Inn Maid Noodles Relies on Roofing System Durability

Inn Maid Noodles Turns to FiberTite Roofing Membrane for Low Maintenance, Durability and Longevity.

Project Details:

Name: Inn Maid Noodles
Dates: Installed in June, 1981
Location: Millersburg, OH U.S.A.

Project Story:

For many, Inn Maid Noodles are the only noodles good enough to eat. Treasured by homemade noodle connoisseurs nationwide, this famous egg noodle was born of the Great Depression when the Reining family served delicious homemade noodles to their guests at the Smithville Inn. Located in Smithville, Ohio in the heart of Ohio's Amish country, the Inn was also the family's home at the time. The Smithville Inn still draws crowds today who are hungry for traditional family fare, like chicken dinners with homemade noodles, biscuits with apple butter, and mouthwatering apple pie.

In 1952, Paul Reining capitalized on a good idea and used his family's recipe to open an independent noodle making shop called Inn Maid Noodles. An entrepreneur at heart, Reining started his business in the nearby town of Millersburg, Ohio with one noodle machine. He eventually pioneered his product to national acclaim in the noodle market.

As his business expanded, Reining turned to a local manufacturer, Seaman Corporation, for his roofing needs. In 1981, Reining purchased a 36-mil FiberTite Roofing System to protect his growing facility and contracted with Hicks Industrial Roofing out of New Philadelphia, Ohio to install the roof. At the time, his product choice was a bit of a gamble since the FiberTite product had just been introduced to the market in 1979. But the risk paid off. Today, that roof, along with three subsequent FiberTite installations at the noodle plant, is still performing.

"The FiberTite product speaks for itself," commented Dan Murphy, plant manager and longtime associate at the company. "We have it on all of our buildings and it has been a maintenance free product."

"Inn Maid could not have made a wiser choice," said Mike Hicks, president of Hicks Industrial Roofing. "The 1981 Inn Maid roof was our first job using FiberTite. We did have doubts about the product back then. Yet, over the next 28 years we installed more than four million square feet of warranted FiberTite installations and millions more without warranties. "To our knowledge," Hicks continued, "not one of our customers has had to replace their FiberTite roof. When I look back at our history of single-ply and asphalt roof installations over the same period of time, I cannot make that same claim for any other product."

Seaman Corporation uses the same core formula today to manufacture the FiberTite roofing membrane as it did back in 1979. FiberTite is a Dow ELVALOY™ Ketone Ethylene Ester KEE-based product that relies on a combination of high performance attributes to yield a membrane with long-term flexibility, maximum resistance to punctures and tears, superior welding characteristics and unmatched endurance in chemical and UV environments. Now installed across the nation on all kinds of roofs in all kinds of climates, FiberTite is proving to last a very long time.

When Reining retired, he sold his company to the T. Marzetti Company of the Specialty Food Group of Lancaster Colony, based in Columbus, Ohio. But, like FiberTite, the Reining family's "original formula" lives on. Inn Maid Noodles can be found today in major grocery chains like Wal-Mart.

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