The egg factory that Thelma and Deloris work at is an actual workplace that the real-life Velma and Doris were employed at. (For more on the real-life people who were altered slightly for our mystery series, check out the book Miss Kansas City Kitty.)
Since neither of us knew much about egg factories, we did a bit of research for Murder Among Friends.
We found this fascinating short video of what a 1931 egg factory looked like. What you see in the video fed into our description in the book.
If you’re really curious, you can check out this article from the Journal of Applied Poultry Research titled “Laying hens in the U.S. market: An appraisal of trends from the beginning of the 20th century to present.” A picture from that article is what we envisioned when we wrote about egg crates being loaded on delivery trucks.
While we found images and videos that helped us describe the egg factory in Murder Among Friends, one thing we couldn’t find was the name or location of the actual egg factory in Kansas City that Velma and Doris worked at.
Our best guess is that it was the Monark Egg Company, located at 403 Grand Ave in the Columbus Park area of northeast Kansas City, Missouri. If you happen to know anything about Monark, or any other egg factories in Kansas City during the 1930s, we’d love to hear from you—drop us a note on social media. Maybe together, we can solve this mystery!