Sargento Foods aims to make positive social impact every single day

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

August 12, 2024

PLYMOUTH – As a family-owned company, Louie Gentine, Sargento® CEO and grandson of the company’s founder, said the company is dedicated to improving the communities where their employees live and work. 

Founded in 1953 by Leonard A. Gentine, Sargento created the world’s first successful prepackaged sliced and shredded natural cheeses.

Through the decades, Louie Gentine said Sargento realized numerous successes with its many innovative products.

Today, he said the third-generation business manufactures and markets “amazing shredded, sliced and snack natural cheese products, as well as ingredients.”

Gentine said the company is guided by family values and a Stakeholder Philosophy that success is shared with those who contributed to their success – those stakeholders being employees, customers, vendors, and neighbors in local communities.

Additionally, he said Sargento has three pillars of corporate social responsibility – people, product and planet.

Each pillar, Gentine said, represents sustainable development goals identified by the United Nations – which reinforce the company’s commitment to its communities, ethical sourcing and respect for the earth.

Gentine said Sargento’s recently published annual Impact Report shows significant strides across the company’s three pillars.

People pillar

According to the report, one way in which Sargento focuses on people is by helping create affordable housing for company employees and others in the community. 

“We look at housing in two different ways,” Gentine said. “First, we started volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in 1992 and since that time we’ve (helped) build 35-plus homes. It’s been great to help rebuild communities… and help provide opportunities for our employees in the Sargento family to volunteer.”

The second way in which the report highlights Sargento’s efforts toward housing is through their participation in a larger-scale housing development project, called Founders’ Pointe.

The Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation (SCEDC), Gentine said, has partnered with four family-owned companies in the county, including Sargento, to construct some 54 entry-level homes in the multi-acre subdivision in Sheboygan County.

“We each contributed $2 million into the $10 million Sheboygan County Forward Fund to help with land acquisition,” Gentine said. “The homes will be sold at a very favorable rate so people can be in our community and build equity in a home.”

Gentine said workforce housing in Sheboygan County is vital to the success and growth of these family-owned businesses, including Sargento.

“Affordable housing is a big deal because we need to have housing that all our employees can afford, that they can raise their children in and be contributors to the community…,” he said. “This will not only help us from a recruitment and job standpoint but also, in the end, will make our communities and our schools stronger.”

Gentine said this project is being built in three phases and, at some point, may address other barriers working families often encounter – by adding a daycare facility and temporary housing for talent moving into the county until they can find something permanent.

Collaborating with each other and local government, Gentine said, shows how the business community can work together to help solve a problem for their community.

He said it’s an initiative that many other areas struggling to have more affordable housing could replicate.

Gentine said Sargento employees regularly help address food insecurity and hunger issues in the community as well by serving meals at local churches or other similar places.

In addition, he said Sargento regularly supports local, regional and national hunger relief networks with funding and food donations. 

Gentine said Sargento also helps fund national and international disaster relief organizations and invests in local, regional and state-wide initiatives to equip today’s youth with the skills, mentorship and networks needed to participate in and contribute to the economy.

During 2023, according to the Impact Report, company-led community service by Sargento employees totaled 1,836 hours. 

Product pillar

According to Sargento’s recent Impact Report, the company only works with vendors who share the same values as it does and maintains the same standards for food safety and quality.  

Furthermore, because the company cares about animals, Gentine said Sargento only partners with suppliers who are committed to the ethical treatment of all animals – with 100% supplier compliance with the FARM (Farmers Assuring Responsible Management) animal care program for dairy supply.

Sargento, Gentine said, was also awarded AA and A food safety rating by BRC in 2023 across all of its facilities.

Planet pillar

According to Sargento’s recent Impact Report, the company is committed to taking good care of the planet by being good stewards of our natural resources.

Gentine said the company does this in several ways, including:

• Using energy and water efficiently during operations
• Minimizing waste in all forms throughout processes 
• Sourcing packaging materials that provide the highest levels of product quality and lessen environmental impacts

“The work we’re doing under our planet pillar is exciting,” Gentine said. “We’re doing various initiatives within our facilities to help reduce landfill waste and, obviously, the water that we can save.”

Flexible packaging, Gentine said, is not an easy thing to be recycled, therefore, Sargento is in the beginning stages of transitioning all of its flexible packaging into recycle-ready film – “which will be great.”

“The challenge with all of that is the recycling infrastructure (needed to receive materials isn’t readily available everywhere),” he said. “But, I’m confident that over time communities will have the infrastructure to make it easy for consumers to recycle not only our products, but any products.”

Gentine said the company has successfully saved 7.6 million gallons of water since 2022 and diverted an average of 90% of its waste out of landfills in the past year – a 3.3% increase from the previous year. 

Also since 2022, he said, the company has reduced its wastewater by 1.3%.

And by incentivizing its drivers, Gentine said the company’s fuel efficiency was increased from the preceding year, resulting in an average of nearly eight miles per gallon across their entire fleet – that, he said, is the highest fuel efficiency Sargento ever achieved. 

“To us, giving back to our community and thinking of others has been, and always will be, central to who we are, what we do and why we’re part of the Sargento Family,” he said. “This core belief shows up in the work we do every day, how we treat each other and through the milestones we achieved in 2023 under our new Corporate Social Responsibility platform – the Sargento Real Impact.”

Key takeaways from the report

Gentine said not a lot changed between the 2022 and 2023 reports, other than to have a greater focus on the things that they’re doing.

Sargento’s strategy, he said, is twofold – “making choices on where you want to focus your efforts, then committing yourself to execute that focus.”

“Our impact strategy fits with who we are as a company and what we’ve been doing for the 70-plus years since my grandfather started the company,” he said. “And now it’s being communicated (through the impact reports) so that all of our stakeholders know the success of what Sargento can do year in and year out.”

Gentine said he enjoys looking back at all the different things Sargento, as a company and as individuals, are doing for their communities – whether it’s around hunger, housing initiatives with Habitat and Founders’ Pointe or education. 

“Those I find fulfilling because, with our contributions and our volunteer efforts, you can visibly see the impact that we’re making,” he said. “We are a humble organization overall, but people want to know the things that companies are doing across all of these impact areas. So, communication about that is big today.” 

Gentine said the dedication to employees and communities “absolutely came from my grandfather.”

“He knew that he needed to have a strong community for his employees not only to work but to live and raise their families in,” he said. “He had a philosophy about hiring good people and treating them like family – which is something we still hold very true to this day. Ultimately, we need to make sure that every employee of Sargento… feels like they’re contributing to something bigger than themselves. Not only are they contributing to our success as a company, but when they see the things that we’re doing in our community and the impact that we’re having, that hopefully brings an even greater sense of pride in doing what they do every day at work.”

Sargento’s entire Impact Report can be found at SargentoFoods.com/Impact-Report.  

The future is bright for Sargento family

Since 2022, Gentine said the Sargento family has grown by almost 700 new employees.

The company’s vision, he said, is to be the most innovative, best-loved real food company in the industry, and Sargento plans to continue to grow to make that vision a reality. 

“We’re at about $1.8 billion in annual revenue today,” he said. “We have had a growth rate of more than 5% over the last 10 or 15 years.”

Gentine said Sargento has 2,600 members across its, now, five locations in the State of Wisconsin.

“Certainly, we’ve done a lot of great things with natural cheese in our 70-plus years,” he said. “I think we can leverage those key competencies of who we are as a company, our culture and our innovation expertise, as well as our ability to build brands and do several different things for consumers. I look forward to us going step-by-step on that journey. It will take some time. It’s a journey, it’s a vision – and I’m excited about it.”