LOWELL, MICHIGAN, US — Nearing its 135th year in business, King Milling Co. is still churning out flour because it has managed to not only survive, but thrive, in the face of what at times have been almost insurmountable challenges.
Through five generations of leadership by the Doyle family, the Lowell, Michigan, US-based company has operated through two world wars, two global pandemics, the Great Depression and the Great Recession, a mill destroyed by fire in the mid-1940s, a 100-year flood, and the premature death of a key company leader.
In a recent interview with World Grain, King Milling Chairman Brian Doyle, President Jim Doyle and Executive Vice President Patrick Doyle said the company’s success and longevity stems from never deviating from its core principles.
“Our family motto is to try to do it the right way every time,” said Patrick, Brian’s son who represents the fifth generation of family leadership. “It’s not always the most profitable decision, but we do it because it’s the right thing to do. The way we treat people and the way we make decisions on investments in the company — those things matter.”
Among those principles is to reinvest heavily in the company, both in terms of assembling a quality workforce and installing cutting-edge milling equipment.
Any conversation with the Doyles about the keys to the company’s longevity will start with each generation’s commitment to pour much of the profit back into the business. That requires some financial sacrifice.
“We don’t draw huge salaries,” Brian said. “We keep the money right here.”
He added: “I don’t know about grandpa’s generation, but our fathers both emphasized putting money back into the business and staying current. Don’t let things get old. That’s been our philosophy, too.”
The latest example of this involved the biggest investment in company history, a $47 million expansion that added an 8,000-cwt fourth milling line (D Mill) to the Lowell complex, bringing total milling capacity at the site to 25,000 cwts per day. The mill, which produces hard, soft and whole wheat flour, now accounts for half of the milling capacity in Michigan and is the 13th largest mill in North America, according to Sosland Publishing Co.’s 2024 Grain & Milling Annual.
The reason for the expansion was simple: the customer demand for King Milling’s products was outstripping the company’s production capabilities.
“We needed more flour, obviously, but we see the fifth generation that is very capable and coming along and we want to help them be successful,” Jim said.
Family matters
From left: Patrick Doyle, King Milling’s executive vice president; Brian Doyle, chairman; and Jim Doyle, president.
| Credit: ©KING MILLING CO.During King Milling’s 125th anniversary celebration in 2015, Brian noted that “only 33% (of family businesses) make it to the second generation, only 11% make it to the third generation, and only 3% make it to the fourth. And they don’t have any stats beyond that because there are so few family businesses that make it to the fifth generation and beyond.”
Family businesses fail for many reasons. Sometimes the next generation has no desire to continue the business. Other times poor decision-making dooms it to failure. In some cases, personality conflicts between family members bring an end to the enterprise.
“Our families had some issues in different generations,” Jim said. “But in the end, each generation of leaders has set aside personal differences and made the company’s success paramount.”
Brian said he and his cousins, Jim and Steve, who is senior vice president, “have always worked at respecting each other. We’ve worked at getting along, and we do.”
Each of them have roles that are important but separate.
“Steve is more out in the plant,” Brian said. “Jim was head of purchasing and human resources for a long time. I was in general management and sales, so we’ve complemented each other. Now the next generation is coming on. Patrick does a lot of things here in the office while his brother, Regan, is in engineering. He has a milling degree from Kansas State University and the Swiss Milling School.”
Steve’s son, Mike, also a KSU and Swiss Milling School graduate, joined the company in 2022 and works in operations along with his dad and cousin, Regan.
The third-generation branch of the family tree included the late King Doyle, former chairman and father of Brian and grandfather of Patrick and Regan, and the late Mike Doyle, former vice chairman and father of Jim and Steve. To understand the entirety of the operation, all the Doyles, including those currently in executive positions, started at the bottom and worked their way up.
Credit: ©SOSLAND PUBLISHING CO.“We have all started working here by sweeping floors so that we have an understanding of what all the employees are doing,” Brian explained.
But he contends that his generation, which includes Jim and Steve, had the most unpleasant job imaginable in their teens. It involved shoveling grain that had been spoiled by flood waters.
“We were shoveling … stuff,” Brian said. “We had a feed mill on the other side of the river. When it flooded, we’d have to go down and clean it out afterwards. It stunk, but it was our job. When we got home after that job, we would put our clothes in the trash and take a shower.”
He added with a laugh, “Our kids have had some dirty jobs, but not as dirty as that.”
War, fire and an untimely death
The flour milling industry in Lowell is 180 years old. The first mill, known as the Forrest Mill, was built on the east bank of the Flat River. A second mill, known as the Superior Mill, was built on the west side of the river in 1867, where the current plant is. The King and Doyle families didn’t get involved in the milling business until 1890, when they purchased the Superior Mill for $20,000 in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Every decade has had its challenges, but the 1940s were perhaps the most tumultuous period in King Milling history. During this time, William Doyle, Brian’s grandfather, oversaw the company.
