This new decade brought with it some dramatic changes to Love and Quiches. We still had a lot to learn (our business model would be completely transformed as we traveled through the nineties and into the new decade), but we were definitely growing up. We made some costly mistakes, but were strengthened as we righted them.
Many of our most important game changers reinforced our “Accidental Business” mantra. Our foray into export started in the early nineties at the NRA yearly trade show, when an entourage from an international company (one that has thousands of restaurants worldwide including the Middle East) happened by our booth. The last thing on their minds, as they told me later, was desserts. Within weeks, we were supplying them with cheesecakes and chocolate cakes, and we have continued our partnership for twenty years.
We have remained a private company through it all. Many of our direct competitors were absorbed by some of the industry giants who thought this would be a quick entry into the upscale dessert arena, but it never really happened as they may have hoped. Our field is very R&D intensive, and, to satisfy our customer base, we have to be extremely flexible, and not the other way around. So many of these initiatives have failed, the upscale brand either disappearing or the quality (in most but not all cases) becoming secondary.
Another phenomenon that swallowed dozens of our competitors was a rolling up of dessert brands under one umbrella by venture capital groups with a mind to overrunning the Sara Lees of the world. They were quite wrong; to be in the dessert business requires knowledge of the baking business, and these groups didn’t have that knowledge. Most of these experiments failed and the companies (sadly, some very fine ones) have disappeared.
The difficult economy of the nineties (needless to say, the nineties were a mere warm-up for the coming decade) ‘did in’ many of the remaining smaller dessert companies. So now we have fewer competitors, but the ‘friendly’ fighting between us is fierce!
Another lesson learned from watching our competitors was to never let any one customer become so important that losing them could gravely (or fatally) affect our future. When we first started doing business in the airline industry, there was a company that only had one product and one customer. They prepared thousands of omelets daily for one of the major airlines, and I always thought that was dangerous stuff-- but they had been doing it for so many years that they felt secure and invulnerable. Then the unthinkable happened: they lost the account, and the business disappeared overnight. One of our tenets has since been that any customer whose importance grows too quickly serves as an impetus to go after new business, so that a healthy balance can be created.
During this very busy decade, the business segued (as I touched upon earlier) into a family enterprise. My husband, Irwin, had joined me in 1980 during our move to Freeport, and in 1992, my son, Andrew (otherwise known as Andy to the thousands of people in our industry that he knows), came in as well; something he always knew he would eventually do, after graduating from college with a business degree in Hotel Management, and a Law degree from Brooklyn Law School. He practiced labor and real estate law for 8 years before joining L&Q, and brought his knowledge and negotiating skills with him. Today he serves as President.
My daughter, Joan, came into the business a few years later, after graduating from Boston University with a degree in Marketing, another great set of skills brought to the table. Today she serves as VP of Sales and Marketing and leads all aspects of that effort.
We are fortunate in that not only do we love each other in the familial sense, but, more importantly, we actually like each other, which is very helpful when we are going head to head (which happens very often in a business as complex as ours is). We spend a lot of time together with our families outside of the business (at the beach, during holidays, and so on) and we try very hard to keep it all separate. It works, most if not all of the time.
So now we are into the second generation. So far, so good.
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Networking Works
Although it may be hard to tell from this blog, and all the experiences I have been describing to you since last June when I started my story, in my heart of hearts I have never been comfortable with small talk, and find it difficult to talk to strangers. But that doesn’t alter the fact that networking is a crucial element in most businesses, and I have always done what I had to do. As a result, I have met and forged relationships with people from all over the world, and found some true friendships in the equation. Each time I met somebody, I listened and learned something.
New relationships are forged, old ones cemented, opportunities identified at trade shows, conferences, luncheons, dinners, and on and on. Of course, today there is the tremendously powerful (and instant) social networking made possible over the internet. But back in the eighties, where we still are in my story, you had to get out there to do it.
