"Great ideas often come out of tough times"

When I took out the waffle mix Sunday morning, I noticed this on the box:

"Great ideas often come out of tough times, and times didn't get much tougher than 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression.  That year, a few women who traded recipes conjured up an easy-to-prepare pie crust mix and named it "Krusteaz" (crust + ease).  They went for to door, café to café, selling their creation.  A few years later that same entrepreneurial spirit led us create the first-ever just-add-water pancake mix."

Mixing the ingredients - the oil made a happy Rohrschach.













And Sunday was the first day that we ate out on the deck.  Warmly, but not overly so, dressed.

Krusteaz is the original product of what is now Continental Mills.  Here's the introduction to a 2017 interview in Snack and Bakery with the new CEO

We recently spoke with with Continental Mills president Andy Heily for a look into some recent innovations at the company, including its successful moves into a new product category with the Buck Wild tortilla chip launch, as well as a packaging and non-GMO update for its flagship Krusteaz pancake line—making it the first major pancake brand to do so.
As a third generation, family-owned company, Andy is taking the reins from his father and current CEO, John Heily, and undertaking major initiatives to keep an 85-year old company at the forefront of consumer trends and preferences.

For those of you who fly through Seattle, the company is headquartered in Tukwilla, one light-rail stop from SeaTac.

An April 10, 2020 article in Prepared Food tells us they are expanding.

Continental Mills, Inc., the maker of premium baking, breakfast and snack brands, including the beloved Krusteaz speed-scratch mixes and others, purchased a 175,000 square foot facility in Effingham, Ill., located adjacent to its existing manufacturing facility in Effingham. Acquired from Hodgson Mill, the facility will provide Continental Mills the capacity it needs to support continued growth.
The renovated facility is expected to be up and running sometime in 2021.  In addition to providing increased capacity, the Effingham facility offers excellent proximity to Continental Mills' customers in the Eastern US, Midwest and Southeast.

I guess a company that started in the Great Depression is confident in expanding during a pandemic.

Here's a company made video.  It's obviously a public relations film, but the values they emphasize are good ones.  And it's still a small, family owned business.  It hasn't sold out.




This seems like a pretty decent company.  I did look for problems.  There are three complaints  at a Better Business Bureau website - one about a piece of metal in a mix, another about bugs, and a third customer complained that it wasn't GMO free.

Indeed is an online job search site which has a space where people can leave company reviews.  Most of the ones for Continental were pretty good.  There was one malcontent.  (I thought about whether I should use that word.  Given all the other reviews, I'm guessing this person brought the problems with him to the job.)

They've managed to keep out of the spotlight.  They are a privately owned company so they aren't required to make public the kind of information other companies are.  There's not a lot out there on the company.  The expansion of the Effingham facilities was covered by a lot of media.

And they are sponsoring the Seattle Seawolves Rugby team.