Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From NASA to Food Manufacturing: How Philip Tulkoff Modernized a Family Legacy | Manufacturing Series

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From NASA to Food Manufacturing: How Philip Tulkoff Modernized a Family Legacy | Manufacturing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Codospodi and
0:16
today's guest is Philip Tolkoff, president of Tolkoff Food
0:20
Products. Founded in the 1930s, they are a
0:24
third generation manufacturer of condiments, specialty sauces and
0:29
ingredients. They've built the reputation on
0:31
providing high quality products for retail, food service and
0:35
COPAC customers. They've been recognized for
0:38
their dedication to consistent quality and remarkable taste.
0:41
With a focus on delivering exceptional flavors and
0:44
innovative ideas. The company has thrived for over
0:47
95 years now. Philip has led the company since
0:52
2005, drawing on his extensive background in both business and
0:56
engineering. Before becoming president, he
0:59
held roles as a thermal control engineer at NASA and Swales
1:05
Aerospace, and also served as president of Peak Computer
1:08
Solutions. He earned his MBA in finance
1:11
from Loyola University Maryland and holds ABS in mechanical
1:15
engineering from Bucknell University.
1:18
His leadership and commitment to excellence have helped the
1:21
company remain a trusted name in the food industry.
1:25
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1:57
All right, back to our guest today, the President of Tolkoff
2:00
Food Products. Phil, I appreciate you making
2:02
the time to Share your story today.
2:05
Hey, Anthony, it's nice to meet you and glad to be here.
2:07
OK. So Phil, it's been a family
2:10
business for several generations here, but before you got
2:14
involved, you went off and did your own thing for a while.
2:17
Why is that? I did, I did, I went to
2:20
undergraduate and got an engineering degree.
2:22
It was something I, I guess I always wanted to do.
2:25
I found one of those kids books that you fill out when you're
2:28
younger that says, you know, what's your favorite color and
2:30
what's your favorite sport and what do you want to be when you
2:33
grow up? And I literally had filled in an
2:35
engineer. So I guess that was something,
2:37
you know, before I was 10 years old that I aspired to do and,
2:40
and did that. And, you know, I wanted to do my
2:43
own thing and, and try engineering and see if I liked
2:47
it. And joining the the family
2:51
business, at least initially, was not on my radar.
2:54
And So what is a thermal control engineer?
2:57
I mean, are you a rocket scientist?
2:59
No, no, no. I used to say it when I started
3:02
at Tolkoff's like this isn't rocket science, right?
3:06
Thermal control is basically when I started the space shuttle
3:10
was was in full bloom and lots of, lots of different missions.
3:14
And what we would do is with either shuttle payloads or free
3:18
flying satellites that you know, went up in the shuttle, we put
3:21
systems together to keep them at operating temperatures so they
3:24
didn't get too hot or too cold. And then also worked on some
3:27
free flying satellites that were up there that were launched for
3:32
with traditional rockets for the same reason to make sure they're
3:34
not too hot or too cold. OK.
3:38
And so you did that directly with NASA for a little while,
3:40
and then you were doing the same kind of work, but through
3:44
another company, like a subcontractor at NASA.
3:47
Yeah, exactly. They were a they were a NASA
3:50
contractor started out really doing the same exact kind of
3:54
work and then while I was there, I decided to go back and get my
3:56
MBA at night. So I was working there during
3:59
the day, went to loyal at night to get my MBA and, and finance
4:03
and honestly just a few classes in, I was kind of sold.
4:06
I really loved the business side of things, found it interesting,
4:09
fascinating. And and when it was done, I
4:13
really wanted to move on to the business side from the
4:16
engineering side. First opportunity was they, they
4:20
created a sort of a project management group at Swales.
4:24
I worked for the the director of that for a while and then we got
4:28
tasked to do a financial budgeting and reporting system
4:33
that met the NASA requirements. So I worked hand in hand with
4:37
the IT manager at Swales and through that I learned how to do
4:41
database programming and we able to come up with a system where
4:45
where literally we pressed a button and it spit out all the
4:48
requirements that we could deliver to NASA.
4:51
Part of our fee structure was basically how accurate and how
4:53
quickly we were able to do that. So we put together, you know, an
4:56
amazing system. I sort of got hooked on the
4:58
computer side and then a few years later the IT manager
5:02
myself were the ones that left and started Peak Computer
5:05
Solutions to do computer consulting as a full time.
5:10
What kind of consulting were you doing with a particular
5:12
platforms you were focused on? Yeah, so I mean, the fun part of
5:15
it was this was the early 90s. Things were changing so fast
5:19
that that you were, you know, in one thing six months and into
5:22
something else another six months.
5:24
You know, we started out with, I'm going to date myself, you
5:27
know, Novell networking and built some of our own PCs when
5:30
that was a viable thing to do. But we did a lot of database
5:34
programming, custom programming. So back then there wasn't a lot
5:39
of software available that unless you were a programmer,
5:42
you know, you really couldn't write your own code or you had
5:45
to do it on like a mainframe. There wasn't a lot of PC stuff
5:48
out there. So, you know, we started out
5:50
with D Base and then went to Clipper and then Fox Pro and it
5:54
was fun because we got hooked up with all kinds of different
5:56
companies to do, you know, all kinds of different challenges.
6:00
One that was really interesting was when the smoking cessation
6:04
patches first came out, the company had these little surveys
6:09
they wanted the pharmacist to fill out with the person using
6:14
the patch. Those would get sent in and then
6:17
the pharmacist would get a dollar for each survey.
6:21
And then we would also collect the data that was that was
6:23
filled in on this little survey. And so we're meeting with a
6:27
client about it and we're like, piece of cake, we'll take care
6:29
of it. You know, how soon do you need
6:30
it? And they said, well, come with
6:31
us. We walked into another
6:33
conference room. They opened the door, the entire
6:36
room, I'm talking about the floor, every chair, the table
6:39
was covered in those white US mail buckets completely full of
6:43
filled out surveys that were ready to get processed.
6:47
So stuff like that. It was just, it was a blast.
6:49
It was a lot of fun. OK.
6:50
So I'm curious about that particular one because when you
6:53
first described the project, it's like, oh, they're filling
6:55
out surveys. I think they're keying it in
6:57
somewhere. And so you've got to take the
6:59
data and make sense of it. But no, you've got hard copies
7:02
now that you've got to somehow. Are you scanning them in?
7:05
I mean, this was back in what, the early 90s?
7:07
This was the early 90s. No, they, they had staff that
7:09
would type it in, but we had to create the software that
7:12
accepted it, you know, put in the exact question that was
7:15
being asked, put in the pharmacist, because then we had
7:19
to track how many of these surveys this pharmacist
7:22
collected over this period. And then we would actually the
7:24
software would cut the check to the pharmacist.
7:27
So it did, it did all those things.
7:28
But no, we weren't typing anything in.
7:30
And this is well before scanning was really prevalent.
