It all began with a family recipe for brown mustard from the early 1900s. Now, 120 years later,
Woeber Mustard has grown to a successful fourth-generation family business.
Founded in 1905 by Carl Woeber, an immigrant from Germany, Woeber Mustard’s early days consisted of this motivated entrepreneur traveling in his horse and buggy, selling mustard door-to-door.
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyWoeber Mustard Company's PlantChristopher Woeber is the director of operations at Woeber Mustard, working on logistics planning, production scheduling, marketing, and customer relations within the business. His great-grandfather was Carl Woeber.
“I’ve been involved in the business most of my life,” Woeber says. “As a kid, I worked here in the summers, and during college time. Then I lived in New York City for about six years, where I worked in advertising, and moved back here in 2005 to work full-time at the business.”
Expanding from that original brown mustard recipe, Woeber’s production also includes complementary products and condiments, including horseradish, vinegar, specialty sauces, lemon juice, garlic, and more.
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyRay Woeber in 1982“We had a production facility across town on Madison Avenue for many years,” Woeber says. “We outgrew that facility in the early eighties and purchased some land and moved to our current facility, at 1966 Commerce Circle, and we’ve been here since that time. We opened a distribution center just on the North side of Springfield in 2009, and have had various expansions over the years.”
The business is currently owned by the third generation, Richard and Ray Woeber, who are still involved in the day-to-day operations of the family company.
Woeber says at its core, the family business remains focused on making high-quality products and providing good customer service. He attributes the company’s longstanding success and 120-year-old reputation back to those assets. Even in Woeber’s time at the company, the past 20 years, there have been growth and changes, too.
“We’ve expanded our
product line so that we can offer more to customers, and we’ve integrated some of the things that we do,” he explains. “We make our own vinegar, not only to bottle the vinegar and sell it as a standalone item, but it’s also one of the main ingredients in our mustard products. That’s been a very helpful thing that we started years ago. We also offer a lot of customization for our private label customers. We have a fair amount of private label customers that we pack for, and accommodate a lot of their requests for their own formulations for their own bottling specifications.”
Other food businesses and retail chains work together with Woeber to make and pack their products. Woeber says a good portion of the company’s business is in creating
new private label formulations and packaging. They’re one of the nation’s largest private label producers of mustard, horseradish, vinegar and garlic products — producing, packaging and distributing them right in their state-of-the-art facility.
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyA selection of Woeber's mustards“That category is expanding quite a bit,” he says. “A lot of retailers now have a much stronger presence in the private label section of the store. Many years ago, back in the 70s or 80s, that would have been called the generic brand. In the past 15 years or so, a lot of retailers have put a huge focus on that side of business. They want their brand to be on the same level as the national brand, including packaging, ingredients and formulation.”
There have also been advances in technology that have helped the 120-year-old business adapt and keep up with increasing food safety standards.
“We are BRC-approved, so we have an independent auditing firm that audits our food safety every year,” Woeber explains. “In our last audit, we received an AA rating, which is the highest rating for food safety. We’ve invested a lot in that to keep up with the demands of the customer as far as food safety is concerned, which has become a pretty high priority for consumers and retailers over the past 15-20 years.”
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyWoeber Mustard Comany's Distribution Center Woeber Mustard products are found on grocery store shelves throughout the country, and internationally in 25 countries, including locations in the Middle East and Central and South America. Locally, their products can also be found at the
Cincinnati Reds' Great American Ball Park and other baseball parks.
The company provides jobs for 200 employees, many of them from the Springfield area.
“Our goal is to be a very strong brand in Ohio, and it all starts here for us,” Woeber says of Springfield. “We’ve had many employees who have been with us for 30 or more years. That’s been a huge benefit to our business. That’s why the local community, Springfield and Clark County, are so important to us. We’re based right here, everything is made here, and ships right out of here. We’re very much tied to the local community, and that’s been a big benefit for us over the years.”
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyA billboard for Woeber's MustardTo celebrate that community, Woeber Mustard hosts an annual
MustardFest in partnership with Greater Springfield Partnership. The September festival, hailed as ‘the world’s most golden occasion,’ has an eating competition, including special guests such as Joey Chestnut, a wiener dog race, free mustard samples, pretzels, and events at Mother Stewart’s Brewery.
“It’s been a great way to get out in Springfield and showcase our product,” Woeber explains. “It’s a good time of the year, usually near Oktoberfest. It’s been a really exciting event for us, and we’re planning on continuing that.”
Although the business has been in Springfield for over a century, Woeber says some residents are still surprised to learn of the company’s local roots and presence today. Events like MustardFest help get the word out, while also giving back to the community.
“We wanted to let the community know that we started here — this is what we do, and we’ve been doing it for a long time,” he says.
In the ever-growing world of social media, Woeber also looks to tell its own story through those channels like Facebook and Instagram.
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Courtesy Woeber Mustard CompanyMembers of the Woeber Mustard Company's team with Brutus Buckeye.“Our company has been a family business since the start, and it feels like nowadays, a lot of people appreciate that and they’re looking to support local businesses and to support family-run businesses,” he says. “A lot of the food manufacturers have consolidated into large, multinational entities and a lot of retailers have also done the same thing. A lot of mom-and-pop grocery stores have really gone away, and a handful of very large retailers control most of the grocery business.”
Looking ahead, Woeber says the company is poised to continually expand, increase efficiencies, and adopt helpful technologies and new equipment.
“We’re going to be looking at expanding the business, looking at what other product lines fit in with what we do, and how we can best manage those efficiently so we can provide those core and new items to the customer in a more efficient manner,” he says.
Visit Wober Mustard’s website to learn more about the company and its Springfield origins.