Schreiber Foods: More Than Just A Cheese Company

It is through their employees that their business succeeded. Through meaningful partnership with the people behind the production, the venture prospered from being a single production facility to a multi-billion industry. It is from this vantage point that Schreiber Foods would like to have everyone look at their business’ history.

Founded in 1945, the company is now the largest customer-brand dairy company in the world. Earning a revenue of $3.8 billion for last year, Schreiber Foods is also one of the largest privately owned companies in the United States. It is an employee owned company and is headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The business is in the production of cheese, yogurt and other private-label products and distributes their goods to grocery chains, wholesalers and even to fast food chains.

L.D. Schreiber founded the business together with partners Merlin G. Bush and Daniel D. Nusbaum. The company started with the name L.D. Schreiber Cheese Company. It was in 1980 that the name Schreiber Foods Inc. was used after 13 employees purchased the cheese operation from Schreiber in 1962.

During that time, the company was already operating in four plants: their original in Green Bay, their second in Missouri and two additional plants in Logan Utah and Monett, Missouri. It was also during this time that the company already started producing other products other than cheese. It was not until 1999, after Schreiber created an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that the ownership of the company was turned over to its employees and other partners.

By 2000, the company already opened additional operations in Arizona, Missouri and Wisconsin in addition to their plants in California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and in Texas. They also have their international operations in countries like Austria, Brazil, China, India, Germany, Mexico and Uruguay. As of, the company employs a total of 7,000 workers across the globe.