Here is a date that stops people.
1747.
That is when this family started farming in Pennsylvania. Twenty nine years before the Declaration of Independence. Before there was a United States to be a company in.
The same family still runs the business.
It went from a farm to a dairy to a chain of convenience stores that now sells more prepared food than most restaurants in its region.
Two hundred and seventy five years is an absurd amount of time for a business to exist. Almost nothing lasts that long. Not companies, not institutions, not countries.
So the interesting question is not how they make money now.
It is what a company has to do to still be here after that many generations, and the answer turns out to be the opposite of what most people assume about old family businesses.