Although the annual IFSA (International Flight Services Association) convention included an exhibition portion that we participated in, complete with plenty of speakers and panel discussions, the event was largely a networking and social conference; it even included golf and tennis tournaments. (I was an “A” tennis player in my other life, so that I enjoyed!). About 800 people attended, half of them spouses or significant others. That is a lot of people to try to interact with during the course of only three days. There was a theme event (costumes, much to my chagrin!) and a cocktail party where all of us from Love and Quiches would spread out and circulate, walking in endless circles in this very large ballroom, in hopes of engaging the important menu planners in brief conversation. Even worse, for the first few years we attended, there was no assigned seating at the closing formal banquet. The result was a virtual stampede, when the doors opened, to try to secure seats near the important buyers. We usually ended up in the far corners, no man’s land. As the years passed we’ve earned our place closer and closer to the center of the room. They finally moved to assigned seating done one day prior to the event; very civilized!
I’ve passed the mantle for airline sales to Karen S., our Executive VP of Product Management, and Michael G., our VP of R&D, and they work the show, but I still show up and participate once in a while. Today the industry is much smaller; we know everybody, and we are an important part of it all.
Another important chapter in my absorption into the industry centers on the Roundtable for Women in Foodservice, which was formed in the mid-eighties in New York (with the help of an SBA loan) as a resource for women from all areas of the trade (restaurant owners, chefs, nutritionists, food writers, etc.). I was invited to serve on the founding Board of Directors. We held monthly meetings and instructional seminars, traded job information, mentored younger women, and so on. During the next few years, chapters of the Roundtable opened in other cities (mostly metropolitan areas such as L.A., Dallas, and Chicago). We held an annual luncheon during the big National Restaurant Association show in Chicago to attract members and attention-- in other words, networking! This was, to my knowledge, the first organization formed to help advance women in my particular industry. Soon after, the Women’s Foodservice Forum was formed, which quickly became much more high profile, with strong corporate sponsorship. We were completely overrun and drowned out, so although a few chapters hung on for a while, the Roundtable pretty much dissolved by the end of the nineties. I was somewhat active in the WFF for a while, and was invited to be a panelist on occasion, but today it is my daughter, Joan, our VP of Sales and Marketing, that remains very active there.
Today, there are quite a few much smaller and targeted conferences that members of our sales staff and executive chef attend. Here they meet and exchange ideas with other suppliers in the industry (and, sometimes, our competitors) and are able to talk, one on one, with targeted accounts to pursue sales opportunities. Joan, unlike me, can have a conversation with a wall and get it animated and laughing, so these conferences are perfect for her.
We are about to enter the nineties, a very busy decade on many levels. My children joined us and we became a true family business (a chapter in itself, as you all can well imagine). Love and Quiches continued to grow and develop.
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
New relationships are forged, old ones cemented, opportunities identified at trade shows, conferences, luncheons, dinners, and on and on. Of course, today there is the tremendously powerful (and instant) social networking made possible over the internet. But back in the eighties, where we still are in my story, you had to get out there to do it.
Although the annual IFSA (International Flight Services Association) convention included an exhibition portion that we participated in, complete with plenty of speakers and panel discussions, the event was largely a networking and social conference; it even included golf and tennis tournaments. (I was an “A” tennis player in my other life, so that I enjoyed!). About 800 people attended, half of them spouses or significant others. That is a lot of people to try to interact with during the course of only three days. There was a theme event (costumes, much to my chagrin!) and a cocktail party where all of us from Love and Quiches would spread out and circulate, walking in endless circles in this very large ballroom, in hopes of engaging the important menu planners in brief conversation. Even worse, for the first few years we attended, there was no assigned seating at the closing formal banquet. The result was a virtual stampede, when the doors opened, to try to secure seats near the important buyers. We usually ended up in the far corners, no man’s land. As the years passed we’ve earned our place closer and closer to the center of the room. They finally moved to assigned seating done one day prior to the event; very civilized!
I’ve passed the mantle for airline sales to Karen S., our Executive VP of Product Management, and Michael G., our VP of R&D, and they work the show, but I still show up and participate once in a while. Today the industry is much smaller; we know everybody, and we are an important part of it all.
