As a Bridgeport-area business, we have been an important part of the community of Southern New England for many generations and hope to be for generations to come.
It is with great pleasure, we’ve teamed with The City of Bridgeport to launch a new initiative to help people find work after they serve time in prison. Mayor of Bridgeport, Joe Ganim, says the issue is close to his heart after he spent seven years in prison before he was re-elected.
It is important to offer opportunities to people who are coming out of the corrections system as a second chance of sorts that they may never be able to have, but truly deserve. More than 1,000 people a year leave prison and return to Bridgeport, and they often face trouble finding employment. The city’s Second Chance Initiative aims to encourage similar success stories for ex-convicts by urging businesses to hire more than 1,100 released inmates a year.
We, along with our owner Doug Wade, are proud to say that our family-operated business includes at least three ex-offenders who served prison sentences. We pledge to hire more offenders and will do anything we can to give great people the chance at an improved life in a city we love so much.
In 2016, we began an expansion to the Wades Dairy facility. To be completed in the summer of 2016, we are nearly doubling in size at our Barnum Avenue space in Bridgeport! The existing warehouse will make way for a 7,000-square-foot space which will be the largest expansion in our 122-year history. Not only is this a big expansion to take us into a 5th generation of Wade’s family, but it marks our foray beyond milk. We’re working on bringing many more products under the Wade’s food distribution umbrella and hiring more great local works to get the job done right. We look forward to what the next year will bring.