Crest Foods sold, but no major changes in the offing, company president says

ASHTON – “Crest Foods Co. Inc. to AGNL Stabilizer LLC, 1884 Route 38, Ashton, $32,950,000,” reads the entry under Lee County in this week’s property transfers, appearing online at saukvalley.com and in print in the Feb. 10 Sauk Valley Weekend edition.

That’s not the big news, however, Crest Foods President Jeff Meiners said. In the grand scheme of things, it’s barely news at all.

Although it’s true that Crest has sold a portion of its property to AGNL, it is leasing the property back.

The bigger news is that a private investment group, which Meiners declined to name, has bought the company itself.

Even that news, however, does not mean that any major changes are in store for Crest – a dry foods manufacturer and packager long owned and operated by the local Meiners family – or for its 700-member workforce, Meiners said Friday.

It’s more of an emphasis on financial restructuring than on a change in ownership, he said.

“It’s strictly a financing type of thing. Family will still be involved, financially, physically. ... It’s just a change in the ownership structure.

“It no longer will be a family-owned business, but it will still be a family-run business. ... We’re keeping every job, and we’re staying true to who we are.”

Crest Foods was founded in 1946 and run by Meiners’ dad, Jay Meiners, before being taken over by Jay’s three sons, Jeff, Steve and Mike, and five of their children.

The company’s stock was sold to the private investment group in a deal designed to maintain the status quo for now, while positioning Crest for the likelihood that, given Illinois tax laws, among other factors, a fourth generation of the Meiners family won’t be running it in the future, Jeff Meiners said.

“We function very well right now, but when we look far ahead ... spreading ownership over more and more people” will be “just difficult to do.”

While looking down the road at the future of Crest Foods, however, two things were very important to the family: making sure operations remained unchanged for now, and maintaining the employee-centered corporate culture that they have established over the years.

“It’s not the business that we do, it’s the way that we do business” is not just an empty motto printed on the company website – it’s the core of how the Meiners family members conduct themselves in the community, with their clients and, most importantly, with their workers, including more than 150 of whom have been with Crest more than 20 years, Jeff Meiners said.

“The most important thing about our business is our culture, and we wanted to make sure that survived,” he said.

That’s also why the restructuring is coming as no surprise to the company’s employees, who have been kept in the loop throughout the process.

“We’ve made sure our employees know what’s changing, what’s not and what they should expect,” Jeff Meiners said.

They’ve also been given a share in the proceeds of the sale, in the form of companywide bonuses, he said.

“Our feeling was that everybody should benefit in that transaction,” Jeff Meiners said. “We have a lot of very long-term employees, and we don’t exist without them. Not to acknowledge that fact would not fit with who we are as a family.”