When a New Horizons Baking Co. delivery van driver or customer care specialist visits
a customer, you just might see that person lending a helping hand with the tasks of the
day. On one occasion, a New Horizons driver assisted in cooking burgers during a delivery run to a McDonald’s, which is New Horizons’ biggest customer.
That’s the type of company Tilmon Brown has grown in Norwalk, the home base of New
Horizons. Employees should be willing to wear different hats, stepping in and assisting where
needed, if it means building customer relationships.
It’s Brown’s way of instilling a take-charge, entrepreneurial spirit in his 250 employees. Brown
doesn’t want his company to be seen as simply a vendor supplying products to customers. He
wants every person in the company to work on building and maintaining the customer relationships that will sustain New Horizons in the future.
Brown has overcome much to build New Horizons into the company it is today. He purchased
20 percent of New Horizons in 1995, nearly 30 years after the company was founded as a dedicated McDonald’s bakery. At the time, the business was in debt. Over the next seven years, he
retired the debt and mended the company’s atmosphere. By 2002, he was in a position to purchase an additional 31 percent from his business partners, which allowed him greater control
over the direction of the business.
In 2003, Brown began to proactively solicit non-McDonald’s business, and between 2003 and
2007, he grew the company’s outside business by 300 percent.
Brown has also fostered an entrepreneurial spirit among his employees by encouraging the
development of new products and new takes on old standards. He has backed up that philosophy by investing significant amounts of capital back into both the processes and people at
New Horizons.
Brown’s leadership and gift for entrepreneurship ensures that the best years are still over the
horizon for New Horizons.
HOW TO REACH: New Horizons Baking Co., (419) 663-6432 or www.newhorizonsbaking.com
