Zingerman's Community of Businesses

What it does: group of eight food production, retail, and service businesses
Web site: www.zingermans.com
Based: Ann Arbor, Mich.
Founded: 1982
Employees: 525
Revenue: $27 million (2007)

Zingerman's started out as a modest deli in 1982. Since then the enterprise has expanded to include a bakery, catering business, coffee wholesaler, creamery, roadhouse restaurant, training business for bakers, and a consultancy for other specialty food ventures. The company brings these diverse businesses together under one brand that has always been associated with local food from the Ann Arbor area. The business, profitable and growing, has prospered by remaining rooted in its hometown and expanding to different products and services, rather than trying to replicate past successes in new locations.

Read the complete case study