Fast food surely ranks as one of the greatest inventions of the last century. That’s about the time it took for the hamburger to go from an oddity cooked up by hungry entrepreneurs to a staple of the American diet.
It’s a simple idea, but one that involves some pretty complicated technology. McDonald’s and Wendy’s preach high quality standards for their product, and need ever-advanced ways to ensure that quality.
Temperature is one of the keys: How cold is the meat? How warm is the grill?
When most of the nation’s major restaurant chains need answers to those questions, they turn to a Middlefield company, Cooper-Atkins, which supplies temperature-reading devices.
The 150-person factory on Reeds Gap Road makes the low- and high-tech thermometers used by 18 of the nation’s top 25 restaurants, including Applebee’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and others. All told, some 100,000 restaurants use Cooper-Atkins products for their grills and fridges.
Carol Wallace, CEO of the privately held firm, is the second generation of Wallaces to own the company. Her father, Floyd, bought it back in 1960, when it was only Cooper. Much of the company’s growth has come since 2001, when it bought Atkins, of Gainesville, Fla., and consolidated its manufacturing operations into Middlefield.
It’s the second largest manufacturer in Middlefield, a bedroom community known more for its state parks and an abandoned hippie fest 37 years ago, than the neat things its builders make.
The largest is Zygo Corp., a 350-person manufacturer headquartered nearby on Laurel Brook Road. Inside that facility, often in cooperation with its five other satellite factories, Zygo builds optical devices used in test equipment for chipmakers and other industrial product makers that need to be able to spot defects in materials they work with. Its customers include Canon, Toyota and IBM
Not far from Zygo is a small manufacturing company that specializes in building things that help other small manufacturers build things. Powerhold Inc. is a 20-person firm that makes devices such as chucks and actuators, which are used in higher-tech manufacturing equipment such as CNC machines.
You’ll find those machines in many of the small contract manufacturers that dot Middlefield, such as the nearby Ramar-Hall Inc. The 30-person manufacturing firm founded in 1956 is a precision machining factory that supplies many of the widgets used in aerospace products. It makes components for engine control and flight systems, turbine engines, and rotary aircraft hardware. Its products are used by most of the major aerospace manufacturers, including Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky.
Other nearby machine shops include REF Machine Co., TET Mfg. Co. and Quality Centerless Grinding.
There’s also at least one plastics manufacturer that has found a home in Middlefield: Wepco Plastics. The 40-person contract manufacturer designs and builds complex injection molds for medical instruments, marine equipment and other devices.
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Kenneth J. St. Onge is associate editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
