Amy’s Kitchen: Natural and Organic Home Cooked Meals on Store Shelves

Twenty-five years ago, a husband and wife team started a family business that would provide organic home-cooked meals to people around the United States. When Andy and Rachel Berliner’s daughter Amy was born, the couple started a company and named it Amy’s Kitchen.

The company’s mission to provide meals made exclusively out of organic ingredients came from Andy’s wife Rachel. Rachel’s family has been using organic ingredients for their recipes since the 1950’s. As such, the company’s belief in the health benefits of organic food has been one of its cornerstones.

From a small family business in 1987, Amy’s Kitchen is now distributing their products all over the world. Despite the company’s success, it still remains to be a family run business until today. The company is headquartered in Petaluma, California, but has offices in two other states and in the United Kingdom.

Amazon.com: Realizing Opportunities

In the mid 1990’s, the internet and the World Wide Web were just starting to become some of the greatest advancements in human history. In 1994, a man named Jeff Bezos read a report that the annual growth of the web would reach around 2,300 percent. Realizing vast opportunities in this report, Bezos left a lucrative job post in Wall Street to start a possibly more lucrative business venture that was based on the growth of the internet.

After leaving his firm on Wall Street, Jeff immediately began formulating plans for a business venture selling products on the internet. Jeff made a list of several products that would likely sell on the web and narrowed down that list to books. Working out of his garage, Jeff started an internet based company called Amazon.com.

The speed of Amazon.com’s growth was one of the fastest in history. After just four months of launching the website in 2005, Amazon was already making waves on the internet. Yahoo and Netscape included the company on their lists of popular web-based companies.  At that time, Amazon was already shipping products to all 50 states in the US and internationally as well.

It was clear that Jeff’s garage would no longer be able to accommodate Amazon’s success, so he opened an office in Seattle to service the company’s online customers.

The continued success of Amazon.com was unprecedented. After only four years of operation, Jeff Bezos was selected by Time Magazine for its “Man of the Year” award in 1999.

From selling books, Amazon.com now sells almost every product on the internet. From household items to business products, Amazon had it all in stock.

Jeff Bezos realized early that the internet would become the world’s biggest marketplace. Acting on the opportunity, Jeff turned a garage-based business into a multi-billion dollar corporation in less than a decade.

General Parts: Providing North America their Auto Parts Needs

General Parts International has Carquest as its largest business. The latter is a chain of auto-supply stores. Some of the company’s biggest customers are Midas and American Tire Dealers, CarMax, Firestone and Goodyear. There are over 3,000 locations in North America that General Parts is maintaining. They distribute replacement parts, light and heavy trucks, offroad equipment, buses, tools and equipment for automobiles, recreational and agricultural equipment.

Other than the auto parts, Carquest also sells chemicals, paints, accessories, tools and equipment through its 35 distribution centers. In September 2004, General Parts International acquired WorldPac (World Wide Parts and Accessories Corporation). The latter caters to independent import repair specialists in North America and supplies them with their auto parts needs.

There are currently 14,700 employees of General Parts International and the business is reported to have generated an income of $3 billion for last year. They keep their headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with O Temple Sloan III as their CEO.

ICC Industries: The Leader in Chemical and Plastic Manufacturing

O'Neil Color & Compounding Corporation, Woodruff Corporation, Primex Plastics Ltd., Konsyl Pharmaceuticals, Inc, S.C. Azur S.A, ICC Chemical Corporation, Dover Chemical Corporation, ICC Trading Inc and Primex Plastics Corporation are some of the subsidiaries of ICC Industries.

The company founded in 1950 as a one-person trading company is now engaged in the distribution, manufacturing, marketing and trading of chemicals, plastics, flavors, fragrances, pharmaceuticals and paints. The  company now has a global presence through its facilities across the United States, Europe, Asia and in the Middle East.

The ICC Chemical Corporation is the main and global trading arm of the business. Headquartered in New York City. It has representatives world wide and has thirty offices across the globe. This arm of the business acts as the principal in all transactions throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and in the Middle East. This corporation is further divided into various sectors: distribution division, Fallek Chemical division, pharmaceutical division and Eastern European companies.

