A Tifton man with one idea.
J. Curtis Branch was thirty-one years old when he opened Curtis Packing Company in 1951. Tifton had cotton, peanuts, tobacco — and not much in the way of meat that hadn't been on a refrigerated truck for two days.
Curtis was the first one in the county to do it right. A slaughterhouse, then a smokehouse, then a counter. The order matters. Everything Georgia Best is today comes out of that order.
Curtis Packing in the 1950s — the original plant in Tifton.
Curtis Packing, Tifton — the early years
A spice blend that's been patented since the country had forty-eight states.
We don't share the blend. We never have. It's in every link of smoked sausage that leaves the plant, and it has been since the 1950s.
Three generations of butchers have learned it. None of them changed it. That's the whole point.
Production was always the plant. The counter is the part you can see.
For most of those seventy-five years, the meat Curtis made ended up on someone else's shelf. Georgia Best Foods is the retail face — the direct line from the smokehouse to your kitchen.
Cut to order, not pre-wrapped. The butcher will ask you what you're cooking. That's a feature, not a delay.
A side being broken down on the block — butcher at work.
At the block — cut to order
The first exit out of Tifton, heading to Florida.
The new store sits at Exit 64 on I-75 — the first exit Florida-bound drivers hit leaving town. The locals already know us. We built the new place so everyone else has an easy way in.
Same county. Same recipe. New door.