Founder of Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods transfers business to employees

By Dana Tims, The Oregonian

DOUG BEGHTEL   Bob Moore overlooks his landmark Bob's Red Mill Natural Food store in Milwaukie.

The 81-year-old just unveiled a program giving his 209employees full ownership of the business. The company produces andmarkets a line of more than 400 whole-grain flours, cereals and bread mixes.

MILWAUKIE – Scores of employees gathered to help Bob Moore celebrate his 81st birthday this week at the company that bears his name, Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods.

Moore, whose mutual loves of healthy eating and old-world technologies spawned an internationally distributed line of products, responded with a gift of his own -- the whole company. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan Moore unveiled means that his 209 employees now own the place and its 400offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes.

"This is Bob taking care of us," said Lori Sobelson, who helps run the business' retail operation. "He expects a lot out of us, but really gives us the world in return." Moore declined to say how much he thinks the company is worth. In 2004, however, one business publication estimated that year's revenues at more than $24 million. A company news release issued this week stated that Bob's Red Mill has chalked up an annual growth rate of between 20 percent to 30 percent every year since.

"In some ways I had a choice," Moore said of what he could have done with the company he founded with his wife, Charlee, in1978. "But in my heart, I didn't. These people are far too good at their jobs for me to just sell it."

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Forwarded by Daily Good


This is a wonderful sharing, yet only a small example of even more awesome corporate-employee ownership sharings.

Blessings

Dan