Dietz Watson

Dietz & Watson Inc., a 68-year-old Philadelphia producer of deli meats, is opening a distribution center in Delanco, where the company could eventually relocate its headquarters. The distribution center will employ 100 when it is in full operation in several months. President Louis Eni said yesterday that the company had been renting cold-storage facilities for several years, raising operating costs and making it hard to consolidate orders for supermarket chains and other customers.

The third-generation owners of Dietz & Watson Inc. are sticklers for cleanliness. First thing each day at the company's Philadelphia meat-processing plant, quality-control workers check every piece of equipment to make sure the cleaning crew did its job. Then, before the plant on Tacony Street near the Frankford Armory begins churning out the day's 500,000 hot dogs and other meat items, workers disinfect the marinating vessels, grinders and...

After two workers sustained chemical burns in an ammonia leak at Dietz & Watson in Wissinoming, other workers wait outside. Fire officials said a tank was being disassembled around 8 a.m. yesterday at the meat-packing plant when the accident happened. A man, 40, was taken to St. Agnes Medical Center with second-degree burns over 27 percent of his body. A 26-year-old man was treated for minor injuries.

Seven years after the Big Bambino's death, people still ask me what it was like working with him weekday afternoons on Frank Talk with Frank Rizzo on WCAU-AM. Here's what: "Why do we have to cut to those damn commercials all the time?" he'd thunder as I silenced his microphone. The only exception was the spot for Dietz & Watson. The lunch-meat commercial had a catchy jingle, and Frank was smitten with it. When the spot came on, I cranked up the monitor. His frame all but filling a crowded corner of the studio, earphones set firmly on his head, Frank would stand and bounce along, his basso profundo extolling the praises of turkey roll: My mom likes Dietz & Watson, It's all she ever eats.

Dozens of personal-injury lawsuits were filed in Bucks County Court last week. But Timothy S. Karl's claim really was much ado about baloney. Literally. Here's his beef: On Feb. 2, Karl, of Levittown, purchased Dietz & Watson brand baloney from the deli counter at Pathmark supermarket, 2603 Durham Rd., Bristol Township, according to the suit. Two days later, Karl made a sandwich using the lunch meat "and when biting into the same he broke and fractured two teeth on a sliver of metal imbedded in the baloney," the suit says.

When Hormel and Oscar Mayer introduced "natural" deli meats this year, they were muscling into a niche dominated by two companies with strong ties to the Philadelphia region. Applegate Farms and Wellshire Farms accounted for half of the $154 million in frozen and refrigerated meat and seafood sold in natural-foods stores during the 52 weeks ended Oct. 7, according to data tracker Spins. Combined sales of Applegate and Wellshire increased 22.3 percent to $78.6 million during that period, compared with 13.9 percent for the whole category.

Richard Graham is director of insurance and risk control for the Crozer-Keystone Health System. It's not the kind of job that one aims for in college, but it is where you might end up after a string of increasingly responsible positions, Graham said in an interview this week. To formalize connections in his field and to help smooth that path for others, Graham helped form the Greater Philadelphia Executive Claims Council, an organization that is employer-based, as opposed to one driven by insurers.

JODI MALLON called with a strange request. She needed to find out where the rescued men and women of the Tacony house of horrors were staying. Because she wanted, badly, to bake a cake for victim Derwin McLemire. Like anyone with a working heart, Mallon had recoiled at reports of the torment that mentally disabled adults and children endured at the hands of monsters allegedly ring-led by Linda Ann Weston. The breadth of the sadism left Mallon, a sales assistant at Dietz & Watson, too numb to cry. Until she saw McLemire interviewed on TV. He had moved into Weston's Florida home a year ago, and he described a life of hell.

Husband-and-wife team Evan Malone and Jill Weber, who own Jet Wine Bar at 1525 South St., have crossed the street to go the bistro route. Rex 1516 (1516 South St., 267-319-1366) has a faded-mansion look (distressed woodwork, wrought-iron chandeliers, antique mirrors, wooden paneling from the old Rittenhouse Club), Southern-inspired cooking from Alabama transplant Regis Jansen (ex-1601), an in-house pastry chef (Shamus Moriarty, formerly of Farmers' Cabinet), and a bar list from manager Heather Rodkey (ex-Adsum, Rouge)

After two years, the Affordable Care Act has yet to dramatically alter the health-care landscape in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but the controversial law, facing a U.S. Supreme Court challenge this week, has expanded insurance coverage in small ways and added momentum to changes already under way in the health-care system. "It has made a difference," said David Simon, executive vice president at Jefferson Health System. "It's been a catalyst for people to start thinking about things, looking at new ways of doing business, accelerating the pace of change in terms of increasing quality and efficiency.

