NOW Foods continues to drive industry standards

NOW Foods has come a long way since its humble beginnings 55 years ago, back when it was founded to be the house brand for The Fruitful Yield. Today the brand has multiple facilities, including a new 90,000 square foot building, all of which is dedicated to production. It doubles the capacity of the company’s flagship plant in Bloomingdale, Illinois, which sits next door. While the company looks very different than it did in the 1960s, NOW’s core values remain the same.

“Our family members take our products. We've got friends that we recommend our products to. We don't want to misrepresent what we do and the best way to do that is to have quality processes, but also make sure you have the science to back up what it is you say, that whatever is on the label of any product that we sell no matter the category that it's in, that we've got the science and the certified analysis to back up what it is that we're selling,” said Jim Emme, CEO, NOW Foods.

NOW has multiple analytical laboratory capabilities in-house to test their own products as well as unfamiliar brands found on Amazon and Walmart.com. NOW’s senior director of quality says many just don't realize what a testing machine this company is.

“Not too long ago, Dan [Richard] asked for a run down of all the samples and all the tests that we are performing in the laboratories and asked for a detailed line-up of all the samples. We counted about 16,000 between all of them,” said Katie Banaszewski, senior director of quality at Now Foods. “We are actually going through a lot of testing on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.”

NOW’s newest manufacturing facility just announced it is LEED certified. The green certification means fewer carbon emissions, conserving resources and a reduction in operating costs–much needed return on investment given all the testing that takes place inside those four walls.