Bob Moore
Bob Moore, 90, is the patriarch of America’s whole grain movement. His smiling, bearded visage is stamped on every package of Bob’s Red Mill, a company based outside of Portland, Ore. He and his late wife, Charlee, co-founded the company in the late 1970s. Today more than 400 products – half of them gluten-free – are ubiquitous nationwide and shipped to 81 countries. Granola, paleo baking flour, hazelnut meal, steel cut oats, and organic quinoa are a fraction of their offerings.
Healthy eating was not always part of Moore’s lifestyle. He was a smoker until the age of 34 and owned gas stations in California. After going broke, he, Charlee and their three boys moved to a five-acre goat dairy farm near Sacramento. Charlee’s grandmother sent them books touting healthy eating. “Frankly, she kind of irritated me,” Moore says.
Moore accepted an opportunity to take over a J.C. Penney automotive center in Redding, Calif. The town library was where Moore, an avid reader, discovered “John Goffe’s Mill,” by George Woodbury. The story of restoring an old mill delighted and inspired him, and he went in search of millstones to grind his own flour. After exhaustive hunting, he found the equipment. “The public beat a path to our door,” Moore says of their first mill in Redding. The Moores’ sons run it to this day.
Moore was curious to tackle another challenge, reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek. He and Charlee relocated to Portland and took long walks together. One day they came across an abandoned mill, akin to a mirage. He leased it with an option to buy and painted it red.
Portland had a far bigger populace than Redding and their freshly ground grains were an instant hit. An arsonist burned down the wooden mill in 1988. The Moores’ dozen or so employees didn’t want them to quit, so they rebuilt. A 20,000 square-foot building grew to 50,000, then 325,000, then expanded to 700,000. When Moore turned 81, he gave all employees stock certificates. Bob’s Red Mill currently employs about 600 people and his long-range retirement plan is for them to own the company. His sons are okay with that.