7:34
Yeah, these were done on. Yeah, I think we did it in like
7:40
in Clipper and it was a Novell network, you know, multi user
7:47
based system that we put together.
7:48
OK so this is pre like Oracle SQL kind of.
7:52
Days or not SQL or anything like that?
7:54
No no. It was a multi user based
7:56
database but not SQL we got. We got into that later.
8:00
OK. So you guys are around from the
8:03
very early days of the web. Then what, when first of all, I
8:08
guess did that become a big part of of what you were doing?
8:10
And if so, I'm kind of curious when you guys sort of realized
8:14
where that was going, what it was going to become?
8:17
Yeah. So we we did.
8:18
We started doing websites pretty early on.
8:22
We had somebody on staff that was pretty artistic and
8:25
creative. So he was doing, you know, the
8:28
websites for us, making them look good, working with the
8:30
clients, still doing more database kind of stuff.
8:35
We started to get into some Internet security.
8:38
We did some of that for a little while.
8:41
We did the name escapes me. There was like remote access
8:48
kind of things, software that was out there.
8:50
We got into that kind of stuff. And then what happened
8:52
wasthe.com boom kind of hit. And my partner, who was a
8:56
brilliant computer guy, I mean, not only could he do hardware,
9:00
he could do software and he could talk to people, right?
9:03
He was not. Oh, that's that's a a rare breed
9:05
of skills. Wow, he found a Unicorn.
9:07
Yep. And he basically got an offer
9:09
that he couldn't refuse. And you know, he he parted, we
9:13
were good friends and I said, you know, do what's best for you
9:16
and your family. He did that.
9:17
And then we ended up merging the company into an accounting firm
9:22
and kind of morphed more into supporting this one software
9:26
that was for membership and trade associations.
9:30
It was kind of an ERP for that and we're a reseller for it.
9:34
So we are installing it, training on it, setting it up
9:37
and things like that. And that became kind of the
9:39
focus at that point. OK, so then when did you get the
9:44
inkling that you wanted to head into the family?
9:46
Business, yeah. So, so after the, the merger
9:50
into the accounting firm took about two years for me to
9:53
realize it just wasn't a good marriage.
9:55
And I ended up going back to Swales in a different role.
9:59
I was the manager of one of their aerospace manufacturing
10:02
divisions that had been created, did that for two years.
10:06
And I got a call from, I guess it was my father and he wanted
10:10
to meet for dinner and it was me and him, the prior CFO and one
10:14
of the other board members. And they basically said, hey,
10:17
we're kind of a crossroads. The two guys that were running
10:20
it, one of them was going to retire, the other was going to
10:23
take over. These were non family members
10:25
who've been running it for a while at this point.
10:28
And one was in his early 70s and the other one who was in his mid
10:32
50s was going to take over. But he ended up getting really
10:36
sick and ended up in the hospital for a year and was
10:39
became obvious within a few months that he was never going
10:42
to be able to to work again, unfortunately.
10:45
And the other guy, his, his last thing he wanted to do was take
10:47
everything over because he was trying to retire.
10:49
So they called me up and said, hey, this is either an
10:52
opportunity for you or we're going to go out and find
10:54
somebody else outside the family to run it.
10:57
You know, at this point, I had been working for Swales for a
11:02
while. While I like the people in the
11:04
job, I, you know, I had a lot of entrepreneurial bent, right?
11:08
I'd work for myself and done my own thing and sort of that itch,
11:12
I needed to scratch it again and I said I would take on that
11:14
challenge. So I like to say it was
11:16
unfortunately some other people's misfortune that became
11:19
my opportunity. Gotcha.
11:21
And what did you find when you walked in the doors there?
11:24
And what was it, 2005? 2005, right after New Year's,
11:28
like January, whatever it was, second or third, I walked in the
11:31
door, pretty much found a rattlesnake under everything I
11:33
picked up. It was, it was eye opening.
11:39
I mean, I, I had to learn the business, right.
11:41
I mean, obviously I understood manufacturing in general, having
11:45
been an engineer and worked in manufacturing for the airspace
11:48
company. But I had to, you know, learn
11:51
the people, the process, how things worked.
11:56
But it was very backwards. You know, the people that ran it
11:59
before me, they did not invest much in the infrastructure, in
12:05
the equipment and the people. And we, we were behind.
12:09
We were way behind in a lot of a lot of ways.
12:12
Say more about that. What do you what do you mean
12:14
that you were behind? Like you just didn't have the
12:16
best manufacturing equipment or? Yeah, that too.
12:19
Let's say let's start with no PCs in the entire building.
12:24
Wait, this is 2005 and there were no personal computers?
12:28
There were green screen dump terminals that were linked to a
12:31
old IBM System 36 that had a cobalt based bastardized
12:36
distribution system that basically did some inventory and
12:39
invoicing. That was about it.
12:42
Nobody had e-mail. We did not have an Internet
12:44
connection. The website we had was
12:48
unmaintained. It was a mess.
12:49
It was not accurate. The equipment, most of it was
12:53
very old. The infrastructure, the building
12:56
itself was not well maintained. It was leaky.
13:02
Every time it rained the roof, the roof leaked.
13:05
They just had not put money into into anything.
13:09
And, and people wise, you know, we had some good core, a core
13:12
group of good people, but there was a lot of people that were
13:14
there because it was the cheapest person they could hire
13:18
to get the job done. So what's the first rattlesnake
13:23
that you decided to grab a hold of and take care of?
13:27
Let's say first thing was, well first of all, I had an overlap
13:30
with my predecessor for about 8 months so had to tread a little
13:34
lightly there. But when I moved first moved in
13:38
there, they had had a 1031 tax free exchange contract on the
13:44
table to swap our building with another building because the
13:49
area we were in was getting very gentrified.
13:52
And while we had room to expand and we had a lot of property
13:56
there, I knew that in the long run it was not the place to be
13:59
because they were putting residential and offices and
14:02
retail all around us. And you don't want to be a horse
14:05
riders factory in the middle of all that, right?
14:07
Everybody's going to complain about you.
14:09
The noise, the smell, the trucks, they, they weren't going
14:11
to be happy. So we knew we had to, had to
14:13
move out. So I took a look at the property
14:16
they wanted to swap with and it was terrible.
14:19
It was just not a good deal. It was, it was not a, it was not
14:22
an upgrade. So I cancelled that contract and
14:27
started looking around for where else could we move to and found
14:31
a, a piece of land still in Baltimore City that was open
14:34
property. It was owned by the city in the
14:36
Halliburton Industrial Park and was able to purchase that.
14:40
And we went down the path of designing and building a
14:43
building. We moved into that in 2008.
14:47
Real quick, what's a 10/31? 1031 tax free exchange is that
14:51
you can actually swap your building with somebody else and
14:53
not have to pay any taxes. It's a way to avoid
14:57
appreciation. So, you know, they had bought
14:59
that building in 1979 for a lot less money than it was worth 30
15:06
years later. So it's a way to to reduce that
15:10
that tax liability. And those same people wanted
15:12
your building so that they could develop the the site and put in
15:15
houses or retail or whatever it. Was correct exactly.
