RHINO FOODS

Burlington, Vermont

founder and Ceo: ted castle revenue: more than $50 million

employees: 140 in 1981, university of Vermont assistant hockey coach ted castle and his wife, anne, opened a small ice cream shop, where he worked evenings and weekends. three years later, he quit coaching and added brownies and cookies, supplying dough to fellow Vermont business ben & Jerry’s, where a staffer tried mixing castle’s raw cookie dough into ice cream. the blockbuster flavor turned rhino foods into a leading producer of frozen dough and other dessert products. ice cream is a seasonal business, but instead of laying off workers in the winter, castle developed a program to loan them to other seasonal businesses like lake champlain chocolates. as rhino grew, castle paid above Vermont’s $10-an-hour minimum wage, offered performance-based bonuses and persuaded a local credit union to make same-day loans of up to $1,000 to rhino employees. to help the 30% of his staff that comes from burlington’s refugee community, castle offers on-site classes in english as a second language.