Bob Moore, the founder of Bob’s Red Mill whose packaging features his familiar, bearded face, died on Saturday, according to the company’s website. He was 94.
The company said in a statement that Moore "peacefully passed away at home."
"Bob’s passion, ingenuity and respect for others will forever inspire the employee owners of Bob’s Red Mill, and we will carry on his legacy by bringing wholesome foods to people around the world. We will truly miss his energy and larger-than-life personality," the company said in a separate statement posted on Instagram.
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Moore founded Bob’s Red Mill in 1978, a natural foods brand that promotes whole grains. They were available at first only in the Portland, Oregon, area but gradually expanded and now sells more than 200 products in over 70 countries.
On his 81st birthday, Moore created an employee stock ownership plan and today the company is owned by more than 700 employees. Bob’s Red Mill said on its website that its legacy was secured by the transfer of ownership to the people who helped Moore and his wife, Charlee, grow the business. Moore remained a board member until his death.
“All of us feel responsible and motivated to preserve his old-world approach to unprocessed foods; his commitment to pure, high-quality ingredients; and his generosity to employee owners and educational organizations focused on nutritional health,” the CEO, Trey Winthrop, said in a statement.
U.S. & World
Robert Gene Moore was born on Feb. 15, 1929, to Ken and Doris Moore in Portland, Oregon. The family moved to San Bernardino, California, six months later.
He met his future wife on a blind date in 1952. According to the company’s website, it was she who inspired the natural foods path the couple took when in the 1960s she decided to feed her family whole grains, beginning with whole wheat bread.
“The first whole grain loaf of bread that came out of my wife Charlee’s oven on our five-acre farm back in the 60s was the most delicious loaf of bread I can ever remember smelling and eating,” Moore said in a quote on the company’s website.
Mill was inspired by a book about a man who resurrected his family’s mill, John Goffe’s Mill, and after studying stone milling and researching historic mills, he opened Moores’ Flour Mill in a Quonset hut in Redding, California, with his wife and two of their sons, according to the company's website.
They took a short break from the milling business, leaving Moore’s Flour Mill to their sons and moving to Milwaukie, Oregon, for seminary school. But after passing an old feel mill that was for sale, they bought it, according to the company's history. In 1978, it opened as Bob’s Red Mill. Ten years later the store burned down but the company survived.
The Moores helped to fund the Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition, and Preventive Health at Oregon State University and the Bob and Charlee Moore Institute for Nutrition & Wellness at Oregon Health & Science University.
Moore’s wife, Charlie, died in 2018.
He is survived by his three sons, Ken, Bob, Jr. and David and their wives, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
The company is encouraging friends and fans to visit Bob’s Red Mill Whole Grain Store in Milwaukie, Oregon, to share a memory of Moore.
