Visual summary of operating lessons from Bob Moore.

Lessons from Bob Moore

Bob Moore ran gas stations and tire stores until a library book about stone milling inspired him to start Bob's Red Mill in his fifties. Over the next five decades, he built a local Oregon operation into an international brand and repeatedly refused to sell to outside investors. Instead, he transferred ownership entirely to his employees, reasoning that the people who bag the flour and sweep the floors deserve the profits.

Part 1: Origins and Finding the Path

  1. On Discovering His Calling: "He stumbled upon stone-ground flour in the mid-1960s after finding John Goffe’s Mill at a local library, a book that changed his entire life trajectory." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  2. On Age and Starting Over: "He was already in his fifties when he opened his first mill in Milwaukie, Oregon, proving that major life chapters do not always follow a standard timeline." — Source: [CBS News]
  3. On the Magic of Stones: "He insisted on using traditional quartz millstones because they keep the grain cool, preserving the nutritional value that modern steel rollers strip away." — Source: [Bob's Red Mill Blog]
  4. On His Wife's Influence: "Charlee Moore was the original driver behind the family's shift to whole foods in the 1960s, a decision that eventually became the foundation of their entire business." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  5. On Early Scavenging: "To build his first mill, he scoured the country for old, discarded millstones, rescuing them from fields and abandoned buildings in places like North Carolina and Indiana." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  6. On Following Curiosity: "The simple act of reading a random book about an old mill in New Hampshire was enough to spark an obsession that lasted half a century." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  7. On Discarding Retirement: "He technically retired after running a gas station and a Firestone tire store in California, only to find himself studying theology before ultimately deciding to mill grain in Oregon." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  8. On Naming the Company: "The name Bob's Red Mill was chosen because of a bright red building they found in Milwaukie, Oregon, though the red color was just a lucky coincidence that fit his rustic vision." — Source: [Forbes]
  9. On Being the Face of the Brand: "My picture's on the package, and everybody thinks I'm dead. When people meet me, they ask, 'There really is a Bob?'" — Source: [CBS News]
  10. On Building From Scratch: "The initial business was entirely built on word-of-mouth and the physical labor of Bob and his sons sweeping floors, painting the mill, and bagging the grain by hand." — Source: [People Before Profit]

Part 2: The Philosophy of Employee Ownership

  1. On Why He Gave the Company Away: "He believed deeply that the people who actually did the daily work to build the company deserved to own it and reap the financial rewards." — Source: [Forbes]
  2. On the ESOP Decision: "Rather than sell to a massive food conglomerate, he established an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 2010 to transition total ownership of the company to the staff." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  3. On Modern Corporate Greed: "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... I'm not so sure everyone cares to do that." — Source: [Wonkette]
  4. On Mutual Trust: "He argued that when workers know they have a literal stake in the machinery and the output, they take better care of the product and each other." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  5. On Rejecting Wall Street: "He fielded endless calls from private equity firms looking to buy the company, but he viewed selling as a betrayal of his employees' hard work." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  6. On True Wealth: "He frequently noted that an individual only needs so much money to live well; holding onto a massive company just to increase a personal net worth made no sense to him." — Source: [CBS News]
  7. On the Command to Cash Out: "He detested the common business strategy of building a brand solely to exit for a massive payday, viewing it as a hollow way to spend a life." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  8. On Worker Dignity: "Giving employees ownership was a direct method of enforcing dignity and respect on the factory floor, rather than a simple financial transaction." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  9. On Completing the Transfer: "By 2020, the ten-year process of converting Bob's Red Mill to complete employee ownership was finished, cementing his promise to his staff." — Source: [Forbes]

