Bob's Red Mill is an American brand of whole-grain food marketed by employee-owned[5] American[6] company Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods of Milwaukie, Oregon. The company was established in 1978 by Bob and Charlee Moore.[5][4]
The company markets natural grains and certified organic grains, as well as gluten-freemilledgrain products — marketing itself as the "nation's leading miller of diverse whole-grain foods,"[7] and distributing its products in the United States, Canada, and a number of other locations.
The company produces over 400 products, primarily whole grains ground with quartzmillstones,[8] as well as baking mixes,[9] beans, seeds, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and herbs. The products are marketed through seventy natural food and specialty grocery distributors in the United States and Canada, as well as via the company's online store, and the company's factory store and restaurant.[10]
History
Bob's Red Mill products on grocery store shelves.
In the 1950s, Moore briefly owned a filling station in Los Angeles.[11] The smog in the city influenced Bob and his wife Charlee to sell the station, and move to Mammoth Lakes, a small resort town in the mountains about 300 miles (480 km) north of Los Angeles where he opened a second filling station. After its failure, Moore worked as a manager at a Firestone Tires store, subsequently buying a five-acre goat farm where he and Charlee raised their sons.[10] He and his sons sold milk and eggs locally. Charlee began experimenting with baking whole grain bread.[12]
Moore's drive for healthier foods started with his father's death of a heart attack at age 49, and his grandmother's healthy eating obsession.[12]
He began experimenting with stone-ground flours in the mid-1960s after reading "John Goffe's Mill", a book about an archeologist who rebuilt a flour mill and went into business with no prior experience.[12][4] Stone grinding, largely abandoned when the flour industry moved to steel grinding burrs, used quartz millstones operating at lower temperatures, blending the germ, its oil, the bran, and the endosperm.[10] He found his first traditional stone-grinding flour millstones from a company in North Carolina while he was working, at the time, for JCPenney. The equipment sat for a few years until Moore, his wife, and two of his three sons started their first mill business, Moore's Flour Mill in Redding, California.[12]
Bob and his wife retired from the Redding Mill and left one of his sons to run it. That mill still produces some products under contract with Moore's current company. The Moores moved to Portland, where Bob attended a seminary to study the Bible for about six months.[10] Bob found a commercial flour mill in Oregon City that was for sale, painted it red, and went back into the flours business.[10] Moore bought millstones from the closed Boyd mill near Dufur, Oregon. He acquired other stones from old mills in Indiana and Tennessee.[10] The business that is now Bob's Red Mill began producing stone ground flours and cereals for the local area. In 1978, Moore sold direct through his store until he made a deal with the Fred Meyer grocery stores to carry his products. [12]
In 1988, annual sales to area health food stores and smaller grocers were approaching $3 million when the original mill was destroyed by an arsonist's fire. The millstones were spared, as grain from the second floor fell on them in the fire, which extinguished the flames around the mills, keeping the quartz stones from shattering in the heat and preserving the gears that turned them.[10]
The company built a new mill in Milwaukie, Oregon, unsuccessful in finding an existing mill that would do after Moore was flown around the state by friends. The couple borrowed $2.5 million to rebuild the factory and warehouse into a new 60,000 sq. ft. facility.[13][10] Bob continued to grow the business by working with small markets, local retail and larger wholesale customers, rather than a corporate approach. The Moores were early to the whole grains movement, when other suppliers were making more money by making faster, cheaper products.[14] They also were one of the first gluten-free mills in 1991, and one of the first to offer specialty grains and cereals in retail-sized packaging. They were also one of the first flour mills to build laboratories that tested their products to certify organic and gluten-free compliance.[12][10]
In 1996, the Moores took on partners to expand and pay off their debt. Dennis Gilliam, who came from the printing business, became their vice-president of sales and marketing. John Wagner became vice-president of administration. Gilliam expanded the company wholesaling with California-based Quality Brokerage and Nature's Best, the company's first large regional distributors.[10]
Wagner helped the company control debt by building and repairing machinery in-house, and through the purchasing of used machinery needed for expansion from older and closed mills like Seattle-based Fisher Mills, Inc.[10]
Bob Moore, founder of Bob's Red Mill
In 2005, it was estimated that Bob's Red Mill's annual revenue was between US$30 million and $50 million.[7]
In June 2007, the company announced that it was moving both its administrative headquarters,[15] and manufacturing and warehousing facility to a 325,000-square-foot (30,200m2) building from its original 130,000-square-foot (12,000m2) facility, which it planned to sell and sub-lease.[16] Its current manufacturing facility is 82,000 square feet (7,600m2).[7] The new facility will triple the company's manufacturing capacity.[17]
As of 2005, its products were available in Japan and the company intends to expand distribution to other countries.[7] In February 2010, owner Bob Moore transferred ownership of the company to his employees using an employee stock ownership plan.[4][18][19] By 2018, the company's annual revenue was estimated at more than $100million.[3] Moore retired in 2018 and died in 2024 at the age of 94.[20]
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↑ "The Mill". www.bobsredmill.com. Archived from the original on 2019-07-03. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
↑ Jabr, Ferris (October 29, 2015). "Bread Is Broken". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved April 17, 2020– via NYTimes.com.
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