Siloam Springs, AR founders on the NWA Founders podcast

Siloam Springs sits on the Oklahoma line at the western edge of Benton County, about half an hour from Bentonville. It's a manufacturing town, and the business at the center of it is one of the oldest companies anywhere on the show.

Todd Simmons leads Simmons Foods, the family-owned poultry and pet food company Bill Simmons started here more than seventy years ago. His episode is about running something that old without letting it drift: the chaplain program and the on-site employee clinics, the growth of the pet food business, and why he treats culture as something a company has to reinforce every day rather than something that scales on its own. He also talks about what Northwest Arkansas looked like in the early 2000s, before people outside Arkansas knew the name.

One conversation from Siloam Springs so far, carrying more history than most. Springdale, half an hour east, is the other side of the same regional food economy.