In 1983, Sue Gin, a real estate developer and bakery owner in Chicago, was on a Midway Airlines flight when the stewardess delivered an unsavory breakfast that was nothing more than a half-frozen sweet roll.

Less than a week after that breakfast, Gin, the daughter of Chicago-area restaurant owners, went to the CEO of Midway and pitched a better food service for the airline. It was a tenacious move by a tenacious entrepreneur, and it worked.

Gin's new company, Flying Food Group, was born. In its first year, the company made nearly $10 million in revenue. Over the next few decades, the business would expand to airports and airlines around the world. Flying Food would go on to become a major supplier to the global coffee giant Starbucks and has more than 4,500 employees.

Gin was a talented and competitive entrepreneur, but for her, the business had a larger meaning, said current CEO David Cotton. She wanted Flying Food to help the communities where it operated and the team members who work there, Cotton said.

Before her death in 2014, Gin established a charitable trust that, today, receives all company profits. The trust works towards implementing Gin's vision of a company that improves the lives of its employees and their families. 

At publicly held companies, profits go mostly to shareholders, and much of the attention is focused on the price of the company's stock. Gin held on to 100% of the ownership, and she had the paperwork in place to transfer ownership of the company to the trust after her death.

As a result, profits at Flying Food now go toward implementing Gin’s vision of a company that improves the lives of its employees and the communities where they live and raise their families.

“We are giving sizeable amounts of money to charity,” Cotton said. “That is the way that you maintain the legacy of Sue. She was a remarkable entrepreneur, a remarkable individual in every sense of the word. It’s my mission to make sure we preserve this foundation in perpetuity.”

The foundation funds college scholarships – both for employees and their family members.

“A lot of our employees are first-generation immigrants,” said Nicole Madigan, Flying Food's general counsel. “Sometimes we are the first employer they have when they get to this country. To see the next generation receive these scholarships is a great immigrant story. They are becoming nurses (and) veterinarians. That was Sue’s story, too. She was a second-generation Chinese immigrant. We are trying to keep Sue’s legacy going in these ways as well.”

The foundation also gives large grants to prominent organizations in Chicago. Those include the Chinese American Service League, the Field Museum and DePaul University. Rush University Medical Center, which is now home to the Sue Gin Health Center, and Chicago Cred, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing gun violence, are also grant recipients.

“Sue loved Chicago,” said Mark Noffke, chief financial officer of both the foundation and Flying Food Group. “She wanted to make sure that Chicago was a place where people wanted to live. Education was big. Sue was a big fan of DePaul University and also Rush University.

The clinic was founded on Gin’s belief that quality healthcare for all is a necessity. According to its website, the clinic provides a wide array of services for patients of all ages despite insurance status. There are no copays at the clinic, either.  

Gin’s support for healthcare extends even to the company workplace. There is a nurse on duty at the Flying Food Kitchen in Chicago, where meals are prepared.

“The nurse is free for everyone,” Noffke said. “It’s paid for by the foundation. If employees aren’t feeling well, they can’t walk in and get a prescription. They actually opened it up to the families.”

The program was recently extended to the Los Angeles FFG facility as well. These nursing services are in addition to the health insurance the company provides for employees.

“Sue treated her employees like family,” Noffke said. “That culture is a big thing with this company. It continues on.”

She always cared more about her hourly employees than she did management, Cotton said.

“She figured management could take care of themselves,” he said. “She knew how important it was for the hourly employees to have a regular job with a decent paycheck.”