A new federal lawsuit alleges that a former Hormel Foods employee stole top-secret sausage recipes and market intel before joining competitor Johnsonville, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
Hormel, based in Austin, Minnesota, claims in the suit that Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin-based Johnsonville and two former Hormel employees conspired to “unlawfully obtain Hormel’s trade secrets.” Hormel is requesting unspecified monetary damages, and that the confidential data be returned and deleted.
The lawsuit alleges that when veteran Hormel employee Brett Sims became Johnsonville’s chief supply chain officer in June 2023, he began attempting to poach other Hormel employees to join him at Johnsonville, apparently violating a non-solicitation agreement. Former Hormel employee Jeremy Rummel reportedly joined Johnsonville this spring after 25 years with the Minnesota sausage company.
Rummel allegedly sent “product formulas, processing procedures, acquisition-target information and marketing-strategy information” to his personal email before disclosing to Hormel that he was joining a competitor. Rummel later confessed the sending the information when confronted by Hormel and then proceeded to Sims’ house “with the intent to share the details of his interview with Hormel and develop a plan to protect his new role at Johnsonville,” the suit claims.
