Look At This Hippie Jerk Who Gave His Company To His Workers ... Waaaait A Minute.

That'll do, Bob Moore of Bob's Red Mill. That'll do.

Video Screenshot, CBS Sunday Morning on YouTube

Here’s Yr. Doktor Zoom’s attempt at an aphorism: Try to live in such a way that people reading your obituary might smile fondly, instead of the other way they could smile when they see your obituary. That’s how we felt (the first option) reading about the death Sunday of Bob Moore, 94, who founded the “Bob’s Red Mill” brand of whole grains back in the 1970s, when there were hippies and Crunchy Earth Mothers and that’s who bought stone-ground whole grains.

I don’t think I’d heard of Moore, apart from seeing the brand in grocery stores, but he’s one of those people you wish you’d known more about before encountering them in an obit. He turned good simple food — made well — into something of an empire, only without the colonialism, as this overview from Eater Portland ‘splains:

Moore’s Milwaukie, Oregon-based company has become one of the most well-known whole grain food brands worldwide, with more than 200 products distributed in 70 countries. Moore was a leader in the stone-milled flour renaissance, opening his first mill in the 1970s — decades before its resurgence in the early aughts; the company was also an early adopter and producer of gluten-free flours and baking mixes, making them widely available to many for the first time. Later in life, Moore made headlines for turning over ownership of the company to his employees in the form of company stock.

Yep. he gave the whole shebang to his workers, regularly turning down offers from Big Food to buy the brand and walk off with a few hundred million bucks. Here’s a nice CBS Sunday Morning story on Moore and his company from three years ago:

Maybe this guy had enemies, people in the whole-grains world who would curse when they heard the name “Bob Moore,” but we’re not betting on it.

Here’s the quote that does it for us: Asked why he thought more companies don’t go the employee ownership route, Moore told Fortune in 2022,

“Companies could do this, but because money is the only factor, and the owners and managers are generally looking out only for their own benefit, and what [the] company can do for them, I’m not so sure everyone cares to do that. ‘Come in, get as rich as you can, get out’ — that’s their main idea.”

Now look, Yr. Doktor Zoom has a really bad cold and his brain has turned into molasses — excellent for cookies, we hear — but doesn’t that sound like exactly the kind of company we’d all want to work for, and where some of us do?

I’m far from an economist, but I sure would like to think that we could do capitalism, or hybrid capitalism/social democracy, so much better than we have so far, even at a level where we might be sourcing materials for EV battery packs from mines that don’t kill their workers, or building said EVs and selling them at a fair price without some asshole using the profits to spread hate. It might just be possible to have neat widgets, a clean economy, and still not grind people into fine powder for an extra dollar.

Yeah, I know, time for Dok to have some chicken soup, lie down, and stop talking crazy. I’m glad to know there are people like Bob Moore out there. We should encourage more of ‘em.

[Inc. / Eater Portland / Bob’s Red Mill]

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