Another important chapter in my absorption into the industry centers on the Roundtable for Women in Foodservice, which was formed in the mid-eighties in New York (with the help of an SBA loan) as a resource for women from all areas of the trade (restaurant owners, chefs, nutritionists, food writers, etc.). I was invited to serve on the founding Board of Directors. We held monthly meetings and instructional seminars, traded job information, mentored younger women, and so on. During the next few years, chapters of the Roundtable opened in other cities (mostly metropolitan areas such as L.A., Dallas, and Chicago). We held an annual luncheon during the big National Restaurant Association show in Chicago to attract members and attention-- in other words, networking! This was, to my knowledge, the first organization formed to help advance women in my particular industry. Soon after, the Women’s Foodservice Forum was formed, which quickly became much more high profile, with strong corporate sponsorship. We were completely overrun and drowned out, so although a few chapters hung on for a while, the Roundtable pretty much dissolved by the end of the nineties. I was somewhat active in the WFF for a while, and was invited to be a panelist on occasion, but today it is my daughter, Joan, our VP of Sales and Marketing, that remains very active there.
Today, there are quite a few much smaller and targeted conferences that members of our sales staff and executive chef attend. Here they meet and exchange ideas with other suppliers in the industry (and, sometimes, our competitors) and are able to talk, one on one, with targeted accounts to pursue sales opportunities. Joan, unlike me, can have a conversation with a wall and get it animated and laughing, so these conferences are perfect for her.
We are about to enter the nineties, a very busy decade on many levels. My children joined us and we became a true family business (a chapter in itself, as you all can well imagine). Love and Quiches continued to grow and develop.
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
Friday, May 13, 2011
Recollections and Lessons of the 1980s
Little by little, lesson by lesson, Love and Quiches was coming into its own. We were better able to vet the opportunities coming our way, because we now had some people on board who could, from experience, work out the logistics for production, oven time, labor hours, throughput, and so on. It gave us our first knowledge of “constraints” (bottlenecks) that all manufacturers face, and by which many have been sadly defeated.
Each defeat made us stronger, each lesson learned made us smarter. We learned to read the industry and watch our competitors with a more practiced eye.
We were approached by two of the industry giants with R&D projects that greatly added to our learning curve. One was from General Foods while they still owned Entenmann's bakery. It was a “fresh refrigerated single serve dessert” project that they planned to test in about 30 supermarkets in the Midwest. They needed a small facility like ours for a project such as this, and they paid us on a time-and-material basis. Since this was General Foods, we were drowning in the required record keeping (fast forward to 2011-- we now do the very same thing). We got to tour the Entenmann's plant (now largely closed) further out on Long island. I’ll never forget some things I saw. They had a brand new (high tech) line that sent the boxes down facing in the wrong direction; they had to have someone standing there just to rotate them manually. They also swept nuts off the floor beneath another line, then sterilized and re-toasted them for reuse! I swear this is true. Please remember this was 25 years ago and, I suspect, could never happen today.
The other R&D project that we were offered by one of the industry giants involved making ice cream cakes with a type of ice cream that didn’t easily melt, could be distributed through normal frozen food channels, and did not need the special panel environment normally required to transport ice cream. That was a lot of fun, too, although the project never moved forward.
It was during the eighties that we developed relationships with several fledgling national chains that grew from just a few stores at the outset to (today) having hundreds and in some cases, over 1000 units. One was a chicken kind of place; the opportunity came our way because one of the executives’ wives was so fond of our brownies that she used to drive down all the way from Connecticut just to get them. Another was Sbarro (the Italian pizza chain), whose executives told me to feel free to share this story. Mama Sbarro had been baking all of their cheesecakes in the original pizza parlor in Brooklyn, NY, for all twenty or so stores that they had at the time; as they developed their expansion plans, they knew this couldn’t last. Getting the cheesecake recipe out of Mama was worse than dealing with our Jimmy the Baker! She put us and her three sons, who were running the business, through “hell” until we finally received her blessing. We have been baking their cheesecakes ever since.