15:18
So where our building used to be in that that property is now a
15:22
large apartment complex and then some of the existing buildings
15:27
they kept because we were on what used to be the Schaefer
15:30
Brewery property so that prior to that it was Gunther's and
15:35
prior to that was Ham's Brewery. So it went back to the late
15:38
1800s. So there's a lot of beautiful
15:41
brick buildings on the property. They saved all those and
15:44
repurposed them. They did a great job.
15:46
The whole area is now called Brewer's Hill.
15:48
And they, they, everything's beer themed, right?
15:51
There's beer bottle kind of labels out there.
15:54
And the names of the buildings are like, you know, the Porter
15:56
and the Gunther and stuff like that.
15:58
So it's, they did a great job. It's beautiful.
16:01
OK. So did you have to wait to make
16:04
like a lot of manufacturing and like facility upgrades until you
16:09
moved into this new facility three years later?
16:11
Yeah, yeah, 'cause it didn't make sense to put money into the
16:14
facility we were in. We bought mostly new packaging
16:20
equipment when we moved into the new facility and had it just
16:22
delivered there, did what we did to get by in the old facility,
16:27
just patch what we could and and got by.
16:30
I would say the first personnel move that I made was I fired the
16:33
quality control manager. It, it was it, it was a story
16:41
where I walked in the men's room.
16:43
He walked out of a stall, walked right past me and walked back
16:46
into the plant. Did not stop to wash his hands.
16:51
Was that the only thing or had there?
16:54
I'm going to guess there were other red.
16:55
Flags. There were other things, but
16:56
that was. Yeah.
16:57
But but that sort of sums up, yeah, what was going.
16:59
On summed up his attitude about, you know, cleanliness and stuff
17:02
like that. So you know, replaced him pretty
17:04
quickly. And then also we were at the
17:08
time we did not have a like a like a food quality program.
17:16
So we were using AIB for audits, which is more sort of plant
17:22
oriented and things like that. But everybody was moving to GFSI
17:26
which is global food safety initiative.
17:28
And under that you had different like SQF and BRC, but we didn't
17:32
have any of those. So that was the next thing we
17:34
did was to move to be able to get SQF qualified.
17:39
And most of our customers were moving to a point where you had
17:42
to be SQF qualified to even do business with them.
17:44
So that was a big undertaking because there's so much, you
17:47
know, paperwork involved in a process you have to put in place
17:50
and you have to test the system and all kinds of things.
17:53
So that was that was a several year process.
17:57
I think you just answered my question.
17:58
I was wondering is somebody who's coming into this from the
18:02
outside, how did you know that you needed to move the SQF?
18:05
It wasn't something that was already, you know, an initiative
18:08
that was moving forward internally.
18:10
But it sounds like your customers were the ones saying,
18:12
hey, Phil. Customers were driving in that
18:15
direction. And I don't know if you remember
18:17
it, but back there was a huge peanut debacle where there was a
18:22
peanut butter company that got caught falsifying records and
18:25
stuff and a lot of people got sick.
18:27
There was, I think it was salmonella or, or listeria or
18:30
something like that. And they were AIB certified.
18:33
So AIB got a real black eye in that whole process too.
18:37
So it was another reason to move away from AIB and get into, you
18:41
know, an SQF certification and things like that.
18:43
Just because the the the requirements are more stringent.
18:46
Yeah, yeah, OK, more stringent. They they look at when they come
18:52
in and audit you, you know, they do walk the plant, look at
18:55
things and and physical things, but they also look at all the
18:58
paperwork, right. You know, do you have a process
19:00
that addresses this or addresses that?
19:03
Show me the paperwork, show me what was filled out.
19:06
You know, show me that you have tested these systems.
19:08
Like we have to do a business continuity test every year
19:11
internally where we get together as a group and, and we come up
19:15
with a scenario and say, OK, there was a giant snowstorm and
19:20
the back corner of the building roof collapsed.
19:22
What do we do? How do we recover?
19:24
Or there's a hurricane and the power is going to be out for
19:27
four days. What do we do?
19:29
How do we recover from it or a flood or whatever.
19:32
You come up with a different scenarios, you have to test
19:34
things like that. So there's there's lots more to
19:37
it than just having somebody come in and walk around once a
19:39
year the way the AIB audits worked.
19:42
Much more thorough much so, Phil, for somebody like you
19:45
who's very forward thinking, very comfortable with technology
19:50
to have to wait three years to start upgrading a lot of your
19:54
your packaging and manufacturing equipment.
19:56
Had we've been driving you nuts, would I be correct in assuming
19:59
that you used that time to upgrade like the in office
20:03
infrastructure, the computers, Internet, that kind of a thing?
20:06
Yeah. So we, I mean, we started
20:08
looking for an ERP system almost right away and then sort of
20:13
kicked the tires and had the demos and talk to people and
20:16
stuff. So that got started before we,
20:18
before we moved and we did bring in PCs and got Internet
20:22
connections and e-mail and things like that.
20:25
But you know, there was so much work to be done in getting some
20:29
more of the right people on the bus, right, getting them in the
20:31
right seats. There was, there was no org
20:34
chart when I walked in the door. There was, you know, nobody knew
20:37
who they reported to or what the lines of communication.
20:40
There were no staff meetings, right?
20:42
Basically that my predecessor, you came in and asked them for
20:45
money to, to do something and he said yes or no.
20:48
It's usually no. So we try to put a lot of
20:52
processes in place, right. So, you know, weekly staff
20:54
meetings. We had an organizational chart
20:58
try to do more in writing than than we did before.
21:02
A lot of it was just verbal kind of stuff, you know, the ERP
21:06
system. What I would look at is the way
21:09
they they, they managed the inventory and did things was was
21:14
just very inaccurate. Right at the end of the day, the
21:17
plant manager had a list of all the recipes that the products
21:22
that have been run that day, how many cases have been run.
21:25
And he had a recipe and he would literally use a calculator and
21:29
figure out how much of each ingredient was used based on
21:32
what was run that day and how much was run.
21:36
So you can imagine how many errors there were in like, OK,
21:39
how many boxes, caps, labels, OK, that's pretty easy.
21:41
But how many pounds of vinegar, how many pounds of horseradish,
21:45
how many pounds of preservative and on and on.
21:47
And then add them all together and say, OK, that's what came
21:51
out of inventory, right? So I started a spreadsheet to
21:54
kind of do that more methodically.
21:57
And he would go do it by hand. I would do the spreadsheet and
22:00
not tell him and then come back and look at his and say, hey,
22:04
Jerry, you know, this doesn't look right.
22:07
Go double check. And of course, every time mine
22:09
was right, his was wrong because mine was now based on a formula
22:12
I had punched in and was solid. And he's doing it by hand with a
22:16
calculator and a pencil. And then, you know, we literally
22:19
grew this giant spreadsheet that did that until we could get an
22:22
ERP system in place. Wow.
