West Lebanon Feed Just Doubled Its Internal Share Value in Three Years. Here's the ESOP Math.

Three years.

That's how long it took West Lebanon Feed & Supply's internal share value to double after converting to employee ownership. The store is coming into its 100th year in the community by handing equity to the people running registers and loading feed, and the numbers say it's working.

What the conversion actually bought

Three years ago, longtime owner Curt Jacques transitioned the 11,000-square-foot West Lebanon, NH store into an employee-owned company. The model includes all employees, full and part time, who accumulate shares and participate in profit sharing. The more someone works, the more shares they hold. Over time, employees can sell shares back to the company, creating what President Mike Burnham describes as "a potential kind of retirement package from a business, an unusual benefit to have outside of working for a large, publicly traded company."

The store now carries 14 full-time and 7 part-time employees across pet, farm, and lawn-and-garden categories. Since the ESOP conversion, the internal share value doubled, a direct result of operational success and customer loyalty in a retail environment where most century-old independents either sell to consolidators or close.

"This has had a direct impact on our success," says Marketing Manager Briana Paronto. "Strong relationships, repeat customers and word-of-mouth recommendations are all driven by the experience our team creates. At the end of the day, people come in for products, but they come back because of the people."

The misread: this is a feel-good story about legacy

It's not. It's retention economics.

Employee ownership flips the math on turnover in tight labor markets. Vesting schedules beat sign-on bonuses when the job requires category knowledge that takes months to build, knowing which chick starter a first-time homesteader needs, or which premium dog food a regular's senior Lab actually tolerates. WLFS runs delivery programs (the store's e-commerce platform has grown, averaging roughly 100 online orders monthly through local delivery and curbside), seasonal live goods (baby chicks in brooders near the entrance each spring), and grooming appointments. All of it requires staff who stay.

"Employee ownership has created a culture where everyone is looking for ways to improve, solve problems and support each other," Paronto says. "That mindset has led to stronger operations, better customer experiences, and continued growth across both pet and farm categories."

The structure also solved the succession problem most founding families face: how to exit without selling to private equity, a regional chain, or a consolidator who strips the local identity. Jacques brought Burnham in to help lead the next chapter, and the ESOP became the path to keep the business independent and community-rooted.

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What the doubled share value actually measures

Internal share value in an ESOP reflects the company's appraised worth divided by outstanding shares. When it doubles in three years, it means the business grew revenue, margin, or both faster than it issued new shares to employees. For WLFS, that growth came from multiple directions: pet is the number one category, General Manager Chris Mazurek says, though homesteading and backyard poultry have "started to creep back up" as business drivers.

The store stocks Blue Seal, Cloud Star, Fromm, Greenies, Honest Kitchen, Old Mother Hubbard, Open Farm, Plato, Polka Dog, Purina Pro Plan, Stella & Chewy's, Wellness, Woof, and World's Best Litter on the pet side. It also runs community events that drive repeat traffic: the Barking Lot Party turns the parking lot into a gathering space; Police K9 Awareness Day raised $1,459 for the Vermont Police Canine Association in 2025; partnerships with 4-H programs deepen ties to regional youth agriculture.

The share-value gain is the outcome, not the input. The input is a team that stays long enough to know the customer base, build relationships, and spot the margin opportunities a transient workforce misses.

The structure smaller stores can actually use

Full ESOP conversion isn't the only path. Partial ESOPs or profit-sharing structures let smaller independents create equity incentives without the legal and administrative overhead of a complete transition. The core mechanic, tying compensation to business performance and giving employees a stake in the outcome, scales down.

For a single-location store planning succession, the ESOP math pencils differently than selling to a chain or rolling into a consolidator. You retain local control, avoid the multiple compression that comes with distressed sales, and create a buyer pool (your own team) that already knows the operation. The trade: complexity. ESOP administration requires third-party valuation, legal structure, and ongoing compliance that a straight sale to a strategic buyer does not.

For stores burning cash on turnover, the retention economics matter more than the succession angle. If you're replacing a category buyer every 18 months, you're retraining product knowledge, vendor relationships, and customer rapport on a loop. Equity-holding staff negotiate differently, longer planning horizons, less churn in the knowledge that drives margin.

What this means for a store of a given size

If you run a single location with 10-20 employees and you're facing either a succession question or a retention problem, ESOP is the structure most owners won't consider because it sounds complicated. It is. But the alternative, selling to a buyer who strips your vendor relationships and rebrands the storefront, or cycling through staff every year and losing the category expertise that keeps customers loyal, costs more than the legal fees.

If you're a regional chain or a buyer working with independently owned stores, know that ESOP-structured retailers plan differently. They're less likely to flip categories on a rep's pitch and more likely to hold margin discipline because the team on the floor participates in profit sharing. The decision cycle is longer, but the relationship, once built, is stickier.

WLFS didn't double its share value by accident. It built delivery infrastructure (Kibble Cab allows customers to schedule deliveries directly with the store, and the team added a subscription option for recurring deliveries and curbside pickups), expanded digital commerce, and kept the team that knows which customer needs chicken feed and dog treats in the same trip. Employee ownership made that possible by solving the problem most century-old stores can't: how to stay independent without burning out the founder or losing the people who actually run the business.

"To have had that longevity in the community speaks volumes to the impact and the value that we have within the community," Burnham says. "Creating an employee-owned business means that hopefully we have another 100 years in us, and we can continue on as we have."

The doubled share value in three years is the proof the structure works. The next hundred years is the bet.

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