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Big Spring Mill has been selling out of its flour and cornmeal products after its closure announcement.
Big Spring Mill owner Bob Long is a fourth generation operator and plans to retire in August.
The mill produces baking flour under the Virginia’s Best label, including self-rising flour, seasoned flour, biscuit mix and corn meal. It also produces livestock feed.
Big Spring Mill is located at 1931 Big Spring Drive, Elliston, next to the South Fork of the Roanoke River.
Packer Patrick Harris stacks sacks of freshly milled flower. Harris is one of 14 employees at the mill.
Owner Bob Long holds a five-pound bag of all purpose flower.
ELLISTON — Big Spring Mill’s recent closing announcement could doom culinary traditions around local, craft-flour biscuits and fried squash breaded in the company’s tasty seasoned flour.
Consumers are purchasing every bag available in grocery shelves. Fans are tapping out the small allotment of products sold at the Elliston plant on weekdays. Opportunists are trying to exploit the product’s scarcity with outlandish online advertisements.
“I saw one on Facebook Marketplace,” company owner Bob Long said. “It was a picture of our seasoned flour bag and it said, ‘Last one on earth, $5,000.’ And I decided that if that was true, that I was going to make a thousand more and just quit.”
Long was at times jovial and serious as he discussed the wind down of his family’s 172-year-old flour and feed mill on the bank of the South Fork of the Roanoke River in eastern Montgomery County. He said he did not announce its closure last month for financial or business reasons, describing the company as profitable — but he did so because he wishes to retire by Aug. 31. He has given the business 31 years of service not counting work put in while he was still in school.
Long said he is open to someone stepping forward to purchase the business before then and continuing operations. But when asked if he had found that buyer, he replied, “probably not.”
Long confirmed he has a price in mind. He declined to disclose any financial aspect of the situation or of discussions he may have had with potential buyers.
An attorney specializing in tax and commercial matters, including business succession planning, but without any direct knowledge of the situation, outlined some of the general challenges involved in selling a family-owned or closely held small business.
“Small business owners spend more time raising their business than their children. It’s an economic child,” said Bill Gust at the Roanoke office of Gentry Locke.
Owners who wish to get out often struggle “to find a transition strategy that makes both economic and emotional sense,” he said. Emotional ties may be especially strong in the case of a fourth-generation family enterprise, as is the case at Big Spring Mill.
When a younger family member hasn’t been identified to succeed an older family member leaving the senior post, as appears to be the case here, the incumbent leadership turns to the markets on which businesses are bought and sold, Gust said. There, it may be possible for a small company to attract interest only from an outsider with all the necessary passion but not the necessary funds to pay the asking price. Or, the only suitors may be large, commercial-scale competitors who have resources but reject the asking price or terms and bid lower. A host of federal and state tax considerations are always part of the equation, as are economic conditions, Gust said. The U.S. economy entered a slowdown early this year.
According to IBIS World, a tracker of industry data, the number of flour-milling businesses in the United States has grown from about 425 in 2013 to 559 at the last count. However, the market has neither grown nor contracted for five years and recently stood at $18 billion. More producers chasing an unchanging amount of business means more competition.
Gust said it’s reasonable to assume that Long, who described the closure plan as the outcome of a multi-year process, consulted qualified experts along the way. Yet, here he is within five weeks of his planned closing date without a buyer.
“It is very possible there is just no one out there interested in a craft mill,” Gust said.
The end of August is nearly five weeks away. Long did not rule out a sale can happen, saying only that as of earlier this week he had probably not found a buyer. And, if Big Spring Mill does close on or before Aug. 31, a sale of the assets afterwards would remain a possibility, Long said.
There would be no guarantee, however, that a post-closure purchaser would resume operations in the same manner that made the flour line a staple in households and some restaurants across the region. Such a purchaser could elect to operate only the feed mill, the larger part of the business in terms of revenue, Long said. A meat or dairy producer could buy it as an in-house source of livestock feed, for instance, Long added.
“I tell people it’s not going to be tied up with the pretty bow on top of it. A pretty bow on top of it would mean there’s a seamless transition to a new operator,” Long said. “But when you’ve been coming to work for the last however many years, I think making a decision not to go to work is somewhat difficult for anybody. I mean, you might consider it scary. I mean, what am I going to do?”
Long, who works from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week, partly answered his question in the interview: He plans to work on his golf game and stay up late enough to watch the Tonight Show.
Gust’s use of the word “craft” was fitting as Long went to the milling room, where the floor felt silky under foot owing to an invisible coating of flour dust. Soft red winter wheat fell from tall silos into a succession of roller sets within closed compartments accessible through a small wooden door. Long opened the door at a mid-process rolling point, reached in and interrupted a stream of product by capturing material on the fingertips of an open hand. He lowered his thumb and tumbled the granules toward his palm.
“Still not flour yet. Still a little gritty,” he said.
A few steps away, crew members filled and weighed white paper bags and closed them with string using a miller’s knot. The next room, the site of feed production, smelled of molasses, an additive that improves taste and pellet formation.
At the Food Lion on Roanoke Street in Christiansburg, the largest grocery store closest to the plant, the flour shelves had no Big Spring Mill bags when town resident Danielle Hinkley reached them Monday.
“It’s the only seasoned flour I use,” she said, describing such dishes as fried squash, fried chicken tenders and fried country steak. Only half a bag remained at home, she said. She left the flour area with no flour though at least seven other brands were available.
Big Spring Mill flour is “flying off the shelves,” store assistant manager Ricci Bell said.
When Long gets to work these days, either there are already people waiting outside the plant or they arrive soon to purchase products at the source, given the low availability in stores. Long adopted a practice of locking the entrance door to keep people out until his staff is ready to sell at 7 a.m. As people began doubling up on purchases at the plant, Long set a 20-pound-per-person limit — and still sells out everything available.
“I can only make it so fast,” he said, noting the maximum flour production is 600 pounds per hour. That’s a tiny fraction of the output of commercial scale mills, such as Mennel Milling in Roanoke, which manufacture most of the flour sold in this country today, he said.
The rush to buy surprised the modest Long. “I guess it says something about our product,” he said, “and I have had people tell me ... ‘Well, I just don’t know what I’m going to do for flour.’ And the truth of the matter is, I don’t either. I don’t know what I’m going to do for flour because it’s the one I’ve always used.”
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Jeff Sturgeon covers the city of Roanoke, including schools, banking and transportation. Phone: (540) 981-3251. Email: jeff.sturgeon@roanoke.com. Mail: 201 W. Campbell Ave., Roanoke, VA 24011.
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Big Spring Mill has been selling out of its flour and cornmeal products after its closure announcement.
Big Spring Mill owner Bob Long is a fourth generation operator and plans to retire in August.
The mill produces baking flour under the Virginia’s Best label, including self-rising flour, seasoned flour, biscuit mix and corn meal. It also produces livestock feed.
Big Spring Mill is located at 1931 Big Spring Drive, Elliston, next to the South Fork of the Roanoke River.
Packer Patrick Harris stacks sacks of freshly milled flower. Harris is one of 14 employees at the mill.
Owner Bob Long holds a five-pound bag of all purpose flower.
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