The Dover Chemical Corporation was acquired by ICC Industries way back 1975 and has turned into  huge supplier  in the global market of chemicals and plastics. This Ohio-based company is continually evolving and innovating. Today, it is considered as the second largest liquid phosphite producers in the North American region. It has its Doverphos product line and organophosphate plant.

There are over 100 processing lines of Primex Plastics Corporation. It extrudes plastic sheets using polystyrene, polyethylene, polyester resins,acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polypropylene. The business is deemed as the largest in the industry of custom sheet extruder of polystyrene.

Some of the subsidiaries of the company were either acquired or founded as a subsidiary of another company. These businesses in total helped generate the $3 billion revenue that the enterprise was said to have delivered for 2012. There is currently a total of 1,725 people that the business employs.

Cástulo de la Rocha and AltaMed Health Services Corporation: Providing Comprehensive Medical Care to California’s Underserved Communities

A fully accredited integrated medical system founded more than 40 years ago, AltaMed Health Services Corporation has transformed Southern California’s affordable healthcare sector under the direction of Cástulo de la Rocha, the company’s long tenured President and CEO. Delivering personalized treatment to millions of state residents since its inception in the late 1960s, AltaMed originally launched as a small, two-employee clinic in East Los Angeles and hired Mr. de la Rocha to fulfill a temporary assignment in 1977. Envisioning a bright future for the burgeoning non-profit (operating on a shoestring budget as La Clinica Familiar del Barrio at the time), de la Rocha subsequently undertook a bold development endeavor with resources provided by the federal government’s Urban Health Initiative.  

By the mid-1980s, AltaMed had opened a second treatment location, instituted transportation assistance for patients, and established programs specifically geared toward adolescents and the elderly. Awarded a million-plus dollar grant to fund additional senior care services in 1986, the corporation successfully bid on a major substance abuse treatment contract shortly thereafter, one of many milestones that would spur continued growth in the years to follow. Throughout the 1990s, AltaMed introduced a host of system-wide improvements including a methadone and HIV services division, an Alzheimer’s program, and various other community outreach projects. As the organization celebrated yet another productive decade with accreditation from The Joint Commission for Behavioral Health, Cástulo de la Rocha set his sights on even loftier goals and expanded primary care services yet again into a number of formerly underserved East L.A. communities.  

Today, Cástulo directs all 44 of AltaMed’s California locations and strives to ensure that the company remains on the cutting edge of modern medicine in every respect. From the electronic health records that AltaMed staff use to track patient progress to an innovative pharmacy operation that many uninsured and low-income individuals rely on for ongoing access to medication, the corporation has garnered a reputation as a healthcare industry pioneer driven by compassion, integrity, and an unshakable commitment to excellence in practice.   

Walsh Group: A Major Construction Group

The 112^th spot on the recent release of Forbes’ list of America’s largest private companies belong to Walsh Group. With a revenue of $3.62 billion, it is no wonder that this company, founded in 1898, will be part of the list.

Walsh Group is a family owned business that is in the construction industry. It is currently being managed by the fourth generation of Walsh. It was Matthew Myles Walsh who started the business of general building construction and it was not until 1949 that the company got incorporated in the State of Illinois. The business provides general contracting, design services and construction management to national clients through their subsidiaries: Archer Western Construction and Walsh Construction. Two of their recent major works include the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto Canada and the redevelopment of the Rainbow Hydro-Electric Station in Montana.

Employing over 5,000 engineers and skilled workers, the company continually invests over $450 million in equipment and other facilities to support their operations. The business is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

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.

Deltek: Project Management Solutions and Accountability

Anyone who is involved in project management knows that it can be extremely frustrating.  As if putting together a good project team is not difficult enough, creating a project that will encompass the client’s vision can be extremely difficult.  It takes clear objectives, a solid project plan, accountability, and experience.  Deltek is the leading provider of project management solutions for enterprise software and information systems.  The company provides these services for government contractors and professional services firms, including architecture, engineering, and consulting firms.

Deltek was founded in 1983 in Herndon, Virginia to be near federal contractors.  Working with government contracts gave them the experience in detailed project tracking since these contracts must be detailed.  They have helped 12,000 organizations improve business performance, streamline operations, and improve compliance.  Deltek’s Costpoint is a project management software that takes care of all aspects of the project including planning, tracking, and budgeting.  Deltek Services provides training and consulting services to ensure that businesses get the most out of their projects.