2016 Community Impact Awards: Business of the Year – Large

Gold Award:
Tree Top Inc.
Location: Selah | Employees: 1,100 | Top Exec: Keith Gomes, CEO | treetop.com

For Tree Top, beauty is literally more than skin deep. The Selah-based company has created a thriving and successful business by saving ugly fruit and turning it into premium products such as applesauce, purees, fruit juice and dried apple products. Tree Top was founded in 1960 as a hometown agricultural cooperative by a group of growers in Washingtons apple country. Today, it is owned by more than 1,000 apple and pear growers in the Pacific Northwest and is one of Washingtons largest privately held companies. As a big user of water, Tree Tops corporate mission is to reduce both its use of fresh water and its discharge of wastewater every year, with each of its nine plants required to continually find ways to conserve. In the community, Tree Top gives nearly a half-million dollars a year to more than 50 local charities. Tree Top has a long history of supporting our communities to create a better place to live and work for all of us, says CEO Keith Gomes, so now its hardwired into our culture of generosity and concern for others.