Owner to sell 106-year-old, family-run Bangor business to employees
FILE PHOTO / BRANDON MCKENNEY
Ron Dennis, president of Dennis Paper & Food Service, in a 2009 file photo.
Ron Dennis, president of Bangor-based Dennis Paper and Food Service, wanted to keep his 106-year-old family business locally owned and independent. He had some other options come up in succession planning, but he ultimately decided to sell it to his 125 employees.
Dennis, the current owner, told Mainebiz that the sale of the company through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan will become effective Jan. 1. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The sale of the company means that all 125 employees will have decision-making abilities in the company’s future. In addition, all company profits will be distributed to employees. Dennis said he will stay on as the company’s president, with no other changes to management.
“I have no interest in retiring, I want to stay active in the industry and my business, and I wanted it to remain an independent and Maine company,” said Dennis, who was named a Mainebiz Nexter in 2010. “I felt strongly that I wanted to take care of [my employees] and their families, and giving them an opportunity to be business owners will accomplish that.”
Dennis Paper and Food Service is one of the largest independently owned food service distributors in New England, having seen major growth in the past 10 years, Gross revenue has gone from $8 million in 2004 to $80 million this year, Dennis said. Before the company decided to get into broad line distribution in 2002, it had only 23 employees, he said.
In a 2009 Mainebiz company profile, Dennis Paper and Food Service was reported to have $40 million in gross revenue and 95 employees that year. At the time, Dennis said the broad line distributor did virtually all of its business with clients in Maine. The company decided to get into broad line distribution just as its last 12 local competitors had folded, and analysts had been speculating at the time that a larger company would buy it.
"When we entered the food business," Dennis said at the time, "the commitment we made was to move into the major leagues and compete with the national companies" like U.S. Foodservice, Performance Food Group and SYSCO.
In the company’s sale announcement this week, it noted that there are more than 11,000 Employee Stock Ownership Plan companies in the United States.
The company said in a prepared statement that the “sustainability of [Employee Stock Ownership Plan] companies has proven to be a strategically sound business decision that empowers people to become business owners while providing excellent customer service.”
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