OUR STORY

Food manufacture in the Sterner family goes back a long, long way. The first generation to make a business of it was Matthew Sterner in 1932, during the Great Depression. The business was then known as Sterner’s Special Foods. Today, Matthew’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren carry on the tradition in Inland Empire Foods.

Inland Empire Foods was founded in 1985 primarily to produce dehydrated refried beans. As the story goes, Matthew’s son Mark and grandson Mark Jr. accepted the challenge to make the dehydrated beans for a fast food company in Texas. After assembling a pressure cooker, cabinet dryer and grinder, they proceeded to make a product suitable for the purpose.

Not long into making the first order, Mark Jr. squeezed a bean between his thumb and forefinger to test how well it was cooked and exclaimed to Mark Sr., “Look! This looks like a mashed potato!” Upon that discovery, a pair of paper mill rolls was assembled to flake the beans before drying them. That was the origin of what now is a whole array of quickly re-hydrating flaked legumes.

After that first production, a pilot plant was assembled to further perfect the process and to put out samples to well known users and marketers of refried beans. Occasionally, while running these beans one or two overflowed the flaking roll hopper and fell on top of the flakes entering the dryer. Once again, Mark Jr. discovered that these dried whole beans readily re-hydrated in hot water.

After demonstrating the quickly hydrating whole beans at a company that made instant rice, they were ready to buy. But the quantities they wanted were out of the question without a commercial manufacturing facility in place. To assure they could get product they placed a purchase order for $250,000 and issued a check for the full amount. With this money Inland Empire Foods was launched into commercial production and became the premier supplier of quality flaked and whole legumes.