Most businesses don’t make it past their founders. A rare few get handed down, parent to child, for three, four, even seven generations. Utah has some remarkable examples, and you can still walk into every one of them.
Here are nine Utah businesses that have stayed in the same family for decades, listed from oldest to newest.
1. Sterling Furniture (1875, Salt Lake City)
Cabinetmaker Hans Madsen founded Sterling Furniture in 1875, before Utah was even a state, and his descendants still run it, now in the seventh generation. Its Sugar House store opened on November 29, 1941, and today it fills 35,000 square feet in a building the family owns. One fun detail: a 1916 bank vault inside the store is now a showroom.
Visit: 2051 S. 1100 East, Salt Lake City (Sugar House)
2. Sweet Candy Company (1892, Salt Lake City)
Leon Sweet started selling candy in Portland in 1892 and moved the business to Salt Lake City in 1900. Today the third, fourth and fifth generations of the Sweet family work in the business, still making the salt water taffy, cinnamon bears and orange sticks Utahns grew up on.
Read our full spotlight: Sweet Candy Company: Five Generations of Taffy, Cinnamon Bears and Orange Sticks.
3. UWM Men’s Shop, formerly Utah Woolen Mills (1905, Murray)
Father and son Henry and Briant Stringham founded Utah Woolen Mills in 1905, and KSL describes it as a fifth-generation family-owned store. After 119 years on South Temple, earthquake damage from 2020 forced a move, and it reopened in Murray in May 2024 as UWM Men’s Shop. Its motto: keeping men dapper since 1905.
Visit: 6100 S. State St., Murray
4. Ruby’s Inn (1916, Bryce Canyon City)
Rancher Ruby Syrett started hosting visitors at Bryce Canyon in 1916, years before it became a national park. His family has run Ruby’s Inn ever since, and their business even grew into its own town, Bryce Canyon City.
Read our full spotlight: Ruby’s Inn: The Syrett Family Has Welcomed Bryce Canyon Visitors for More Than 100 Years.
5. Harmons (1932, statewide)
Jake and Irene Harmon started out in 1932 with a fruit and vegetable stand. It grew into Harmons, one of Utah’s best-loved grocery chains, and it is still owned by the Harmon family today.
Visit: Stores across the Wasatch Front
6. Lagoon (Freed family since 1946, Farmington)
Lagoon itself dates to the 1880s, but the family story begins in 1946, when Robert Freed and his partner leased the park after World War II. The Freed family’s company later bought it outright, and three generations of Freeds have run Utah’s favorite amusement park.
Read our full spotlight: Lagoon: How the Freed Family Kept Utah’s Favorite Amusement Park Spinning.
7. Maddox Ranch House (1949, Perry)
Irvin and Wilma Maddox opened their restaurant in August 1949. They were so unsure it would work that the original building was put on skids so it could be towed away if it failed. It didn’t. Irv’s motto was “The Best is None Too Good,” and today the fourth generation of the family works alongside the current owner.
Visit: 1900 S. Highway 89, Perry. Open Tuesday to Saturday. See maddoxfinefood.com
8. Hires Big H (1959, Salt Lake City)
Don Hale opened Hires Big H in 1959, and three generations of Hales have run it since. The buns still use his 1959 recipe, the beef is ground in-house and the root beer comes in frosted mugs.
Visit: 425 S. 700 East, Salt Lake City
9. Gossner Foods (1966, Logan)
Swiss immigrant Ed Gossner founded his Logan cheese company in 1966. His great-granddaughter, Kristan Gibbs Earl, now leads it as the fourth generation, and Gossner makes about a fifth of all the Swiss cheese in the United States.
Read our full spotlight: Gossner Foods: The Swiss Immigrant Who Turned Cache Valley Into Utah’s Cheese Country.
What keeps a family business going
Read enough of these stories and a pattern shows up. These families held on to what made them special in the first place, a recipe, a building, a way of treating customers, while letting each new generation update the rest. Between them, they’ve survived fires, earthquakes, wars and the Great Depression, and the same families are still running them today.
Explore more people and history stories and Best Of guides. Run a multi-generation family business in Utah? We’d love to tell your story.
Details in this guide draw on each company’s own history and on reporting from KSL, Utah Business, Home News Now and our own spotlights. Top photo: Rockclaw1030, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.