The Seventh Annual list of the best-managed U.S. firms. See the full pdf of the list here.
Highlights of the List
"We take them coffee picking, and they do some hand sorting of beans in the hot sun," says Winston Rost, Green Mountain Coffee Roaster's director of coffee appreciation, describing the annual trip he leads of a dozen employees, visiting coffee-growing cooperatives in Vera Cruz and Oaxaca, Mexico. With a newfound appreciation for how hard the work is, some roasters say they'll never spill another bean again, Rost adds. This kind of attention to the human element of business offers a hint at why Green Mountain Coffee of Waterbury, Vt., is No. 1 this year on the list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens.
Since its founding in 1981, the company has been socially and environmentally active, "but it wasn't all that extensive or organized at first," recalls CEO Bob Stiller. Green Mountain upped the ante in 1989 when it formed an environmental committee and created a rainforest nut coffee to support the Rainforest Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to protecting ecosystems. The company has grown increasingly active in the countries where coffee is grown and has been a pioneer in the fair trade movement, which pays coffee growers stable, fair prices. But the biggest change came in the early 1990s when the company began sending its employees on trips to see where the coffee is grown. Many employees "said it changed their lives," Stiller adds.
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