Image – George Fox Evangelical Seminary from Portland, OR, USA
Nearly half a century ago, Bob Moore founded a natural foods brand that now boasts over 200 products in more than 70 countries. On February 10, at the age of 94, he passed away peacefully in his home in Oregon, US. Having grown Bob’s Red Mill and Natural Foods with his wife, who died in 2018, Moore began securing the company’s legacy in 2010, by transferring ownership to its employees — over 700 of them.
Last year, he told the Portland Monthly, “There’s an element of how you treat people that impressed me. And sharing in the profit, sharing in the company to make things more fair and more benevolent impressed me, and I felt strongly about it.
Originally, we started giving employees a percentage of the profits — just whenever you do well, you pay them extra money. We did that for a number of years, and eventually the government came up with this ESOP, employee stock ownership plan, and that was an established program. We did a lot of investigating — nine years — to decide that was the right thing for Bob’s Red Mill.”
