Whenever someone offers to acquire Rich Products—Buffalo, New York’s $5.8 billion (annual sales) food giant that you’ve probably never heard of—its senior chairman and son of the founder, Bob Rich Jr., has a form letter ready for his assistant to send back.

The response gets sent often, according to Rich: “We say, Dear blank, thank you for your interest in our company. Rich Products is not for sale. Yours Truly.”

His assistant often asks if he wants to know who she’s sending the letter back to, but he actually doesn’t. “I don't really care,” the 84-year-old billionaire says, chuckling. “How bad is that?”

“Our biggest priority is that we want to remain a privately held company for eternity,” adds his wife, Mindy, 68, who is chairman of Rich’s and its board.

Rich’s north star is keeping the business under 100% family control, as he says, “to have the freedom to make decisions quickly and move ahead with more speed.” His father, Bob Sr., invented the first non-dairy whipped topping in 1945—three years before the better-known (and dairy-based) Reddi-Wip came to market—and Rich’s signature whipped topping is now sold in more than 100 countries. It remains one of the top products for an expansive food conglomerate—which Forbes values at north of $7 billion—whose range of products include cookies sold at supermarket bakeries, cold foam offered at coffee shops, pizza dough for independent and chain pizzerias, as well as SeaPak frozen seafood and Carvel ice cream cakes. Its longtime customers include Walmart, Kroger, and Dunkin’, Publix, Sodexo and more.

“Growth for us is not exponential. It's not a straight line. It goes step by step,” says Rich, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $6.5 billion, based on his stake in the business and other investments.

The company expects to grow annual revenue to $10 billion by 2030, and the plan to get there includes more “breakthrough” products designed for restaurants and wholesalers that alleviate labor woes as well as reformulating some bestsellers for the MAHA era.

And there’s another massive change ahead for Rich’s: At the end of this NFL season, the Buffalo Bills’ stadium—which became the first to sell naming rights to a business in 1973 when Bob Sr. spent $1.5 million for a 25-year contract, the only one to make a bid—will be demolished. It bore the Rich family name until 1997, when it was renamed for team founder Ralph Wilson until 2015.

“Now there are about 500 stadiums around the world that have sold their naming rights. It was a crazy decision,” Rich says, “that was okay.”

Bob and Mindy, avid Bills fans, say they are excited for the new stadium, just as they are excited about what’s on the horizon for Rich’s as it moves into........

© Forbes