Siblings look to expand Waukegan vanilla company
Craig Nielsen of Grayslake, his brother Matt Nielsen of Lake Bluff and their sister Beth Nielsen of Mundelein are leading a 100-year-old Waukegan company to the sweeter smell of success with plans to expand.
This third generation has broken ground at Nielsen-Massey Vanillas to add a testing and demonstration kitchen, an extra 24,000 square feet for manufacturing and warehouse space, and another 4,800 square feet of office space. The construction is expected to be finished later this year. Then, the family might focus on its other facility in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.
Nielsen-Massey has produced a line of vanilla flavorings for generations of cooks both in restaurants and in the home. It has tapped vanilla beans and extracts from Madagascar, Tahiti, Indonesia, Uganda, India, New Guinea, and Mexico and more recently introduced a line of flavors that include almond and lemon. The products can be found in gourmet food shops and grocery stores.
The company started in 1907 in Sterling and later moved to Chicago, then Lake Forest and finally to Waukegan. The company has about 20 workers and plans to add more by later this year, Craig said.
But it’s been grueling work for the siblings, keeping up with tastes and traveling the globe. Craig is CEO, while Matt is chief operations officer and Beth is chief culinary officer.
“We all enjoy working together and we live near each other,” said Craig Nielsen. “But we also get some breaks from each other, like when we go on vacations with our own families.”
While each joined the company upon coming of age, the siblings are now looking toward the next generation, Craig said.
“It’s still early to tell,” he said of his own kids. “We weren’t forced into the family business by our father, so we won’t force them. It should be natural.”
After all, flavors like vanilla are comforting. That’s something that will likely continue for future generations. And with a tough economy nudging more people to cook at home, Craig is confident the company will continue for years to come.
“The food industry is insulated from the economy,” he said. “We all have to eat. If people are happy, they’ll eat ice cream and chocolate. But if they’re depressed, they likely eat twice as much.”
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