Part 3: People and Respect

  1. On the Golden Rule: "He structured his entire business philosophy around treating others as he wished to be treated, a principle he insisted must apply to business as much as personal life." — Source: [Bob's Red Mill Blog]
  2. On Profit Margins: "People are everything. He believed that prioritizing human relationships over squeezing out a few extra percentage points of profit was the secret to longevity." — Source: [Medium]
  3. On Vendor Relationships: "He viewed the farmers who grew his grain as essential partners, refusing to treat them as supply-chain nodes to be squeezed for lower prices." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  4. On Kindness as a Strategy: "He argued that being kind to employees naturally results in better customer service, because miserable workers cannot sustainably project warmth to buyers." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  5. On Mistakes: "He fostered an environment where mistakes were treated as mechanical or training issues rather than moral failures requiring harsh discipline." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  6. On Listening: "He made a habit of walking the mill floor daily, listening to the mechanics and baggers rather than just reading reports in an office." — Source: [CBS News]
  7. On Purpose: "We all have to do something in life, and hopefully it's something good." — Source: [Whole Grains Council]
  8. On Compensation: "He instituted profit-sharing long before he established the ESOP, believing that workers should take home extra cash during good months alongside the owners." — Source: [Forbes]
  9. On Business Ethics: "He firmly believed that you do not have to be ruthless to survive in the competitive food industry." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  10. On Remembering Names: "He made it a point to learn the names of the people on the floor, recognizing that anonymity is the first step toward treating workers like machines." — Source: [People Before Profit]

Part 4: Real Food and Nutrition

  1. On Processing: "He fundamentally distrusted the modern industrial food system that stripped nutrients out of wheat only to artificially add them back in later." — Source: [Eating Rules]
  2. On Dietary Fads: "While his company happily supplied gluten-free and paleo bakers, his personal loyalty always remained with simple, unadulterated whole grains." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  3. On Oatmeal: "He famously ate oatmeal almost every single morning of his life, crediting it for his physical durability." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  4. On Taste: "You don't get tired of good food. Come on! He refused to accept that healthy food had to be bland or purely functional." — Source: [CBS News]
  5. On Charlee's Vision: "He credited his wife Charlee with introducing him to the concept of feeding their family whole, unprocessed foods long before it became a mainstream trend." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  6. On Celiac Disease: "Bob's Red Mill was one of the earliest major producers to dedicate separate machinery and facilities to gluten-free oats to prevent cross-contamination." — Source: [Bob's Red Mill Blog]
  7. On Sourcing Ingredients: "He traveled the world to find specific grains, like teff from Ethiopia or amaranth from South America, to introduce to the American market." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  8. On the Definition of Food: "He believed that if a grain had its bran and germ removed, it had been robbed of its identity and its core nutritional purpose." — Source: [Eating Rules]
  9. On Honesty in Labeling: "He insisted on transparent, clear packaging so customers could actually see the grains they were buying before they opened the bag." — Source: [People Before Profit]

Part 5: Navigating Adversity

  1. On the 1988 Fire: "When an arsonist burned his original mill to the ground, he was in his late fifties and could have easily taken the insurance money and retired." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  2. On Immediate Action: "Instead of waiting, he rallied his employees in the ashes of the fire and promised them they would rebuild and nobody would miss a paycheck." — Source: [Forbes]
  3. On Community Support: "Competitors and local businesses offered him space and equipment to keep milling while he built a new facility, teaching him a lifelong lesson about community goodwill." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  4. On Debt: "Rebuilding required taking on massive debt late in life, a terrifying prospect that he managed by focusing entirely on the daily work of milling." — Source: [CBS News]
  5. On Forgiveness: "He chose not to harbor bitterness toward the arsonist, viewing anger as a distraction from the task of saving his business." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  6. On Finding Machinery: "To rebuild, he had to once again scour the country for rare stone mills, traveling to find functioning nineteenth-century equipment to install in a modern factory." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  7. On Resilience: "He believed that surviving the fire permanently shifted the company culture to one of extreme resilience." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  8. On the Pandemic: "During COVID-19, he leaned on the company's established culture of trust to keep the supply chain moving while protecting the health of the workers on the floor." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  9. On Quitting: "He often stated that the thought of quitting never seriously entered his mind, because too many families depended on the mill's survival." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]

