Tom Faley

Treated Like Family Lib/E Tom Faley

Told from the viewpoint of four generations of the Gentine family, Treated like Family reveals the secrets that enable Sargento Cheese to become an industry leader and provides entrepreneurs with key managerial strategies that will help them succeed in business and life.

Leonard Gentine operated a financially challenged mortuary business for sixteen years. Yet, by the time he died, he stood at the helm of Sargento Foods, Inc.-a profitable, nationally recognized cheese company and a household name. How does one go from a struggling funeral director to a competitive force in the natural cheese category? Treated like Family is that full, untold story. Leonard believed in a simple philosophy: Hire good people and treat them like family. Yet that belief, admittedly foundational to the company, proved to be only one of many tenets underlying his success. It is the story of Sargento but also of its employees who, empowered by the Gentine family, took a vision and nurtured it into a formidable company.

Told from the viewpoint of the four generations of the Gentine family, the narrative is based on over 150 interviews-the collective voices of the company's employees, retirees, and friends. This is an unvarnished portrait of Sargento, its management, and the trials leading to its influential place in the cheese industry.

Within the pages of this story lie key concepts for others seeking to replicate Leonard Gentine's entrepreneurial success: the importance of a corporate culture based on the value of its employees, servant leadership and the belief that a company's ownership is not narrowly defined to its shareholders or by its products. It is a stakeholder-ownership philosophy that encompasses the company's employees, customers, suppliers, and the community in which it operates, all of which become all-inclusive in Leonard's eventual definition of family.