Hopkinsville Milling Co. produces 25 million pounds of baking flour, corn meal mix and grits every year from grains harvested within a 100-mile radius of the mill that towers at the end of Fort Campbell Boulevard near downtown.
From there, red, yellow and blue packages of Sunflour-brand flour and Sunflower corn meal mix and grits line grocery store shelves across much of the Southeast. The distribution extends from Evansville, Indiana, to New Orleans, and from Arkansas to central Kentucky, Tennessee and western Georgia.
The company traces its origins to a local mill established in 1874, and today it is run by a fifth-generation owner.
So it makes sense – with its longevity, tradition and distribution – that the company has earned some brand loyalty. This is especially evident leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas when home cooks make huge batches of biscuits and cornbread for the dressing that’s pretty much mandatory fare alongside turkeys and hams.
“There’s a lot more demand for our products right before Christmas and Thanksgiving,” Hopkinsville Milling CEO Robert Harper said.
Recently, though, at the on-ramp to cornbread-and-biscuit season, Hopkinsville Milling came upon a detour.
The world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer stopped carrying Sunflour products in what seems the most unlikely location on the planet – at Walmart stores in the very region that produces most of the wheat and corn that is processed at Hopkinsville Milling.
Several weeks ago, when Harper learned that 15 Walmart stores in Western Kentucky had quit stocking his company’s products, he decided the mill needed to alert customers who might otherwise think Sunflour had gone out of business. And he wanted to enlist their help.
“Their buyers don’t want to talk to vendors, so we were not able to talk to anybody directly at Walmart,” Harper told Hoptown Chronicle.
Harper believed the problem stemmed from a Walmart Distribution Center in Olney, Illinois, that ships groceries to the Western Kentucky stores. The lines of baking products supplied by that distribution center apparently had changed, and Sunflower didn’t make the cut. Walmart stores in other parts of the country that had been carrying Sunflower did not remove the products. (Hoptown Chronicle asked Walmart for an explanation of the change but a corporate spokeswoman did not follow up with information after initially responding to an email.)
Meanwhile, other grocery stores in Hopkinsville, including Kroger, Food Lion and Piggly Wiggly, continued to carry Hopkinsville Milling’s flour and corn meal mixes.
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To alert Walmart customers in Western Kentucky, Hopkinsville Milling bought ads in a few dozen newspapers across the region, including the Kentucky New Era and the Courier-Journal. The ads encourage customers to contact Walmart and provided a phone number and website address they could use to request that Walmart put Sunflour back on store shelves.
In addition, Harper spoke directly to customers in a video posted on milling company’s website.
“Are you having trouble finding our Sunflour products at Walmart?” Harper asks in the video, where he stands behind a counter covered with several bags of flour and corn meal.
“If so, this is because Walmart has recently reduced the number of items that they carry in their stores. We would appreciate your help if you would be willing to talk to Walmart about putting those back in.”
Several days ago, the Walmart’s Supercenter and Neighborhood Market in Hopkinsville, both restocked Sunflour products.
As of early this week, said Harper, none of the other Walmart stores in Western Kentucky had restocked.
It would be unfortunate if Hopkinsville Milling didn’t get those stores back, said Harper, but he wants to make sure customers know why they aren’t seeing the Sunflour brands in some locations.
“We will miss (those stores) but it certainly won’t put us out of business,” he said.
The only feedback Hopkinsville Milling Co. received from Walmart was a call from a manager at the local Neighborhood Market, who apparently had been hearing from customers who noticed Sunflour was gone from the shelves.
“You sure have some loyal customers,” the manager told a Hopkinsville Milling employee, according to Harper.
Milling History
A company named Crescent Mills was established in 1874 at Seventh Street and the railroad and become the first mill in Hopkinsville powered by steam. Early on, Crescent produced “an average of 150 to 200 barrels of flour every 24 hours,” according to a history on Hopkinsville Milling’s website. Crescent brands included Perfection Patent, Orient Extra Fancy, Sultan Family and Sunflour.
In 1906, Climax Mill built a mill at 21st and Walnut streets, where the L&N and Illinois Central railroads intersected. Two years later, Climax and Crescent merged to form Hopkinsville Milling Co.
Harper is the fifth generation in his family to work at Hopkinsville Milling. He moved to Hopkinsville in 1993 to work with his maternal grandfather, Frank A. Yost, who was then head of the company. Harper took the lead in 1997.
A Meal That Travels
When Hopkinsville native Emmaline Cornelius Brandt married and moved away from Kentucky in the mid-1980s, she soon learned she couldn’t make a decent batch of cornbread without a bag of Sunflower.
“I’ve tried other brands, living away from home. It’s not the same. I don’t know if it’s the texture. Up here, what you get is too much like powder,” Brandt said.
Milling has become highly automated. Hopkinsville Milling employs just 18 workers at its facility. But there is still both an art and science in milling, said Harper. A good miller can decide how to adjust the grind by rubbing the meal between his fingers.
In the last 30 years, Brandt has carried bags of Sunflower through airports on her way to new homes in Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Australia. Once, a security worker made her leave corn meal behind because he suspected it held contraband.
Lesa Long became a Sunflower devotee shortly after she moved to Hopkinsville from Virginia in the late 1970s.
Kim Ferguson, who grew up Hopkinsville, says she got into the Sunflower habit through a family legacy. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all used the flour and corn meal from Hopkinsville Milling.
“When I lived in Nashville, I would take it back with me,” Ferguson said.
Cadiz resident Linda Tribble makes cornbread with Sunflower two or three times a month for her husband.
“Jim did say he proposed because of my cornbread,” she said.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