22:25
Yeah. Lots of just lots of stuff like
22:27
that. There's so much done and there
22:30
was so many language. That you.
22:32
Go ahead. Go ahead, Phil.
22:34
I was going to say there was so much low hanging fruit that
22:37
there was just lots and lots of little things like that to, to
22:41
change. For instance, we do a lot of
22:45
garlic is a is a big part of our process.
22:47
We buy dehydrated garlic, we rehydrate it with water and then
22:51
we pack it. We get the garlic in 50 LB bags.
22:54
And what they were doing is they were cutting the 50 LB bags,
22:57
putting them in a 50 gallon drum.
22:59
You've seen those big, tall, like an oil drum kind of thing.
23:02
They would put a forklift clamp around the drum.
23:06
You have to get a forklift, put it on, attach it, pick it up
23:09
with a forklift and then rotate it to port into the vessel where
23:13
you're going to rehydrate it. And I think it took four of
23:16
those for each batch or something like that.
23:19
So it was like a 20 or 30 minute process by the time you went
23:21
through all that. I'm like, well, there's got to
23:24
be a better way to do that. And I quickly found this big
23:27
plastic tote that had a sluice gate on the bottom that you
23:30
would just pull open. And we would fill that with 1000
23:32
lbs, hold it over, pull the gate, and in 30 seconds, you,
23:36
you filled it. So, you know, just time after
23:39
time finding millions of things like that.
23:41
And the problem was when I started, whenever I asked what,
23:45
why do you do it this way? Why is it being done?
23:48
The answer was always, this is the way we always do, which I
23:52
banned as a phrase. You weren't allowed to say that
23:54
after a while. You had to come up with a better
23:56
reason. So did you find in the early
23:58
days, Phil, that it was you who was pretty much the only one
24:02
coming up with this needs to be changed, this needs to be
24:04
changed, this needs to be changed?
24:06
Yeah, I hate to say it was. I mean, it really was because
24:09
they had been sort of beaten into stagnation of don't bring
24:13
anything up because we're not going to pay for it, we're not
24:14
going to do it. I think a lot of people just
24:17
gave up on on stuff like that. And you know, if it's not
24:21
broken, don't fix it. Was kind of the kind of the
24:24
attitude, right? Was it hard to find the funding
24:27
to make some of these changes and upgrades?
24:29
No, we, we had money. I mean, the, the company luckily
24:31
was profitable. I mean, it wasn't wildly
24:34
profitable, but it was profitable enough to, to
24:36
reinvest into, into the company. And we, we did that a lot.
24:40
I mean, those first several years, as you can imagine,
24:43
between building a building and buying all new equipment and
24:47
moving, we spent 10s of millions of dollars to do that.
24:52
No, some of the phraseology that you used leads me to believe
24:56
that you're a fan of EOS. Were you guys using that as part
24:59
of your? We're not OK.
25:02
Was that even around back then? How Long's EOS been?
25:07
Early 2000s. That's about when I first heard
25:10
of it. I feel like I I could have the
25:12
timing a little bit wrong. Yeah, no, I never did do EOS.
25:15
And matter of fact, it's really only come up in my circle, like
25:21
people I run into and talk to. I would say in the last few
25:24
years, you know, even though it's been around, I think it's
25:26
kind of had a resurgence and I'm seeing more people talk about it
25:29
and more people implement it. But no, we didn't do that.
25:32
I mean, for me it was management by walking around, getting to
25:36
know everybody, looking for better ways to do things and,
25:41
you know, fixing a lot of the people we had a lot of people
25:44
that, you know, we're very dedicated, showed up every day.
25:47
But maybe the company had outgrown them, outgrown their
25:50
skill set. Nobody ever got sent to
25:52
training. Nobody did training, right?
25:54
So we started doing training classes.
25:56
We brought in classes about, you know, food safety and food
26:00
security, sanitation classes, good manufacturing practices,
26:07
you know, all those things, lean manufacturing 5S.
26:11
So we started doing more training and it was great to see
26:13
people jumped on, you know, when you give them those
26:15
opportunities and, and, and, you know, challenge them, most of
26:19
them rise to the occasion. Would I be correct in assuming
26:23
that some combination of your MBA and your time at NASA that
26:27
really kind of gave you a, a foundation for some of these
26:31
structures, some of these approaches to people and
26:34
training? Yeah, I mean, the MBA was more
26:37
definitely more the, you know, the people part of it.
26:40
And then also having my own company for a while, even though
26:42
it was much, much smaller. I mean, we had like 12 employees
26:45
compared to, you know, 100 I guess back then at Tolkoff's or
26:49
something like that. But yeah, I mean, engineering is
26:54
is very structured. I think the best thing about an
26:56
engineering degree is it teaches you how to approach a problem,
27:01
how to come up with potential solutions and then how to how to
27:04
solve it. And I think that kind of
27:06
thinking is what I used, you know, throughout my career here.
27:10
So, Phil, obviously there's at no point the way, you know, guys
27:15
like us are wired or no point is there ever, you know, a stage
27:18
where you're like, oh, OK, we've we've done everything we want to
27:21
do. Like we've crossed all the
27:22
upgrades off the list. But at what point did you feel
27:25
like, hey, we finally come out of the Dark ages and we're going
27:29
to continue to make changes and upgrades along the way, But
27:33
like, this is where the company should have been several years
27:36
ago? Right.
27:37
I would say a few years, like maybe three years after moving
27:40
into this building that we're in now having, you know, a bright
27:45
brand new building that was had better flow.
27:48
It was much better laid out in terms of the flow of the
27:51
process, having almost all new equipment and then, you know,
27:55
getting all the kinks worked out and getting everything rolling.
27:59
I'd say that's, that's about when, and also we had the ERP
28:02
system implemented and in use. I would say that's when I felt
28:05
like, hey, you know, we're, we're modern times.
28:09
I feel proud to bring people in and show them and give them a
28:12
tour. And that was actually part of
28:15
our, our sales philosophy was get prospects in here and show
28:18
them around. And I loved hearing over and
28:21
over again, can't believe how clean this place is.
28:24
I love the flow, how automated it is.
28:27
You know, we had automated palletizing 10 years ago and we
28:32
continue to add robots. So things like that for a
28:34
company our size, I think are unique.
28:37
It leads great into the next question I wanted to ask, which
28:40
is, OK. You've got a lot of these
28:42
operational efficiencies and upgrades that you introduced.
28:45
You guys are, you know, fine tuning the dials.
28:48
But then yeah, what happens on the sales side?
28:50
Like, how do you, how do you really feed that part of it?
28:53
Yeah, great question. So when I started, we were
28:57
probably 95% food service, which means that we're selling, you
29:01
know, larger sizes like gallons and quarts to people like Cisco
29:05
and U.S. Foods and PFG and Gordon's, all
29:07
those trucks you see on the road that are delivering to
29:10
restaurants, hotels and caterers, right.
