After less than two months in their new building, Billy’s Original Foods has already outgrown its facilities, president and head chef Billy Lieberman said of the spin-off of Billy’s Italian Restaurant and manufacturer of artisan, ready-to-eat frozen Italian meals and deli products.

Why?

An increase in demand.

Since Billy’s landed its first deal with Kroger, which sells its meatballs and sauce and lasagna in 68 stores in five states, including Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, the orders have only kept coming.

“We outgrew the building we are in five weeks after we got there. We’re going to have 1,000 stores in a year, which just blows me away. I’m shocked this is happening,” Lieberman said to the Vicksburg Kiwanis club Tuesday.

“I thought it was good (food). Some of you who ate in the restaurant thought it was good,” he said. “The risk is huge, but you know what, I’ve never been one for playing it safe. I’m from Vegas. I’m a gambler, and this is the hugest gamble I could take. I’m confident it will be really great. We’re working really, really hard.”

The hard work seems to be paying off.

Billy’s has signed a contract to produce their frozen foods for 100 Wal-Mart stores beginning in March 2017.

It is also in the process of nailing down a deal with another large-scale food distributor to place their food in another 400 stores across the country, explaining why they need a large place.

“We just looked at a place that was 10 times the size of our current one,” he said.

Lieberman added they expect to hire close to 100 employees in the next year to accommodate the demand for their hand-made foods.

“We don’t subcontract out anything,” he said. “We make every meatball and every lasagna by hand. We cook it, refrigerate it, cut it all by hand. What makes it artisan is that it’s all done by hand.”

Though replacing celery in their much-loved chicken salad in order to produce it large-scale and appease the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been a challenge, Lieberman said even that will be solved soon.

“We’re doing all we can and just plugging along,” he said.