We had an opportunity to do a second product for the chain that had given us such a tremendous boost when they bought our Pecan Brownie Pie, knocking us out of the ballpark and into our next phase of growth. (This chain was originally owned by General Mills [since the 1970s], who grew it to 400 units before spinning it off.) This story didn’t have such a happy ending, though. Our product was a lovely frozen lemon mousse that was ordered in four-pound tubs, and was to be scooped and served with a berry sauce. None of the servers wanted to bother scooping the mousse and garnishing it (too much trouble). Since the item was a special and did not appear on the printed menu, it failed rather spectacularly. They asked us to take it back, all $90,000 worth, and we did, to preserve the relationship. We made the Salvation Army very happy that month! An expensive lesson for a problem that wasn’t of our making!
I was on the road nonstop during this period, as were our one or two other salespeople. I remember one time sharing a cab on the way to the airport at some ungodly hour, on my way to g-d knows where, when my cab companion, a neighborhood person who was familiar with my story, asked me why we weren’t going public. We have always appeared to be larger than life to those looking at us, so he probably didn’t realize that our business was still quite small. I told him that we had our banking relationship to finance our needs, to which he retorted, “Yes, but then you have to pay it back!” Funny guy, but he meant it.
We were setting the stage for the nineties. Our distributor business was becoming more distinct from our local business, although until the late 90’s we were still dealing direct with at least 400 restaurants and gourmet shops, and running our own trucks to service them. But our focus was building our multi-unit chain account and airline business. And soon…….export!
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
Each defeat made us stronger, each lesson learned made us smarter. We learned to read the industry and watch our competitors with a more practiced eye.
We were approached by two of the industry giants with R&D projects that greatly added to our learning curve. One was from General Foods while they still owned Entenmann's bakery. It was a “fresh refrigerated single serve dessert” project that they planned to test in about 30 supermarkets in the Midwest. They needed a small facility like ours for a project such as this, and they paid us on a time-and-material basis. Since this was General Foods, we were drowning in the required record keeping (fast forward to 2011-- we now do the very same thing). We got to tour the Entenmann's plant (now largely closed) further out on Long island. I’ll never forget some things I saw. They had a brand new (high tech) line that sent the boxes down facing in the wrong direction; they had to have someone standing there just to rotate them manually. They also swept nuts off the floor beneath another line, then sterilized and re-toasted them for reuse! I swear this is true. Please remember this was 25 years ago and, I suspect, could never happen today.
The other R&D project that we were offered by one of the industry giants involved making ice cream cakes with a type of ice cream that didn’t easily melt, could be distributed through normal frozen food channels, and did not need the special panel environment normally required to transport ice cream. That was a lot of fun, too, although the project never moved forward.
It was during the eighties that we developed relationships with several fledgling national chains that grew from just a few stores at the outset to (today) having hundreds and in some cases, over 1000 units. One was a chicken kind of place; the opportunity came our way because one of the executives’ wives was so fond of our brownies that she used to drive down all the way from Connecticut just to get them. Another was Sbarro (the Italian pizza chain), whose executives told me to feel free to share this story. Mama Sbarro had been baking all of their cheesecakes in the original pizza parlor in Brooklyn, NY, for all twenty or so stores that they had at the time; as they developed their expansion plans, they knew this couldn’t last. Getting the cheesecake recipe out of Mama was worse than dealing with our Jimmy the Baker! She put us and her three sons, who were running the business, through “hell” until we finally received her blessing. We have been baking their cheesecakes ever since.
We had an opportunity to do a second product for the chain that had given us such a tremendous boost when they bought our Pecan Brownie Pie, knocking us out of the ballpark and into our next phase of growth. (This chain was originally owned by General Mills [since the 1970s], who grew it to 400 units before spinning it off.) This story didn’t have such a happy ending, though. Our product was a lovely frozen lemon mousse that was ordered in four-pound tubs, and was to be scooped and served with a berry sauce. None of the servers wanted to bother scooping the mousse and garnishing it (too much trouble). Since the item was a special and did not appear on the printed menu, it failed rather spectacularly. They asked us to take it back, all $90,000 worth, and we did, to preserve the relationship. We made the Salvation Army very happy that month! An expensive lesson for a problem that wasn’t of our making!