29:15
But the problem is that they are had become very powerful in the
29:19
food chain and when they asked you to jump, you had to say,
29:23
Hey, how high, right? So we felt like there was just
29:26
too many eggs in that one basket and we needed to diversify.
29:30
So early on we tried a couple things like, you know, one was,
29:32
hey, maybe we should really get into retail.
29:34
We have the equipment to make retail products and we have some
29:37
retail products. Let's let's do that.
29:39
So we sort of put one toe in there.
29:41
And then the other one was we looked at Co Packer Co
29:44
manufacturing and said, let's make other people's products for
29:47
it, right? Maybe that's a good way to go
29:49
because then I don't have to worry about sales or marketing
29:52
because I make it, they take it and they sell it.
29:55
It's their problem after it leaves my dog.
29:59
The retail side didn't go well, right?
30:01
We didn't make a lot of inroads, didn't work well.
30:04
And Kopac, early on we sort of took on anybody we could, made a
30:10
lot of mistakes, bumped our heads, figured out who we should
30:13
and shouldn't be working with what works.
30:15
And little by little, you know, it went from zero percent of my
30:21
business about 13 or 14 years ago.
30:24
Now it's 50% of my business and it's the growing portion of my
30:28
business. So that that was really the
30:33
sales side was let's grow that side and that's what's taken
30:37
off. And you know, we're really lucky
30:39
to say that pretty much every one of my Co pack clients now is
30:43
a brand name that you would know.
30:45
And they're all, I think every single one of them, except for
30:47
one who was one of my first COPAC clients.
30:49
He's still with me. They're all multi billion dollar
30:51
companies. Oh wow, we don't work with
30:53
anybody. Little like if you can't do
30:56
50,000 cases or more in a year, we we just can't talk to him.
31:01
You know the the volume we need to put out and the quantities
31:04
that we can do in a day kind of warrant that kind of volume.
31:09
Are any of these private label like grocery store brands like
31:12
in house brands? No, they're like.
31:15
The big retail brands, yeah, we do a little bit of private label
31:19
for like horseradish or cocktail sauce, but I'm talking about
31:22
like we make a marinade for somebody that we do 700,000
31:27
cases a year of. We do a garlic spread for
31:30
somebody else. We do all kinds of flavored
31:33
mayos and some mustards and a deli dressing for somebody else,
31:39
all kinds of things that like people say, I didn't know Tocos
31:41
could do that or did do that. Yeah.
31:43
Say more about the the product capabilities that you guys have.
31:46
Yeah. So we're, so we're FDA, not
31:48
USDA, which means I can't do any proteins, right.
31:50
So I can't do like a meat soup or a Stew, things like that.
31:55
But if you can flow it through a pipe, we can probably do it.
31:59
Our Forte is flexibility. We're not a high speed, high
32:02
speed Co Packer. I'm not doing 2300 bottles a
32:06
minute, but what I can do is glass plastic, round square, 6
32:12
oz up to a gallon hot fill, cold fill, CT lid, lug lid, 1-2 or
32:19
three labels on a container. It's about flexibility.
32:22
It's it's the ability to do lots of things under one roof so that
32:26
somebody that has a myriad of either pack sizes or products
32:30
doesn't have to go to find two or three Co Packers to get it
32:34
done. The other thing is that with a
32:37
second facility, we have another facility in Cincinnati, we have
32:40
redundancy. So somebody that's worried about
32:43
like a single point of failure, we do their products in both
32:46
locations so that we can, you know, load balance or move it
32:50
from one of the other if we have to.
32:54
And so we're talking about ingredient like powder
32:57
ingredients, liquid ingredients. No powder.
32:59
No powder. OK, this is all liquid.
33:01
Has to be. I don't even want to call it
33:04
liquid. I mean, you have to flow it
33:06
through a pipe. So it could be like a slurry.
33:08
It could be like, you know, horseradish is kind of a thick,
33:10
viscous product. We do ginger puree, garlic
33:15
pesto, all kinds of Aiolis marinades.
33:19
We've done steak sauce, we've done BBQ sauce.
33:21
We've done chutneys. We do a garlic spread.
33:26
We've done cooking. We've packed cooking wines for
33:28
somebody. We did coconut oil for somebody
33:30
else. That's the other flexibility we
33:32
have is from very, very thin products like an oil to very,
33:35
very thick like horseradish or garlic, which are really
33:38
difficult to pump and you know, very thick and hard to move
33:41
around a building. Do you get involved at all in
33:45
the actual R&D like hey, we want to come up with something new,
33:49
is it possible? Like can you?
33:51
We do, we do. So I mean, most of our R&D is
33:54
used to get something from sort of the lab to the plant, right,
33:59
the scale up and things like that, getting the right
34:01
ingredients and getting the customer to be happy with the
34:04
with the lab version and then we scale it up for the plant.
34:07
But we do have like I at one client's, a multi billion dollar
34:10
client, still family owned and the owner will go out to dinner
34:15
like something he has, get a little ramekin of it, send it to
34:18
us and say can you match this? So it goes from that extreme to
34:23
the big CPG companies that walk in with the the set of papers
34:27
that says here's what I want you to make, here's the formula,
34:30
here's who you're going to buy the ingredients from, here's the
34:32
packaging, here's the codes that go in everything.
34:35
Go do it for it. So we have both ends of the
34:37
spec. OK, so sometimes a client comes
34:40
to you and they've they've got it all figured out.
34:42
And sometimes, like you've got your own lab on site there where
34:46
it's like, hey, here's a sample of something that I want to
34:48
recreate and you guys set your mad scientist to work on it.
34:52
And how can we replicate that texture that the viscosity the
34:56
the flavor? All those things, yeah, yeah.
34:58
I mean, they literally start with the technical side of it,
35:01
which is, OK, let's measure the pH, let's measure the viscosity,
35:05
you know, all those things that are quantifiable.
35:08
If we have an ingredient statement, you can also sort of
35:11
work backwards from that. And if we don't, then it's, you
35:14
know, based on, you know, taste and, and those other things.
35:16
And they can. They can back into it.
35:20
How would you describe the open capacity that you have now?
35:23
Like are you like, hey, we've got our customer base, we're
35:26
just trying to take care of them or like is there room to add
35:30
another production line? Yeah, so Baltimore's pretty
35:33
full. We do have another shift on the
35:37
food service side that we could do a bunch of things with.
35:40
Kopac is pretty busy. It's double shift five days a
35:43
week. But my Cincinnati plan has a lot
35:45
of capacity right now. We have two production lines.
35:47
They're only running one shift. We have physical space for
35:51
another production line and then we have enough land out there to
35:54
actually double the size of the building.
35:55
If we wanted to double the size of the building, we have 9 acres
35:58
out there. So we could go from 63,000 to
36:01
130 or 140,000 square feet if we needed to out there.