Richard Graham is director of insurance and risk control for the Crozer-Keystone Health System. It's not the kind of job that one aims for in college, but it is where you might end up after a string of increasingly responsible positions, Graham said in an interview this week. To formalize connections in his field and to help smooth that path for others, Graham helped form the Greater Philadelphia Executive Claims Council, an organization that is employer-based, as opposed to one driven by insurers.

After two years, the Affordable Care Act has yet to dramatically alter the health-care landscape in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but the controversial law, facing a U.S. Supreme Court challenge this week, has expanded insurance coverage in small ways and added momentum to changes already under way in the health-care system. "It has made a difference," said David Simon, executive vice president at Jefferson Health System. "It's been a catalyst for people to start thinking about things, looking at new ways of doing business, accelerating the pace of change in terms of increasing quality and efficiency.

Husband-and-wife team Evan Malone and Jill Weber, who own Jet Wine Bar at 1525 South St., have crossed the street to go the bistro route. Rex 1516 (1516 South St., 267-319-1366) has a faded-mansion look (distressed woodwork, wrought-iron chandeliers, antique mirrors, wooden paneling from the old Rittenhouse Club), Southern-inspired cooking from Alabama transplant Regis Jansen (ex-1601), an in-house pastry chef (Shamus Moriarty, formerly of Farmers' Cabinet), and a bar list from manager Heather Rodkey (ex-Adsum, Rouge)

Shortly before noon every weekday, people in long cotton jackets enter the cinderblock break room at the Dietz & Watson meat plant in Northeast Philadelphia, spread out sheets of white paper, and lay out a picnic-worthy spread of cold cuts, including roast beefs, hams, salami, maybe London broil, and Muenster and American cheeses. Minutes later, about 150 dayside plant workers on their lunch breaks, many still in safety helmets, hairnets, and heavy overcoats, pick up tongs and divvy it up. For those who need bread, there's a vending machine filled with hot dog rolls packaged in plastic bags, two for 50 cents.

JODI MALLON called with a strange request. She needed to find out where the rescued men and women of the Tacony house of horrors were staying. Because she wanted, badly, to bake a cake for victim Derwin McLemire. Like anyone with a working heart, Mallon had recoiled at reports of the torment that mentally disabled adults and children endured at the hands of monsters allegedly ring-led by Linda Ann Weston. The breadth of the sadism left Mallon, a sales assistant at Dietz & Watson, too numb to cry. Until she saw McLemire interviewed on TV. He had moved into Weston's Florida home a year ago, and he described a life of hell.

Dietz & Watson Inc., a 68-year-old Philadelphia producer of deli meats, is opening a distribution center in Delanco, where the company could eventually relocate its headquarters. The distribution center will employ 100 when it is in full operation in several months. President Louis Eni said yesterday that the company had been renting cold-storage facilities for several years, raising operating costs and making it hard to consolidate orders for supermarket chains and other customers.

When Hormel and Oscar Mayer introduced "natural" deli meats this year, they were muscling into a niche dominated by two companies with strong ties to the Philadelphia region. Applegate Farms and Wellshire Farms accounted for half of the $154 million in frozen and refrigerated meat and seafood sold in natural-foods stores during the 52 weeks ended Oct. 7, according to data tracker Spins. Combined sales of Applegate and Wellshire increased 22.3 percent to $78.6 million during that period, compared with 13.9 percent for the whole category.

Hiller's Prime Meats had been a fixture in the Route 130 corridor in Cinnaminson for more than 30 years. In that time, owners Helmuth and Monika Hiller raised two daughters, survived a store robbery at gunpoint, and outlasted three other butcher shops in the area. But on Saturday, the time had come to say goodbye and close the book on a business that paid for their children's education and their home in Lumberton, and that will allow them to begin the next chapter of their lives in retirement.

The third-generation owners of Dietz & Watson Inc. are sticklers for cleanliness. First thing each day at the company's Philadelphia meat-processing plant, quality-control workers check every piece of equipment to make sure the cleaning crew did its job. Then, before the plant on Tacony Street near the Frankford Armory begins churning out the day's 500,000 hot dogs and other meat items, workers disinfect the marinating vessels, grinders and...

After two workers sustained chemical burns in an ammonia leak at Dietz & Watson in Wissinoming, other workers wait outside. Fire officials said a tank was being disassembled around 8 a.m. yesterday at the meat-packing plant when the accident happened. A man, 40, was taken to St. Agnes Medical Center with second-degree burns over 27 percent of his body. A 26-year-old man was treated for minor injuries.