Omaha Steaks International, Inc., known as Omaha Steaks, is a food retailer. The company is named after the city it was founded in, and its headquarters location, Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha Steaks manufactures, markets, and distributes a variety of steaks, meat, seafood, and some prepared foods. The company was an early pioneer in direct mail sales and online marketing. History In 1850 Lazar Shames founded a packing house and meat market in Riga, Latvia. 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. 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. 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. The business was located in downtown Omaha in the current location of the First National Center. The previous occupant in that space had been a carpentry shop called "Table Supply Co." and the Simons changed the name to Table Supply Meat Co. The butchery established a reputation for fine cuts of loin, boneless strips, ribs, and ribeyes. In 1924 the Simons moved the business to a new location in what is now Omaha's Old Market neighborhood and began selling their cuts of beef to local supermarkets and national chain grocery stores, hotel restaurants, and institutional customers. In 1929 B.A. Simon's son Lester joined the business and helped expand its distribution. In the 1940s Lester brokered a deal with the Union Pacific Railroad to begin serving Omaha Steaks in the dining cars of their transcontinental trains. Lester selected the meat for the passenger trains that traveled between Omaha and Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The mail-order business began in 1952, as orders packed in dry ice and cardboard cartons lined with wax paper were shipped via train. In the early 1960s innovations in shipping like insulated-foam coolers, vacuum packaging, and direct parcel shipping helped Omaha Steaks transform itself into a direct marketer. Catalogs were mailed to customers for the first time in 1963, and gradually expanded to include not only steaks, but poultry, pork, seafood, side dishes, and desserts. In 1966 the company changed its name to Omaha Steaks and moved