On March 7, 1943, King Milling’s Superior Mill was destroyed by fire, along with thousands of bushels of wheat. The temperature on the day of the fire was -18° F, and the water sprayed on the building by firefighters froze almost immediately upon impact.
Facing building supply shortages due to World War II, William Doyle had to travel to Washington, DC, to obtain permits to rebuild.
“Flour was a necessary food product, so grandpa was able to get permits to buy steel,” Brian said. “We were given permission because the food needed to be produced. Once World War II ended and the whole world was devastated, our mill produced a tremendous amount of flour that was sent overseas.”
The rebuild was complicated by the reality that many of Lowell’s most able-bodied men were overseas taking part in the war effort.
“They had to find older men to do the rebuild,” Brian said. “A lot of them were farmers who worked on their farms by day and then came into town to do a shift and hand-mix concrete. They did it in the same number of days that Todd & Sargent just poured this one (the D mill). The jacks were hand-cranked. Those guys were animals. I can’t imagine.”
The wooden mill was replaced with a new concrete mill with the most technologically advanced milling equipment available.
Then came a tragic twist: only 10 days after completing the new mill in 1945, William Doyle died of a heart attack at age 54. He left the mill to his wife and two sons, King, age 23, and Mike, age 15. King Doyle, who was serving in WWII in the Pacific, was granted a 90-day leave from the navy to return home and put his father’s affairs in order.
“Dad was on a destroyer near Okinawa when it was attacked by Kamikazes,” Brian said. “The ship had to go to a dry dock for repairs. That’s where the Red Cross caught up with him to tell him that his dad had died, so dad got on a ship going back to the states that was carrying the caskets of fallen service members. He was given 90 days to come back. By the end of 90 days, the war was over.”
Marveling at what his grandfather had to go through during that tumultuous period, Patrick added: “It’s called the greatest generation for a reason.”
On the cutting edge
King Milling flour mill in Lowell, Michigan, US.
| ©KING MILLING CO.Regardless of the era, King Milling always has valued cutting-edge technology and innovation.
Under King and Mike’s leadership, which spanned 50 years, production capacity at the mill was increased to 5,400 cwts of flour per day and another milling line capable of producing 4,000 cwts of whole wheat products per day was added.
In the 1960s, King Milling was among the first to switch from the bucket system for conveying flour to pneumatic conveying from Kice Industries, Inc. Like King Milling, Wichita, Kansas-based Kice is a multi-generational family business with a long history in the US milling industry. Brian said the partnership with Kice, much like its partnership with milling equipment manufacturer Bühler, has thrived over many decades.
“Back in 1983, we built a fast loadout with four bins that could hold four truckloads, each on load cells,” Brian said. “We would dial in the weight we wanted and shut it off. Nobody was making a bin-bottom for that. We talked with Russ and Jim Kice and told them we needed to have something to do that and also be able to blow it from one bin to another so we could blend it in. We asked them to design something like that and they did. We still use those same bin bottoms today that we did back then because they work.”
Another important innovation occurred in the 1960s, when King Milling developed a proprietary process that deactivated wheat enzymes for a longer shelf life.
“We made further refinement to the process in the 1980s and early 2000s,” Brian said. “This wheat is milled and sold under our Ceres line of products.”
King Milling always has been willing to go the extra mile to guarantee the highest quality products for its customers, the Doyles noted.
An example of this occurred in the 2010s when King Milling became the first flour mill in the world to earn Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification. It came on the heels of an incident involving Peanut Corporation.
“They had a Superior AIB rating, then had the blowup,” Brian noted. “We also had a Superior AIB rating, so we thought we had to do something better. We sought SFQ certification; Jim spearheaded that effort. We told customers it would be a two-year process before we were certified so we wouldn’t have a two-party audit for two years. Our customers told us they would be supportive of that as long as we were moving forward. We kept them abreast of our progress and some of them actually helped us achieve it.”
Looking ahead
King Milling has its eyes on growth. Although there’s not enough room for expansion at the current location, Brian said the company has options. It owns 52 acres of land eight miles south of Lowell and is also open to the idea of expanding outside the Grand Rapids area. They also will monitor technological advances, such as the use of artificial intelligence, that can enhance their ability to improve flour quality and production efficiencies.
Whatever decisions are made will be motivated by one enduring company principle.
“Part of our emphasis on reinvestment is the quality and service we are able to give to our customers by keeping our facilities up to date so there’s no gap in service and quality,” Patrick said. “The customers get flour when they want it and to the standards they’ve come to expect.”