Part 6: Wealth and Greed

  1. On Hoarding Money: "He found the modern billionaire class baffling, frequently questioning why any single family would need more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes." — Source: [Wonkette]
  2. On Corporate Buyouts: "When massive food conglomerates came calling with blank checks, he turned them down flat, knowing they would likely shut down the local factory and lay off his staff." — Source: [Forbes]
  3. On the True Source of Value: "He recognized that the brand's value was held in the institutional knowledge of the millers and baggers working the floor, rather than his own public image." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  4. On Personal Lifestyle: "Despite building a massive international brand, he lived modestly, continuing to wear his signature red vest and driving himself to work." — Source: [CBS News]
  5. On the Duty of Owners: "He felt that business owners have a moral obligation to the communities that allow them to operate, an obligation that supersedes shareholder returns." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  6. On Selling Out: "He viewed selling his company to a competitor as functionally equivalent to selling his employees down the river." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  7. On Sharing the Pie: "He believed that giving away the company proved the business was strong enough to support everyone, validating his success rather than diminishing it." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  8. On Legacy over Cash: "He wanted his legacy to be a working, thriving mill in Oregon, completely rejecting the idea of cashing out to put money in a bank account." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  9. On Success: "To him, success meant looking his employees in the eye and knowing he had never compromised their livelihoods for his own comfort." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  10. On Economic Fairness: "He felt the ESOP model was a practical, functioning alternative to the brutal cycles of corporate extraction and layoffs." — Source: [Forbes]

Part 7: Daily Work and Longevity

  1. On Routine: "Well into his nineties, he still came into the office daily, enjoying the routine and the presence of the people he had worked with for decades." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  2. On Stopping: "He rejected the idea of traditional retirement, finding the concept of sitting idle to be far more exhausting than going to the mill." — Source: [CBS News]
  3. On Staying Sharp: "He credited his continued mental acuity to his daily interactions with staff and the constant problem-solving required to run an international food brand." — Source: [Portland Monthly]
  4. On Physical Presence: "He believed a leader's physical presence on the floor communicated respect to the workers in a way that memos or emails never could." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  5. On Age as an Asset: "He viewed his advanced age as a source of long-term perspective that prevented him from panicking over short-term market shifts." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  6. On Dietary Consistency: "He maintained that a daily bowl of whole grain oats, combined with staying physically active at work, was his best defense against aging." — Source: [Eating Rules]
  7. On Mentoring: "In his later years, he shifted his focus from daily operations to mentoring the employee-owners who would eventually take over the board of directors." — Source: [Forbes]
  8. On Joy in Labor: "He genuinely loved the sound of the millstones and the smell of the grain, finding a deep sensory satisfaction in the actual mechanics of his business." — Source: [Bob's Red Mill Blog]
  9. On Life's Final Chapters: "He wanted to work until his final days, preferring to pass away with his boots on rather than fade out in a recliner." — Source: [CBS News]

Part 8: Legacy and Giving Back

  1. On Philanthropy: "He and Charlee donated tens of millions of dollars to universities in Oregon, specifically to fund research into nutrition and the impacts of whole foods on childhood health." — Source: [Oregon Health & Science University]
  2. On the Purpose of Wealth: "He saw his accumulated wealth as a tool to solve structural health problems, believing that funding nutritional science was the logical extension of his life's work in milling." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  3. On Charlee's Memory: "After his wife passed away, he aggressively funded programs in her name, wanting her early advocacy for whole foods to be permanently remembered." — Source: [Oregon State University]
  4. On Building Institutions: "He donated heavily to the National College of Natural Medicine, hoping to legitimize and expand the medical understanding of food as preventative medicine." — Source: [NUNM]
  5. On the Word Self-Made: "He disliked the idea that he built the company alone, constantly crediting his wife, his sons, and the thousands of employees who touched the grain over the decades." — Source: [NPR How I Built This]
  6. On the Next Generation: "He established the ESOP so that the mill would outlast him by generations, intentionally designing a structure that made it legally difficult to sell out." — Source: [Forbes]
  7. On Local Roots: "He wanted his legacy to remain strictly tied to Milwaukie, Oregon, refusing to move headquarters to a cheaper state just to save on taxes." — Source: [Oregon Business]
  8. On Measuring Impact: "He judged his life's work by the number of employee families who were able to buy homes and send kids to college because of the mill." — Source: [People Before Profit]
  9. On How to Be Remembered: "He simply wanted to be known as a fair man who provided good, clean food to people at a reasonable price, and who took care of the people who helped him do it." — Source: [Portland Monthly]