What’s the Story Behind Aldi’s Goldhen Eggs?

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Behind every product on a store shelf is a tale. Seriously, it’s true. Every product has an origin story: a history of how it was manufactured, or cultivated, or crafted, or whatever word is appropriate. Products also have a path to packaging, to distribution, and finally, to shelving. Somewhere in there, too, is the story of how the product’s supplier inked a deal with the store.

Most consumers know precious little of the story behind most of the products they buy, other than, perhaps, the general country of origin. We don’t know what the conditions were like in the factory that assembled our toaster, or what the state of things were in the facility where our ground beef was slaughtered. In many cases, we’re not even sure who, exactly, the manufacturer and supplier are, as they’re hidden behind brands and subsidiaries.

Take Goldhen Eggs. The casual Aldi shopper is liable to assume that Goldhen is a company — perhaps even the name of a farm — that ships its eggs from a pastoral point of origin to your local German supermarket. Even your more veteran shoppers may not know much, if anything, about where the hens are bred and hatched, where the eggs are laid, or how the eggs are collected, packaged, and shipped.

And yet, Goldhen Eggs have attracted a hair more attention than the average Aldi product. It’s not because Goldhen Eggs are cheap, although they are cheap — they’re regularly among the cheapest eggs we can find. It’s also not because of any particular interest in the quality of the eggs — on balance, Goldhen Eggs are about on par with most other store-bought eggs.

A Story in Verse

Instead, Goldhen Eggs have gotten some notice because of a single quote emblazoned on the inside of the carton.

It reads: “This is the Day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Immediately after reads the source: Psalms 118:24. It is, of course, from the Old Testament of the Bible, likely from the New American Standard Version.*

When we first reviewed Goldhen Eggs back in 2018, we got a lot more comments and emails about that passage than we did the actual eggs. Most of those comments were positive, while some were critical. Regardless, whenever the packaging buzz exceeds the item inside, it’s hard not to want to dig a little deeper into the backstory.

Inside the Carton

Goldhen, it should be pointed out, is not a company. It’s an Aldi brand. The grocer appears to have trademarked it back in 2000.

It can be hard, sometimes, to determine who Aldi’s suppliers are. Not in this case. It’s is right there on the outside of the carton.

It reads: “Packed by Rose Acre Farms,” giving the address of 1657 West Tipton Street, Seymour, IN 47274.

Seymour is a town of roughly 22,000 people just off of Interstate 65 in south-central Indiana, about halfway between Louisville, Kentucky, and Indianapolis, Indiana. A quick look at Google Maps at that location shows a few buildings across a large property. If you look at Google Street View along a side street, meanwhile, you find this:

The Company Behind the Label

Rose Acre Farms operates a website, which proudly declares: “From our beginnings in the 1930s as a family chicken farm in rural Indiana, Rose Acre Farms has grown to become the second-largest egg producer in the United States.” The site notes that Rose Acre now has “numerous facilities across the United States” and “our customers include some of the world’s largest retail, food service, and industrial companies,” while adding that it is still “family-owned.”

A look at the company’s job openings currently shows 20 different facilities stretching as far west as Arizona and as far east as North Carolina.

Rose Acre Farms specializes exclusively in eggs and egg-derived products. We don’t know a great deal about the exact conditions inside the farm’s various facilities. The website, though, says that its facilities are United Egg Producers (UEP) Certified. According to the UEP’s own website, this designation means a producer conforms to certain standards for the hens and their caretakers.

The Story Behind the Verse

Because of the volume of correspondence we got about the Bible verse following our 2018 review, we decided to reach out to the company at that time to find out the backstory. Here’s what a company representative told us:

The Bible verse came about on our cartons from our founder, David W. Rust, who held that verse special to him through out his life. He had it placed on Rose Acre Farms egg cartons in 1980, where it has remained to this day! It has always garnered letters of sincere appreciation from customers all across the USA as a positive message of hope.

That same verse is on display near the top of the homepage of Rose Acre Farm’s website.

Closing Thoughts

Goldhen Eggs is an Aldi house brand that is as well-known for its packaging as its cheap eggs. It turns out that the company behind the brand, Rose Acre Farms, has a lot to do with said packaging. While people may have differing views on that packaging — and trust me, we’ve heard them all — the eggs nevertheless have one of the more interesting stories among the various products Aldi sells.

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* The New American Standard Version, or NASB, has been revised three times: in 1977, 1995, and 2020. Given the timetable of when the verse was added to cartons, it would seem probable the 1977 version was used.