Sept. 8, 2025

CJ Schwan’s is moving its first employees into a newly opened downtown office.

The global cuisine company is building an Asian food production facility at Foundation Park in northwest Sioux Falls but will base 50 to 100 people at the renovated office downtown.

The 12,000-square-foot regional office is in the River Centre at 200 E. 10th St.

“It’s very open, very collaborative,” CEO Brian Schiegg said. “Right now, it’s really housing our project team, so you have engineers from all over the country, either external to CJ Schwan’s or part of our own engineering team … going through the drawings and timelines for the factory. So it’s being used already and will continue to be used after the facility is open to house a lot of engineers and technical jobs.”

The centerpiece of the space is a commercial kitchen designed to host sampling events for customers. Typically, CJ Schwan’s hosts customers worldwide at its largest manufacturing facilities, Schiegg said.

“Every year, we have an Innovation Summit with the largest customers in the world — Walmart, Costco — and they’ll come to town, and we’ll showcase product and look at a three-to-five-year pipeline of innovation sharing and get feedback,” he said.

“Top customers love to see our largest facilities and take tours.”

The CJ Schwan’s sign will be lit nightly and visible entering downtown from the 10th Street viaduct. The company officially lit it for the first time Monday night, along with hosting an open house for state, local and business leaders. To mark the event, CJ Schwan’s announced a $250,000 commitment to the next five-year Forward Sioux Falls campaign, a joint venture between the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce and Sioux Falls Development Foundation that supports economic and workforce development initiatives.

“For us, it’s consistent with what we’ve done in communities we operate in,” Schiegg said. “We’re very involved in the communities we’re in.”

The company also will have an increased presence at this week’s Sanford International golf tournament, entering its third year of sponsorship. Caddies during the Pro-Am competitions will be eating bibigo products, there will be on-course concessions, and the company sponsored Autograph Alley, as well as a promotion with Hy-Vee for customers to win tournament tickets.

CJ Schwan’s broke ground in November 2024 on its 142-acre production facility in Foundation Park. The company estimates 55,000 hours of work have been completed so far. Most of the production facility’s walls are up, and the goal is to enclose the production space by the end of the year.

It’s scheduled to open in mid-2027 and will produce dumplings for bibigo, the leading Korean-style food brand in the U.S. and the 103rd-largest retail food brand overall, as well as Asian-style snacks and appetizers for the Pagoda brand, and egg rolls for both food service customers and retail brands.

The new facility initially will include two state-of-the-art food production lines with room for additional expansion, a wastewater treatment plant, warehouse and distribution center, shipping and receiving docks and additional office space for plant operations.

“There’s been lots and lots of progress,” Schiegg said. “There’s a lot to be done before we open in mid-2027, but in terms of the timeline, so far so good, particularly with the variables you encounter in projects this size.”

He estimates that more than $73 million has been spent with local suppliers so far, “and that number will continue to grow as the project progresses.”

The company also continues to look deeper into automation that will be used in the plant and anticipates additional investment, he added. There likely will be more than 600 employees needed at the Foundation Park site, which also includes land for future expansion potential.

While many of the technical staff already are hired for construction, once the facility opens, “you’ll have local engineering and technical jobs that will come online,” Schiegg said, adding that his team has been meeting with area technical schools to address training needed for a variety of roles in the plant. CJ Schwan’s recently sponsored its first full-ride Build Dakota scholarship.

“We’re pretty impressed with the level of support and desire to partner with us for specific jobs we have in the factory,” Schiegg said. “All our visits have been very, very positive.”