At C|O we’ve stood for people, passion and food for more than 25 years. Every day we consider it a privilege to build, connect and protect brands and to develop and drive business forward for those who grow, produce, process, distribute, market, serve and eat food.

And now it gives us great pride to announce that through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), we are now 100% employee owned and operated.

We’ve always believed in partnership, investing wisely in each other, the success of our people, the community and the industry. Now we’re owners, we’re united like never before with an even deeper commitment to help our clients succeed. We’re in this together, for your success, for ours and for the future of food and agriculture.

What it means to be employee owned:

Download this shareable & printable infographic.

1. “Firm Survival and Performance in Privately-Held ESOP Companies,” Sharing Ownership, Profits, and Decision-Making in the 21st Century (Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory & Labor-Managed Firms, Volume 14), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.109-124.
2. “Does Linking Worker Pay to Firm Performance Help the Best Firms Do Better? a 2012 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Douglas Kruse and Joseph Blasi of Rutgers and Richard Freeman of Harvard
3. National Center for Employee Ownership of data from the 2015 General Social Survey (GSS) 2014
4. 1997 Washington State study http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0143831X97183003
5. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) compiled statistics in 2012 on 401(k)s and other retirement plans