A local Kent business was recently named the 2008 medium-sized family business of the year and they are, um, udder-ly thrilled.
Medosweet Farms, a local-sourced dairy distributor, received the plaudit by Pacific Lutheran University.
“It’s a real honor,” said company president Eric Flintoff, son of company founders Cliff and Carolyn Flintoff. “We are just really appreciative of being even recognized in the top 250 nominees and to win it is a great, great honor for us.”
Medosweet was founded in 1975 under the name “C&F Distributors” as a small milk-delivery business. According to Flintoff, the company started with 20 cases of milk and an old delivery truck, which Cliff Flintoff would drive from home to home to deliver milk.
Today, the company has grown into a $40 million-per-year business that specializes in delivering local-sourced dairy products to restaurants, bakeries and other food-service businesses from the Canadian border all the way to Eugene, Ore.
“We do a little bit of all types of food service,” Flintoff said.
As the business grew to include more than 70 employees and a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Kent, Flintoff said the family remained involved, including his two brothers and his sister, as well as his son.
“We start them from the ground up,” he said, adding that it was the perseverance of his parents that helped get the business this far.
“We just worked hard as a family to achieve the dream up to this point,” he said.
Flintoff said he hoped this is a sign of bigger things to come in the future as the company prepares to move into a new 100,000-square-foot facility in Sumner in January 2010.
“If you dream big, big things can happen,” he said.
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