36:05
So we have capacity right now. The push is to get more
36:09
business, right. We've got the process, the
36:12
people, we've got equipment. We just need to get it busier
36:15
out there in in Ohio. And So what would be some of the
36:21
the target products that would be a great fit, Same thing As
36:24
for the Baltimore facility, anything that's in a slurry,
36:27
anything that flows. Through a pipe, yeah.
36:29
Yeah. We've actually tried to
36:31
standardize equipment. So if you go visit Baltimore and
36:34
then you go visit Ohio, you're going to look at the production
36:36
lines and go, oh, same filler, same labeler, same capper, you
36:41
know, So we've tried to be able to to mirror that for a couple
36:45
reasons. One is then you have
36:47
institutional knowledge about how to use the equipment, how to
36:50
fix the equipment. You can share spare parts from
36:53
both locations from 1:00 to the other.
36:55
You have one OEM to deal with when you have a problem with
36:58
equipment. So that was one of the things
37:00
that I did early on is to make sure that we we kind of kept the
37:04
things the same on each side. But yeah, also the redundancy
37:08
because I don't want to be able to say, well, yeah, I can do it
37:10
in Baltimore, but that machine's down.
37:12
I can't do it in Ohio because I have a different kind of
37:14
machine. It doesn't do that.
37:16
It's pretty standardized. Is Cincinnati kind of a a
37:20
strategic decision like location wise because it's good
37:25
distribution point to, you know, big parts of the population?
37:28
Yeah, so that's a funny story. When I started, we had a a
37:32
facility in Northern California. It had been open for about 5
37:36
years I think when I started. Maybe it had never made money.
37:39
It lost money every single year. About a year in, I asked my
37:43
brother who lived in Southern California to go up and take a
37:46
look and see what he thought and if he's interested.
37:48
It was his to run. And if not, I was going to find
37:50
somebody else. And luckily he took it on and
37:53
within the first year got it into the black and, and started
37:56
making money. The problem was it's a very
37:58
small facility. There was no room to grow.
38:02
You know, we couldn't even expand the building.
38:03
We didn't have any more room. And as most people know, doing
38:06
business in California is really difficult.
38:08
They make it hard to, to, to run a business.
38:12
Honestly, they, they, they don't want people out there making
38:15
money. I don't know what it is.
38:17
So the long term goal was to eventually find a bigger
38:20
facility somewhere else and, and shut California down.
38:24
So when COVID came around, it became an opportunity to say
38:28
maybe now's the time because they did a lot of food service.
38:33
And when we got rid of the food service because of what happened
38:35
with restaurants, we're going to lose money kind of right away
38:39
out there. And we said, OK, listen, the the
38:42
employees are going to get the best benefits because of
38:44
everything the government's giving people.
38:47
Let's take this time to shut it down.
38:49
So we did. And it just sheer coincidence,
38:53
somebody had called me about buying a business that was going
38:55
under in Cincinnati. So I flew out to see it.
38:58
This was early 20/20/20, probably in the January time
39:02
frame. I looked at the business and
39:06
didn't like it, but it was in a building and they were doing
39:09
jams and jellies and condiments and sauces and stuff.
39:15
But I didn't like the equipment. I didn't like their their client
39:18
base. I didn't like the volumes that
39:20
they were doing on all these different a zillion skews and no
39:23
volume on any of them. But it turns out that the
39:25
original owner of the company that had sold to a private
39:28
equity firm, he was still working there and he grabbed me
39:31
and said, hey, I still own the building.
39:34
My tenant has essentially picked up and walked out on me, and I'm
39:39
trying to retire. Are you interested in the
39:41
building? So I ended up buying the
39:43
building. So don't follow my timing when
39:45
it comes to real estate because I bought the building in
39:48
February of 2020, and then the world fell apart six weeks
39:52
later, right? But we got a great building,
39:55
right? The building was already being
39:56
used for that kind of equipment, for that kind of product line.
40:00
And you didn't overpay buying a business that you didn't
40:03
actually want the customer base for.
40:05
As a as a matter of fact, I mean, when they told me what the
40:07
building cost and that it had enough acreage to double the
40:10
size, I mean, I felt like I was stealing it compared to what
40:14
things cost in Baltimore. You know, it was crazy.
40:18
So, yeah, I mean, we, we, you know, cut the deal pretty
40:20
quickly and closed California and moved and started producing,
40:25
I would say January or early January of 2021, we were
40:29
producing in that building. So you know, we redid a bunch of
40:32
the infrastructure we put in. Let's see, new boiler, new air
40:37
compressors, new piping, fixed the the offices all up and we
40:41
kind of spruced the building up a lot.
40:43
And it's been, it's been good. You know, before I pulled the
40:46
trigger, I went to two of my biggest COPAC customers and
40:49
said, hey, if we wanted to do some of your product in Ohio,
40:52
would you be OK with that? Both of them were like,
40:56
absolutely. And one of them said which is my
40:58
biggest client, they said that would be great.
41:00
Our biggest warehouse is 2 hours away from there.
41:03
So they were thrilled. Part of the problem with
41:06
California was we had some capacity out there even though
41:09
it was small, but nobody wanted a Co pack out there because they
41:12
didn't want to send stuff all the way across the country.
41:16
So it just didn't make sense to to be there anymore.
41:19
Yeah, I had a little happy dance when we sold that building, by
41:22
the way. So what's the, what do you think
41:27
is going to be the thing that fills up the business there in
41:31
Cincinnati? Like are you guys just trying to
41:34
like get new additional business from your current customers?
41:37
Are you knocking on new doors? How do you do that?
41:40
Is it just a phone call or? It's going to be new doors.
41:44
I mean, we we have, you know, we do get more business from
41:46
existing customers, but to really ramp up quickly, you
41:49
know, you want to find new ones. So, you know, part of it is
41:53
getting a sales force out there knocking on doors.
41:55
Part of it is going to trade shows like PLMA private label
41:58
manufacturer association, which is basically all Co Packers for
42:02
all kinds of different industries.
42:06
And then I think the location is good.
42:07
You know, you've got some companies that they're having
42:10
everything they started in California, let's say, or the
42:12
West Coast, and they're having everything Co packed there and
42:15
they're gaining traction on the East Coast.
42:17
But now they got to ship stuff all the way across the country.
42:20
So they're looking for somebody further east.
42:22
So that gives us opportunities. Some people have outgrown their
42:26
current Co Packers and they're looking for more capacity.
42:29
Every once in a while somebody's not happy with their Co Packer
42:31
and they want to switch. So there's there's a lot of
42:34
business out there. We we've also added portion
42:38
control packets. So we currently do like half
42:41
gallon bags that are good for the back of a restaurant.
42:44
We'll have a sauce in it. They'll take that half gallon
42:46
bag and fill a couple squeeze bottles, use it to apply to the
42:49
burgers all day long or something.
42:52
But we're also going to start to do portion control like the
42:54
small ketchup packets and all the way up to a four ounce
42:58
little sachet that might go into a frozen food kit or maybe into
43:05
a HelloFresh meal that you get delivered to your house or
43:07
something like that. So that's new for us.
