Dairy Minded

Family makes freshness a must pursuit.

Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News

I

s it possible for one person to be the
matriarch of both a family and a
business? Talking to Mary Must, 89,
of Bloomfield Township, and observing
her in action at the headquarters of Dairy
Fresh Foods Inc. in Taylor, the answer is
"yes!'
She's the matriarch of the Must family,
which consists of her two sons, Alan and
Joel, her daughter, Madelon, nine grand-
children and six great-grandchildren. She
travels to the Dairy Fresh office at least
twice a week. She's a bookkeeper and
catalyst of the 78-year-old firm founded
four generations ago by Abraham Must, a
Polish Jewish immigrant, who originally
was a cabinet maker.
And in her family and business roles,
she has been an avid supporter of Jewish
communal causes and charities over the
years, winning a number of honors and
plaudits along the way.
Overseeing much of the bookkeeping
for the business is a big enough job in
itself Dairy Fresh is a distributor of food
products that other companies manu-
facture and package. It offers a variety
of more than 3,500 dairy, delicatessen,
grocery, bakery, snack and confection
items. Customers mainly are thousands
of chain and independent supermarkets
and convenience stores in Michigan, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky
"We take a hands-on approach to build-
ing and maintaining mutually beneficial
customer relationships. These efforts com-
bine with our competitive pricing philoso-
phy to help explain our longevity and our
reputation as a leading food distributor '
said Alan Must, 69, who is co-president of
Dairy Fresh along with his brother, Joel,
63, both of Bloomfield Township.

;

The Beginning
That longevity took root when Abraham
Must, who got to Michigan via England,
South Africa and Quebec, opened a cream-
ery in Midland in the late 1920s. He had
dropped cabinet making and began to
make cheese after taking a cheese-mak-
ing course at Michigan State University.
In the Detroit area, Abraham and his
wife, Sophie, made cheese in an east-side

Three of the four generations of the Must family: Alan Must (grandson); Mary Must (wife of company founder Abraham Must's son, Mike Must); Jay Must
(great-grandson and son of Alan); and Joel Must (grandson). All live in Bloomfield Township.

garage and sold it to small stores and bak-
eries. Their son, Mike, the youngest child
of eight, joined the business as a youth.
One of their early customers was Sidney
Hiller, founder of Hiller's Markets and
whose first store was situated on Detroit's
Michigan Ave. The Musts opened Detroit
City Dairy on the east side in 1930. They
moved the business to the Eastern Market
and several other locations — expanding
in space and volume each time — before
settling in Taylor in 2002. The name evolved
into Dairy Fresh Foods in the late 1990s.
Mike took the helm of the family owned
and managed business in the early 1940s;
Abraham died in 1948.
Alan and Joel recall working there as
youngsters in the summers.
"Our father worked practically around
the clock to keep the business going,
and our mother worked right along with
him:' said Alan. "The only time he took a
breather was when he attended the local
boxing matches, which he lover
Added Joel: "In the 1950s, our father
had the foresight to take on dry goods, like

canned goods, crackers, snacks, etc., to
complement the firm's bulk and packaged
cheese and butter. The average person in
this country ate only about five pounds
of cheese a year back then, but consumes
about 32 pounds a year now It's our pre-
mier item!'

Change At The Top
When Mike died at 82 in 1997, Alan and
Joel became co-presidents. Alan's son, Jay,
42, of Bloomfield Township, became the
fourth-generation Must to join the com-
pany; he now handles a variety of func-
tions. Mike and Mary's daughter, Madelon
Seligman, 67, of West Bloomfield, never
worked at Dairy Fresh, but her husband,
Louis, 70, retired recently after 37 years in
the business.
The state-of-the-art Taylor building,
extensively renovated when Dairy Fresh
took over, has 200,000 square feet of space,
200 employees and 50 dual-temperature
trucks to deliver products to the stores in
five states. Besides 90,000 square feet of
warehouse dry grocery storage, there are

85,000 square feet of refrigerated storage;
the refrigerator is kept at 34 degrees and
the freezer at five below zero. There also
are 25 refrigerated bay loading docks and
about 20,000 feet of office and meeting
space.
"The docks are a beehive of activity all
night when the trucks are being loaded
with orders taken by our sales personnel
during the day:' said Jay.
"Our customers usually require only a
few cases of any one product at a time,
so we distribute mixed orders to them
made up of various products in small case
quantities that they can handle and sell
from week to week. In this respect, we're a
normal distribution company.
He added,"Basically, we distribute prod-
ucts that others manufacture and package.
Some are national or regional brands, but
others are exclusive, private-label products
made to our specs under our own brand
names — mainly, of course, Dairy Fresh.
Actually, the only food we re-pack here is

Dairy Minded on page A30

December 11 • 2008

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