Technical Abstract: Rapid methods for the testing of foods for the presence of pathogenic bacteria typically suffer from poor sensitivity and therefore require large concentrations of the bacteria to be present. Since foods are often contaminated with little or no pathogens, the need exists to increase the number of potentially present pathogenic bacteria through growth in an appropriate culture medium. Furthermore, multiplexed testing for the presence of different bacteria in food samples necessitates the ability to increase, through growth/culture, the concentration of multiple bacterial species to detectable levels. We have evaluated several commercially available and in-house media preparations for their ability to support the simultaneous growth of the following bacteria: Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium, and Yersinia enterocolitica O:8. Conditions (primarily incubation temperature and time) that resulted in growth of all bacteria to at least 10 e6 cells/mL were reported and considered suitable for use prior to testing with a rapid method. Additional mixed culture results in ground pork indicated that several of the growth media tested appear to be suitable for the growth of the selected bacteria prior to testing with rapid methods as well.