Omaha Steaks International, Inc., known as Omaha Steaks, is an American food company that manufactures, markets, and distributes steaks, meat, seafood, and some prepared foods. The company is named after Omaha, Nebraska, the city in which it was founded and is still headquartered.
History
In 1850, Lazar Shames founded a packing house and meat market in Riga (then in the Livonian Governorate of the Russian Empire, today in Latvia).[1] In 1898 his son J.J. and his family fled religious persecution in Latvia and came to the United States as part of the third wave of Jewish immigration to the country.[2] They passed through Ellis Island, chose Simon as their American name, and eventually arrived in Omaha, which was experiencing a population surge due in part to the development of the meat packing industry.[3][2] J.J. and his son B.A. worked as butchers for many years, and then in 1917 the family started their own meat-cutting operation.