Scores of employees gathered to help Bob Moore celebrate his 81st birthday this week at the company that bears his name: Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods. Moore, whose mutual loves of healthy eating and old-world technologies spawned an internationally distributed line of products, responded with a gift of his own -- the whole company! By unveiling a new Employee Stock Ownership Plan, Moore's 209 employees now own the company and its 400 offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes. "In some ways I had a choice," Moore said of what he could have done with the company he founded with his wife, Charlee, in 1978. "But in my heart, I didn't. These people are far too good at their jobs for me to just sell it."
