The $14.2 Million Ranch That Pancake Mix Built

John Heily, the chairman and chief executive of Continental Mills Inc., which owns such brands as Krusteaz and Buck Wild, is not, by his own account, a sportsman. “There isn’t a bone in my body that’s a cowboy or even an outdoorsman,” he says.

Still, during a family trip to the Montana fly-fishing lodge Ruby Springs, Heily, in the midst of what he describes as “a pretty generous cocktail hour,” decided he needed to have a ranch of his own, despite being based in Seattle. Even after the effects of cocktail hour had subsided, he stuck with his plan. He and his wife Deeanna chartered a helicopter in Missoula to look at various properties that were for sale, and “we tooled around, but we didn’t see anything we enjoyed.”