About Us
Alder History
Alder Market Dressings evolved in 1981 as a result of The Alder Market & Catering Co., a Northern California gourmet restaurant and catering company.
The chefs at The Alder Market & Catering Co. prepared all of their gourmet dishes, including the sauces and dressings, from the finest natural ingredients. The butchers created seasonings from unique combinations of fresh spices for use with all of their selected meats.
Over the years, customers continually asked to purchase our prepared seasonings and dressings so that they might use them at home in their own food preparations. At first, the orders were easily filled: the seasonings and dressings were sold over the counter in paper containers. With the increasing demand of our customers’ requests, it became very apparent that we could no longer sell our gourmet products in this manner.
In 1987 we were prompted to bottle our dressings and seasoning salt, thus introducing Alder Products to gourmet food shops across the country, as well as our own customers at The Alder Market and Catering Co. The Alder Market & Catering Co. was retired in 2011.
Evolving With the Times
To streamline operations and to help keep the business thriving, we made the difficult decision to temporarily reduce our product offerings. While we currently only offer the Alder Market Dressing for Spinach Salad, we do still plan to bring back our other popular dressings.
In 2023, we moved our headquarters to Springfield, Oregon, but we will continue to ship our product out of Stockton, California.
Please join us in remembering Larry Ruhstaller, our chief cook and bottle washer.
Looking Forward
We plan to reintroduce some of our other distinctive gourmet products for our customers to enjoy at home while remaining committed to the highest standards of quality in our retail gourmet products as we did previously for the products prepared in our own restaurant and catering company.
Continue to follow along to be a part of our journey.