43:11
Equipment's actually still in the crate.
43:12
It's not even out yet, but that'll be another push is to
43:14
say, hey, we have another packaging format.
43:18
And then, you know, we've gotten diversified and very flexible by
43:23
adding equipment as we see opportunities that make sense
43:26
for the customer, make sense for us.
43:28
And I think that's going to continue to happen as other
43:30
people say, hey, I want dipping cups or I want a sauce that goes
43:35
into a bag, but it needs to be hot filled and then cooled.
43:39
Well, I can hot fill a bag, but right now I don't have cooling
43:41
equipment. So we'll probably put in cooling
43:43
equipment to do something like that.
43:44
So I see those kind of things happening in terms of giving us
43:48
other packaging capabilities. Do you wait until you have a
43:53
client who's asking for that packaging capability or do you
43:56
say, hey, I think this is probably a good area for us,
43:59
let's go ahead and invest in it. Yeah.
44:01
So I've never done the build it and they will come kind of
44:03
methodology now once again, I I mentioned that we're now owned
44:09
by Graham Partners. They have pretty deep pockets.
44:12
They're not. So actually, let's take a moment
44:13
to talk about that 'cause you and I did that off air, right?
44:17
Yeah. So your your big plans coming up
44:20
are? Yeah.
44:21
So I'm, I'm retiring the end of this month as the CEO.
44:26
We sold the company in October to Graham Partners, who's out of
44:30
Philadelphia. They have deep pockets, right?
44:33
They want to build the company up, they want to invest.
44:36
So they're going to get more sales people, more R&D, invest
44:40
in other technologies or packaging formats that other
44:45
people want to try to grow the business quickly.
44:49
So I already saw that happening where they invested right away
44:51
in this packet machine because we do have an existing customer
44:55
with a lot of volume that's having that exact same thing
44:58
done somewhere else. And we want them to move that to
45:00
us, which they haven't done because up until now we haven't
45:03
been capable of doing that. So your philosophy has always
45:08
been, let's wait until we've got a customer who's asking for it,
45:11
the new owners, the PE company and they want to go and let's
45:15
let's buy the tech now and then we'll find the customers who
45:18
want to want to use it. Yeah, or, or they'll have a warm
45:21
lead on something and, and get the process started because you
45:25
know with with equipment, it's lead times are long, right?
45:27
It can be like 6 months to get something.
45:30
That opportunity could come and go because they found somebody
45:33
else that already has it. So getting started early gives
45:35
you gives you a leg up. OK, so Retirement view is coming
45:40
at the end of this month. We're recording this on February
45:42
19th, 2025. So this is just, you know, a
45:44
week and a half away. What, what do your days look
45:48
like then going forward? What?
45:49
What are you going to spend your time on, Phil?
45:51
So, you know, I'm still going to be through October of 20 of this
45:56
year 25, I'll still be sort of on staff.
45:59
So helping with the transition with, you know, answering
46:02
questions, customer introductions, things like that.
46:05
So I'll, I'll be doing some of that in the background.
46:08
I also have a therapy dog that that I take to a couple
46:11
hospitals here in Baltimore, probably ramp that up and find
46:14
some other places to take her on a more regular basis.
46:19
And then I'm also on the board of directors of Valor service
46:21
dogs, which is five O 1C3 at a Tampa that provides PTSD and
46:26
mobility service dogs to combat wounded vets and 1st responders.
46:31
And I've been kind of their their business guy and helped
46:35
with fundraising. I'll be able to do more of that
46:38
with with more time available and then also more, more hands
46:41
on with them to help in terms of, you know, flying places to
46:45
do events for them or we have to do different check insurance
46:50
with our recipients for the first couple years and see
46:53
they're they're doing OK and things like that.
46:55
Dogs doing OK. How did you get into the service
46:58
dog space? And this isn't really a business
47:02
for you. This is more philanthropic.
47:03
Yeah, this is philanthropic. So in 2012 I had a 24 year old
47:08
cousin that was killed in Afghanistan.
47:09
He was a Air Force EOD. Him and his two team mates were
47:13
killed by A roadside bomb. He was a Maryland guy also.
47:17
So went to the funeral here in Maryland, and then he was buried
47:20
at Arlington. First time I'd ever been to
47:23
Arlington for burial and it was a relative.
47:26
So kind of really hit home at that point.
47:29
I felt like when I left there that I needed to do something to
47:32
give back to that community. So I found a service dog
47:35
organization in Maryland that did similar things to what Valor
47:39
does and started volunteering with them.
47:42
Through that volunteering, I met the woman and her husband who
47:46
started Valor. Her husband was a combat wounded
47:50
vet who got his dog through this organization in Maryland.
47:53
When he was healthy and was able to get back out of the hospital
47:57
and stuff, they moved to Florida.
47:58
She started Valor and that's how I got involved and and then been
48:03
in it ever since. As a matter of fact, earlier
48:06
this month I was down in Tampa for a graduation.
48:11
There was a dog that was named after my cousin's EOD team.
48:14
The team was called Tripwire. Dog's name is Trip Black Lab and
48:19
he was given to an Orlando police officer, a great guy,
48:23
probably in his mid to late 30s. Just a couple years ago he had
48:30
to shoot and kill a suspect that had a gun trained on his
48:33
partner. And then one month later, he had
48:35
to respond to the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando,
48:39
and he commandeered a pickup truck in the parking lot, drove
48:43
30 some wounded patrons to the hospital and saved all of them.
48:48
And after that, he was just done PTSD, just could not be a police
48:54
officer anymore and couldn't find a nicer, more deserving
48:58
guy. So, you know, that's what I love
49:00
about watching that, that pairing and that partnership and
49:03
knowing that you're, you're helping them to reconnect with
49:05
their family and have a fuller life.
49:07
And it's been great. I I I came for the dogs and I
49:12
stayed for the people. And so the dog is there to help
49:17
people feel more comfortable, more relaxed, more more assured,
49:21
is that right? Yeah, so, so we do PTSD and we
49:24
also do mobility. So mobility is easy, right?
49:26
You have somebody that has balance issues or can't bend
49:29
over, so the dog will bring them things or pick stuff up off the
49:32
ground. You know, we teach dogs to to
49:35
hit those handicapped plates on the wall that opens door.
49:39
The dog can jump up and hit and handle it.
49:43
You know, one of the dogs we gave actually the guy just got
49:46
his second dog. If if your dog can no longer
49:48
work like it has to get retired, you go first on the list.
49:51
So I was at this guy's first graduation.
49:54
He just had another one. This was another Air Force EOD
49:58
guy. He was like a 24 year vet and
50:02
got blown up and lost both legs and an arm.
50:05
But an amazing guy. I mean, you know, great attitude
50:09
still, you know, living large and, and just amazing to watch.
50:13
You know, I can't complain about anything.
50:15
Reading about and seeing what these folks have have gone
50:18
through 'cause there's there, there's nothing that I've had to
50:22
endure that compares to what what these people go through.
