuggets and tenders.
2000
Bell & Evans completed its $10 million plant expansion, doubling the size of the facility. This brought its total number of employees to over 700 and total farm families to over 90.
2005
Bell & Evans Retail Outlet opened for business in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania.
2005
Bell & Evans opened its $26 million state-of-the-art 100% Air Chilling facility.
2005
Bell & Evans launched gluten free nuggets and gluten free tenders.
2009
Bell & Evans launched its organic line of products.
2010
Bell & Evans introduced innovative freezer-safe recyclable packaging, made with #1 PETE recyclable materials.
2011
Bell & Evans introduced Slow Induction Anesthesia (SIA) and the Bell & Evans Humane Animal Welfare standard, which garnered praise from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Temple Grandin.
2015
Bell & Evans opened a $110 million, 160,000 square-foot processing, packaging and par frying facility.
2016
Bell & Evans launched a premium line of ready to cook, gluten free, organic items.
2017
In July, Bell & Evans opened the world’s first Organic Certified, animal welfare focused chicken hatchery.
2017
In November 2017, we had the first hatch of our New Breed, Das Klassenbester™, higher-welfare, slower-growing chickens.
