Paul Kelly’s family farm in England has been selling $500 heirloom turkeys for two generations. Now, after a decade breeding them in Virginia, KellyBronze birds are looking to gobble up America’s Thanksgiving market.
After two decades of breeding what the Times of London once called the “Rolls-Royce of turkey,” Paul Kelly wanted to learn from experts with generations of knowledge in America, where turkey farming originated. But once the Briton arrived in 2003, and after spending several weeks visiting turkey farms across Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Kelly was “amazed” to find no farmer or butchery maintained the American traditions, including dry-plucking and hanging, that have set the Essex, England-based KellyBronze apart.
Then again, when a frozen American Butterball costs about a $1 a pound and you’re asking customers to pay around $15 a pound—or nearly $500 for a 32-lb. turkey—high quality has to come with more than a high price.
“I thought, it’s almost impertinent for an Englishman to take turkeys to America,” says Kelly. “But there’s an opportunity there. I started looking, and we took it big.”
Kelly, 62, is now the owner of the only USDA-approved turkey plant in the U.S. that dry-plucks and hangs its birds, which many believe creates crispier skin and better flavor. Since purchasing 130 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Crozet, Virginia a decade ago, Kelly has opened America’s first newly built turkey hatchery in years.
KellyBronze, which sells its turkeys at Eataly and other high-end retailers across America, had 2024 revenue of $28 million. About 4% of that comes from the U.S., but Kelly expects that to be 25% within three years as he increases production in Virginia—and he is aiming for annual revenue will hit $80 million by 2028.
Founded in 1971 by Kelly’s parents, Derek and Mollie, KellyBronze is 100% family-owned and has never taken any private investment, though there have been many offers over the years. The business has grown steadily for the past six decades with little debt, and it currently has none. “I have slept at night knowing that every decision we made, we could afford to make, rather than hoping it worked,” says Kelly, who admits that the business is challenging as the bulk of revenue comes in November, December and January. “But, in America, bang, we bought the farm, we built the plant, not having sold one turkey. We were taking risks but risks we could afford.”
Kelly acknowledges the high price of his turkeys can be a “problem” but he is quick to point out that his birds are also three times the age of the typical frozen turkey, and lose 3% of their weight during hanging, and it’s all done by hand, which increases labor costs.
“People aren’t buying it to save money, are they?” asks Kelly. “The sales of amazing wines and the best champagnes go through the roof at Thanksgiving in America, the same as here at Christmas. Not everyone can afford it, but for those that can, it’s there.”
In the U.K, KellyBronze supplies high-end butchers and retailers like Harrods and Selfridges. The Royal Family as well as chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay have also supported the brand for years.
The Eaten Path: “We are never going to be Butterball,” Kelly says. “We are a small niche player and we just want to be producing the best possible turkey we can for Thanksgiving.”
KellyBronze
In addition to Kelly’s 130 acres in Virginia, the family owns 90 acres across Scotland and England, where it rents another 140 acres. There are also now 13 British farmers raising turkeys for KellyBronze, including British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who started raising a flock five years ago, after spending 25 years as a customer. Oliver calls KellyBronze “the turkey equivalent of Wagyu beef or Pata Negra ham—simply the best of its kind.”
“I became a turkey farmer not out of necessity, but to support an extraordinary artisan family and their craft,” Oliver tells Forbes. “The Kelly family are a shining example of what’s right in British farming. They brought back values and methods that were nearly lost to history.”
Now, after more than 50 years in business, KellyBronze is finally ready to feast on America’s high-end turkey market. “We are never going to be a Butterball. We are never going to be big,” says Kelly. “We are a small niche player and we just want to be producing the best possible turkey we can for Thanksgiving.”
Kelly’s parents bought a small farm the year he was born in 1963. His father worked at a big poultry company and after many years he left so the family could start their own turkey business in 1971 when Kelly was 8 years old. Back then, the British turkey industry was producing what was known as “New York Dressed” birds because, as Kelly explains, “the whole tradition of what we do came from America.”
When Kelly returned to the farm after graduating from an agricultural college attached to Scotland’s Glasgow University in 1983, he pushed his family to take their farming to the next level. In 1984, he changed the family’s breed from a white Wrolstad turkey that originated in Oregon to “the old traditional bronze breed.”
Farm To Table: KellyBronze dry-plucks and hangs its turkeys in the American tradition, which many believe creates crispier skin and better flavor.
KellyBronze
He also started bringing the birds outside where they could roam, dust-bathe, and peck in peace. The Kellys also started dry-plucking and then hanging the birds—at first for 7 days and now for 2 to 3 weeks. It was an expensive approach to a type of poultry that is traditionally quite cheap.
“It was a race to the bottom,” he recalls of British turkey farmers at the time. “We were the laughingstock of the industry.”
That first year, the Kellys had an annual revenue around $300,000 (or about $930,000 today). Despite the slow sales, the family doubled down. In 1987, the Kellys bought a former dairy farm for $90,000 at 10% interest over 10 years. The buildings and 5 acres of grasslands (where Kelly later built a house and now lives) helped the family expand its breeding and allowed them to build a small processing facility. “It was a huge step for us but gave us the space to supply the increased demand that came,” Kelly says. “It proved to be the best investment ever.”
By 1990, “the butchers were phoning us,” and by 1994, sales had skyrocketed to $1.2 million. After adding local farmers to their network throughout the 1990s, in 2001, KellyBronze was appointed by then-Prince Charles’ organic food brand Duchy Originals to farm its Christmas turkeys.
In 2003, revenue reached $3.8 million and Kelly was ready to broaden his understanding of traditional techniques and learn from farms in the United States, where it all began. The first turkeys are said to have been imported to England back in 1526, when a trader named William Strickland brought back six birds he obtained from Native Americans during an early voyage across the Atlantic. Eating turkey at Christmastime became fashionable at King Henry VIII’s court, cementing the turkey’s place as a symbol of festivity. The birds then traveled back across the Atlantic, as the colonists at Jamestown in Virginia had shipments of domesticated turkeys arriving on boats from England.
And while no turkey was ever formally recorded at the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving with the Wampanoag in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621, they were plentiful in the region. Benjamin Franklin once famously called the turkey “a much more respectable bird” than the bald eagle and “a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours.” He even described turkey as “a bird of courage.”
Born To Be Wild: KellyBronze is now producing 4,600 turkeys in the U.S. this year, and Kelly’s hatchery has the capacity to produce 15,000 “poults” every month.
Levon Biss for Forbes
Kelly says the stock he is raising in Virginia is inspired by “the original traditional turkey that was produced in America hundreds of years ago with the Pilgrims.” In 2014, he brought his turkeys back to the continent they originated on, buying his farm for $750,000, and spending another $2.75 million on infrastructure upgrades—with help from a $1 million bank loan that’s already been paid off.
KellyBronze is now producing 4,600 turkeys in the U.S. this year, and Kelly opened his own hatchery in 2018, which has the capacity to produce 15,000 “poults” every month. It’s currently at 5,500 per year and Kelly wants to open another on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.
Doing business in America isn’t easy. For one, sales are super lumpy—95% of Kelly’s U.S. sales occur at Thanksgiving—and KellyBronze might get hit with tariffs from the Trump Administration’s trade war. Kelly shipped turkey eggs from the U.K. to his U.S. hatchery just before the tariff start date. Next season, if the tariffs continue, the eggs could face charges of a few thousand dollars.
“My dream would be for people to order it in January or February of every year. They put their name on one and we’ll grow it to order,” says Kelly, whose son, Toby, 31, and daughter Ella, 28, are now running parts of KellyBronze. “The potential is huge.”
