Archer — Vernon meat-snacks plant
Nearly 140,000 SF of Vernon food-manufacturing space, converted for meat-stick production. A second life for the former Farmer John site.
What it is
Archer is one of the fastest-growing meat-snack brands in the country — the jerky, meat sticks, and smoked-sausage brand founded by Eugene Kang. In May 2025, Archer announced its second California manufacturing plant: a roughly 140,000-square-foot facility in Vernon, on the site that Farmer John operated for close to 90 years.
The Vernon plant will run as a dedicated meat-stick line, both processing and packaging under one roof. It joins Archer's existing plant in San Bernardino, which employs more than 150 Californians and produces both jerky and meat sticks. Together, the two sites are expected to nearly double the company's overall manufacturing capacity, with the Vernon facility coming online in the early fall of 2025.
Why the site matters
Vernon is one of Southern California's oldest and densest concentrations of food-manufacturing real estate. The Farmer John plant — the "Farmer John" script sign still crowns the entry — was a landmark of that ecosystem for decades. When it went dark, the building went from active production to one of the largest food-grade sites in the region to sit idle.
Archer's move brings the plant back into production and back onto Vernon's tax and employment rolls. The company has said the site is expected to create more than 200 local jobs, with initial hiring and onboarding beginning in the summer of 2025.
That kind of adaptive reuse — a large, purpose-built food-manufacturing asset returning to food-manufacturing use under a new operator — is precisely the kind of Southern California industrial re-tenanting that our practice tracks.
Archer, briefly
Archer's products are stocked in more than 30,000 stores nationwide, including Costco, Whole Foods, Walmart, and Target. In the announcement of the Vernon expansion, the company reported roughly 90% year-over-year sales growth against a category growing 5.8%, with meat-stick sales up 187.4% year over year. Vertical integration of meat-stick production in Vernon is the operational answer to that demand.
The Vernon plant is not just capacity — it is a strategic bet on Southern California as the base of Archer's manufacturing. That bet lines up with what we see across our own refrigerated and cold-storage practice: food operators of every scale continue to concentrate in the Vernon / Commerce / City of Industry corridor because the buildings, the workforce, and the compliance environment already exist here.
Why we highlight it
Vernon food-manufacturing sites are a core part of our refrigerated and cold-storage work. The Archer Vernon plant is a high-visibility example of how a legacy Southern California food-manufacturing asset can be reoriented for a modern brand and a modern product line — and it is the kind of tenant story we point to when owners of Vernon, Commerce, and City of Industry sites ask us what a next-generation food-tenant deal looks like.
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Sources: Archer, "Archer to Open Second Manufacturing Plant in Los Angeles," archerjerky.com; Los Angeles Times, "Former Farmer John factory will make Archer meat sticks; manufacturing jobs return to Vernon," May 8, 2025.