I was on the road nonstop during this period, as were our one or two other salespeople. I remember one time sharing a cab on the way to the airport at some ungodly hour, on my way to g-d knows where, when my cab companion, a neighborhood person who was familiar with my story, asked me why we weren’t going public. We have always appeared to be larger than life to those looking at us, so he probably didn’t realize that our business was still quite small. I told him that we had our banking relationship to finance our needs, to which he retorted, “Yes, but then you have to pay it back!” Funny guy, but he meant it.
We were setting the stage for the nineties. Our distributor business was becoming more distinct from our local business, although until the late 90’s we were still dealing direct with at least 400 restaurants and gourmet shops, and running our own trucks to service them. But our focus was building our multi-unit chain account and airline business. And soon…….export!
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
Thursday, May 5, 2011
A Bit of This and That
During the mid-eighties we had come through our early years in Freeport (and the twenty-two percent interest rates) still standing; we were now free to concentrate on growing and not just surviving.
I have never really allowed gender to affect how I have conducted myself during my career as a business owner, but in many ways I suppose my gender has helped the growth of my business. I have been asked to speak at many important industry functions and seminars as the years have passed, and have won awards that I may not have won otherwise, all of which has brought attention to Love and Quiches. So that has always been a good thing.
And for some reason, just recently in March 2011, in conjunction with Women’s History Month, several opportunities came my way. I was invited to be Keynote Speaker at a prominent Town of Hempstead Pathfinder Awards yearly event that honors women from various fields. I have also been the honored recipient of awards at quite a few other events (we have been having trouble keeping them all straight!) I have, as a result, been written up in a few newspapers with articles that I could have frankly lived without; I can’t say I enjoy being quoted out of context!
Another time, I was invited to Chicago to conduct an all day seminar preceding the Purchasing Managers Association monthly meeting, and then to be the speaker at the meeting itself. It still remains a powerful association; I was probably invited because of our excellent relationship with one of our major distributors, and, also, because I was a woman who started a business from scratch against the odds. No way was I going to miss that opportunity; however, I had to fly straight there following a four day Inflight convention in Orlando. It was in the dead of winter and was held at the old and then quite deteriorated Blackstone Hotel (now renovated) downtown. There had been major flooding in the tunnels of the downtown areas, and so, the following morning, no cabs came anywhere near it, nobody at the hotel could help me, and I practically ran to the airport to make my getaway.
One more important advantage is our certification as a Minority Woman-Owned Business Enterprise, which is very helpful with the larger corporations and public companies (airlines, chain restaurants, buying groups, etc.) that are required to do a certain percentage of business with minority companies. Other than that, we operate in a rather color-and-gender-blind way, and I am hopeful that my employees respect me for my ideas and leadership, and not for unimportant distinctions. However, they do tend to follow me around rather closely when I’m on the production floor; I like to think it is to keep me from falling (since I am always darting around) more than anything else.
Only once was I subjected to truly blatant discrimination. There was, at the time, a powerful buying group called North American. These are groups of (otherwise unaffiliated) companies that pool their buying power both for price and marketing dollars. The vendors favored by them then have a “hunting” license and an advantage over their competitors with similar products. This all doesn’t come cheaply. These groups have meetings once or twice yearly where they review potential new vendors for both products and programs. You had to be “invited” by a member company (just like a country club!), and we were able to secure a showing. Elaine and I flew out to Chicago at the crack of dawn because we were told we had a 9 a.m. slot. We sat there all day and were not invited in until 5 p.m. We could not get anybody to taste even one thing, nor were we asked any questions. We left quite dejected, but dejection turned to outrage the next day, when we were contacted by the distributor that had invited us to present our line. He told us that the minute we had left the room, he had been asked by everybody present if I was his girlfriend. He was angrier than we were!
