The American Flatware Factory
That Refused to Disappear

They were supposed to be finished.

In 2005, Oneida shut down flatware manufacturing in Sherrill, New York.

For more than 100 years, generations of people in this small Upstate New York community had made American flatware.

Suddenly, that was supposed to be over.

Two men refused to let that happen.

Matt Roberts and Greg Owens were both former Oneida manufacturing managers. When Oneida ended production in Sherrill, they bought the plant and equipment and reopened the factory the very next day as Sherrill Manufacturing.

There was no giant rescue fund. No Hollywood
ending waiting for them.

There was a building. There were machines. And, most importantly, there was a workforce that knew how to make forks, knives and spoons in America.

Then they had to survive.

At first, Sherrill Manufacturing continued making flatware for Oneida.

Then that remaining work was moved overseas.

That should have been the end.

It wasn't.

Matt, Greg and their team took government flatware contracts to keep the machines running and people working.

In 2010, the company filed Chapter 11. They sold equipment they could no longer use. They sold factory space they could no longer fill and leased back only what they needed to keep manufacturing.

In 2013, they emerged from bankruptcy.

And then they made the decision that would change everything.

They built Liberty Tabletop.

Instead of depending on another company to decide whether American manufacturing survived, they decided to go directly to the people who could make that choice themselves:

You.

Liberty Tabletop began selling high-quality 18/10 stainless-steel flatware directly to Americans who wanted something increasingly difficult to find:

Quality flatware actually made in the United States.

Today, Liberty Tabletop is the only company still manufacturing stainless-steel flatware in America.

Same town.
Same trade.
American steel.
American packaging.

They didn't bring back the thousands of manufacturing jobs that once existed here.

Nobody did.

But they saved the last line, and we hold it to this day.

More than two decades later, those machines are still running.

Every Liberty fork, spoon and knife represents something much bigger than what sits on your dinner table.

It represents the belief that we can still make things here.

That American craftsmanship is worth preserving.

And that American manufacturing doesn't have to be something we only talk about in the past tense.

This is what keeping manufacturing in America actually looks like.

Liberty Tabletop.
Made in America. 
Always have been, always will be.

Special thanks to The Buy American Movement for inspiring this blog post