Dean Foods Company

[URIS id=124]

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Dean Foods is a food and beverage company and is America’s leading milk bottler. The company has 100 facilities located in 35 states in the U.S. and another 5 manufacturing plants in the countries of the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, and Belgium which manufacture and distributes milk, and other dairy and dairy case foodstuffs to distributors, retailers, foodservice outlets, governmental entities, and educational institutions across America and in Europe.

The Company’s Fresh Dairy Direct business markets and distributes cultured dairy products, ice cream, ice cream mix, fluid milk, and other beverages such as bottled water, teas, and juices under more than 50 local, regional, and private-label brands, including a leading national flavored milk brand – TruMoo, as well as Meadow Gold, Country Fresh, Pet, and Borden, Country Love, Swiss Premium, Swiss Dairy, Meadow Brook, Bud’s Ice Cream, Shenandoah’s Pride, Mayfield, Brown’s Dairy, Schepps, Louis Trauth Dairy Inc., Brown Cow, Saunders, Lehigh Valley Dairy Farms, Broughton, Robinson, Land-O-Sun & design, Berkeley Farms, Reiter, Land O Lakes, Barbe’s, Purity, Knudsen, Barbers Dairy, Jilbert, Arctic Splash, Pog, Hygeia, Alta Dena, McArthur and Stroh’s, among others. Dean Foods still owns around 20% of WhiteWave even after the spinoff of most of WhiteWave’s Foods business. WhiteWave makes International Delight coffee creamers as well as other specialty dairy products including cottage cheese, butter, ice cream, and dips.

Dean Foods was founded in the 1920s by Samuel E. Dean, Sr., who owned an evaporated milk manufacturing facility in Franklin Park, IL. After purchasing other Illinois dairy processing facilities, Dean, Sr. transformed the enterprise from a small regional dairy into a diversified food company. Dean Foods Company was incorporated on September 19, 1994. In December 2001, Dallas-based Suiza Foods Corporation acquired the legacy brand of Dean Foods, who later adopted the Dean Foods name. The Company decided to spun off its Dean Specialty Foods in 2005 as Bay Valley Foods, LLC which is a division of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. In June 2005, TreeHouse Foods began trading on the New York Stock Exchange using “THS” as its ticker.

Dean Foods acquired Jilbert’s Dairy in August 2006, which is a 70-year-old family-ran business located in Marquette, MI. In June 2007, the Hain Celestial Group purchased the TofuTown brand of Dean Foods. Dean Foods, on the other hand, acquired the Wells Dairy milk plant in Le Mars, IA in December of the same year. In 2009, Dean Foods bought Alpro for about US$455 million, turning it into a world leader in soy beverages. This, in turn, led to the restructuring of the company that involved selling off some of its subsidiaries such as Rachel’s Organic.
Dean Foods moved to the Cityplace district of Dallas, TX in the first quarter of 2010. In the fourth quarter of the same year, Dean Foods announced it was retiring the Schepps brand, which had been in the Dallas market since 1942, for dairy products in the Dallas, TX area for the Company’s Oak Farms brand. In May 2015, Dean Foods announced that they would remove regional brands for its milk for a single brand, DairyPure – a sub-brand that the Company was already using under its former regional marketing scheme.

Dean Foods believes that enriching the communities where the Company operates is not a choice, but a responsibility. The Company’s corporate philanthropy initiatives emphasize on the values that are in parallel with their business goals. Through their contributions to the Dean Foods Foundation, the Company hopes to make a significant impact by supporting organizations nominated by the Foundation that focus on dairy stewardship, childhood nutrition, youth leadership, and disaster relief. Dean Foods’s staffs also generously give of their time in communities across America. Also, their local businesses regularly sponsor community events or donate products, and in times of calamity, they often respond to local needs by not only contributing products but also by giving on-the-ground logistical support, such as refrigeration and trucking services.

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Dean Foods Company

by Helen Thompson time to read: 3 min
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