The anger didn’t last very long. I have always picked myself up, dusted myself off and moved on when things happened, and this, by far, was not the worst. Besides, most of those companies were sold and absorbed into even larger companies, and North American no longer exists as a buying group. We have established programs with several other buying groups as the years passed. So we have had the last laugh, after all.
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
I have never really allowed gender to affect how I have conducted myself during my career as a business owner, but in many ways I suppose my gender has helped the growth of my business. I have been asked to speak at many important industry functions and seminars as the years have passed, and have won awards that I may not have won otherwise, all of which has brought attention to Love and Quiches. So that has always been a good thing. I have been honored by Long Island Business News as one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Women in Business” on Long Island so many times that I was finally inducted into their Hall of Fame (along with some other business owners in the region) in 2009. They have similar awards for ethnic minority-owned businesses. There have been other honors throughout the years; for example, I was once asked to be the keynote speaker at an NYU graduation for their Hospitality Program-- a small group of graduates at the time, but it was really fun. This is going back quite a way, but I never forgot it.
And for some reason, just recently in March 2011, in conjunction with Women’s History Month, several opportunities came my way. I was invited to be Keynote Speaker at a prominent Town of Hempstead Pathfinder Awards yearly event that honors women from various fields. I have also been the honored recipient of awards at quite a few other events (we have been having trouble keeping them all straight!) I have, as a result, been written up in a few newspapers with articles that I could have frankly lived without; I can’t say I enjoy being quoted out of context!
Another time, I was invited to Chicago to conduct an all day seminar preceding the Purchasing Managers Association monthly meeting, and then to be the speaker at the meeting itself. It still remains a powerful association; I was probably invited because of our excellent relationship with one of our major distributors, and, also, because I was a woman who started a business from scratch against the odds. No way was I going to miss that opportunity; however, I had to fly straight there following a four day Inflight convention in Orlando. It was in the dead of winter and was held at the old and then quite deteriorated Blackstone Hotel (now renovated) downtown. There had been major flooding in the tunnels of the downtown areas, and so, the following morning, no cabs came anywhere near it, nobody at the hotel could help me, and I practically ran to the airport to make my getaway.
One more important advantage is our certification as a Minority Woman-Owned Business Enterprise, which is very helpful with the larger corporations and public companies (airlines, chain restaurants, buying groups, etc.) that are required to do a certain percentage of business with minority companies. Other than that, we operate in a rather color-and-gender-blind way, and I am hopeful that my employees respect me for my ideas and leadership, and not for unimportant distinctions. However, they do tend to follow me around rather closely when I’m on the production floor; I like to think it is to keep me from falling (since I am always darting around) more than anything else.
Only once was I subjected to truly blatant discrimination. There was, at the time, a powerful buying group called North American. These are groups of (otherwise unaffiliated) companies that pool their buying power both for price and marketing dollars. The vendors favored by them then have a “hunting” license and an advantage over their competitors with similar products. This all doesn’t come cheaply. These groups have meetings once or twice yearly where they review potential new vendors for both products and programs. You had to be “invited” by a member company (just like a country club!), and we were able to secure a showing. Elaine and I flew out to Chicago at the crack of dawn because we were told we had a 9 a.m. slot. We sat there all day and were not invited in until 5 p.m. We could not get anybody to taste even one thing, nor were we asked any questions. We left quite dejected, but dejection turned to outrage the next day, when we were contacted by the distributor that had invited us to present our line. He told us that the minute we had left the room, he had been asked by everybody present if I was his girlfriend. He was angrier than we were!
The anger didn’t last very long. I have always picked myself up, dusted myself off and moved on when things happened, and this, by far, was not the worst. Besides, most of those companies were sold and absorbed into even larger companies, and North American no longer exists as a buying group. We have established programs with several other buying groups as the years passed. So we have had the last laugh, after all.
Until next time...make someone happy —serve them dessert!
http://www.loveandquiches.com/
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