50:24
It's, it's amazing PTSD, to answer your first question, a
50:28
lot of times, let's see my dog stand there sleeping.
50:31
But you'll see PTSD behaviors where people put their head in
50:35
their hands and kind of rock or rock their legs or, or ring, you
50:39
know, wring their hands and they're sort of getting into
50:42
this, this funk, this depression, this, this zone
50:46
that's not good for them. And we teach the dogs to
50:48
interrupt that. So they will see those cues and
50:51
come with their nose and bop you.
50:53
They'll bop you in the face, they'll bop you in the hands,
50:55
they'll bop you in the leg until you stop.
50:58
And it kind of snaps you out of that.
51:00
And then a lot of it is it just gives people the comfort to go
51:03
out and go to a grocery store or go to a mall or something
51:07
because I have this dog by my side and they feel more
51:11
comfortable. Like it's, it's that companion,
51:13
it's that safety net that's that's there if they have a
51:16
problem. So both sides.
51:19
Yeah. And Phil, you made the comment
51:21
that man, I, I watched what some of these guys are going through
51:23
and I don't have, you know, these kinds of problems.
51:26
Having said that, we, we've all been through our own stuff,
51:29
personal challenges, professional challenges.
51:32
Sure. Maybe we can share one of your
51:34
own what that was like going through it, how you got through
51:37
it and and what you learned coming out of it.
51:39
Yeah, So I mean, I guess there's both sides, right?
51:41
There's the personal ones, there's the professional ones,
51:43
you know, professional in in my 20 years, you know, when I
51:47
started, we had a very underfunded pension plan, had to
51:52
fight through that. It took me 11 years to get out
51:55
of that quagmire. 2008 financial crisis, had to deal with that.
52:02
We're now going through the avian flu, the egg problem again
52:05
with shortages and and high cost that that's not the first time
52:10
it's happened. So I've been through that again.
52:12
And then of course, COVID, which everybody kind of had to, to
52:15
deal with and fight through. So, you know, those were a lot
52:19
of the different challenges that you and, and even the move, like
52:22
moving from our old building to this new building was, was a
52:25
real challenge. It did not go the way it was
52:27
planned. A lot of sleepless nights and
52:30
like ridiculously long days and stuff like that.
52:32
So a lot of challenges there on the personal side.
52:37
My dad was diagnosed with with lung cancer about six months
52:43
before we moved into this building.
52:46
And, you know, he really wanted to see this built.
52:49
My dad, you know, loved, he was the inside guy.
52:52
He was the guy that did the operations and all that kind of
52:54
stuff. And he's the one that got us
52:56
moved from the original site into the site where the brewery
52:59
is. And he did all that work and
53:01
stuff. So he was really excited about
53:03
this. And unfortunately, he died right
53:05
before we did the groundbreaking.
53:07
And that was really hard. And, and he fought like crazy.
53:11
You know, he went through all the treatments and stuff.
53:13
And unfortunately it was one of those situations where he got
53:17
worse every day instead of getting better.
53:18
There was no remission. There was no good day.
53:21
And, you know, unfortunately it was, you know, learning the
53:24
business, building a new building and then watching my
53:26
dad die a day at a time. And that was that was pretty
53:28
tough. And I think the hardest thing
53:30
about that is not bringing it to work, right?
53:35
Not taking it out on your employees or your customers or
53:38
your vendors. And it's hard, right?
53:40
I mean, you got to keep a, you know, a solid base and do your
53:46
job every day and things like that.
53:49
And then more recently in July, my, my daughter was expecting
53:54
our first grandchild, her first child, and she lost the baby one
53:58
week before the delivery date. Same kind of thing.
54:01
Just, you know, a gut punch to everybody.
54:03
And as a parent, you want to be able to fix anything that is a
54:09
problem or your kids hurting. And I can't do anything about
54:14
it. And it's, it's been really
54:16
tough, been tough on her, been tough on us.
54:19
So I would say those are the two biggest personal challenges in
54:22
the the the 20 years. When you're going through
54:26
something like that, who or what do you lean on for help and
54:31
support? So I mean, I'm pretty tight
54:38
about stuff. I'm not real open about a lot of
54:41
those kind of things. I would say from a, this is
54:44
going to sound weird, but from a mental health standpoint, I go
54:47
to the gym. So I've been a gym guy for lots
54:50
of years. Not that I'm like super fitness
54:52
guy or anything like that, but it's the way for me to work out
54:56
anxiety to get out my frustrations.
55:00
My joke used to be I go to the gym so I won't kill any
55:02
employees. There's some truth to that.
55:07
So I would say that's part of it.
55:09
I I've also been part of ACEO group and it wasn't the same
55:13
group. It's been sort of a morph of it
55:15
over the years, but almost since I started, I joined the CEO
55:19
group that a buddy of mine was in that that invited me and
55:23
that's been a great sounding board.
55:25
You know, you got a group of people that you respect, that
55:29
you're surrounded by, that don't have a dog in the fight that
55:32
will give you unbiased feedback, call bullshit when you when you
55:37
when you're telling them bullshit and hold you
55:38
accountable, Right. Hey, last month you said you
55:41
were going to do this. Did you do it yet?
55:44
That that's been very helpful over the years, too.
55:47
And look, I started that 20 years ago.
55:48
I guess I was 44 at the time. Now I'm the old guy in the
55:52
group, but, but I love being able to help out and give, give
55:56
advice and stuff like that. And, and I still use them,
56:00
right? I'll still pick people's brains
56:01
about what's going on and you know, what do you think and, and
56:04
you know, what ideas do you have?
56:06
So I would say that's another area.
56:08
I mean, not so much me, but it was amazing watching some people
56:13
like completely breakdown in meetings when they were talking
56:16
about personal items or challenges they were having or
56:19
stuff, stuff like that, right. Sometimes someone would talk
56:23
about an issue they're having and I would like, that's exactly
56:26
why I come because now, now mine is nothing compared to that.
56:31
You know, one guy talked about, you know, a relative in his
56:35
business got got arrested for attacking an HR manager during a
56:40
retreat. And I'm like, you know, I don't
56:43
have to deal with anything like that.
56:44
One guy had to fire a sister, you know, in the family
56:47
business. One guy found a trusted employee
56:51
that he was travelling with dead in his hotel room.
56:55
You know, just some, like, really horrible things that had
56:58
happened. And you just say, OK, my
57:00
problems today don't really compare to that, and I'm going
57:03
to help him out not to worry too much about the aggravation I
57:06
have with an employee that's driving me crazy or something
57:09
like that. Yeah.
57:10
Yeah, but finding those those support groups of you know, of
57:13
your peers is is so helpful and important.
57:17
How did you find that group or, or how might people listening
57:19
who are like, man, I could use that.
57:21
Any suggestions for them on how to find something like?
57:23
That yeah. So the one I initially got
57:25
involved with was, you know, a friend who's also in the food
57:27
business in Maryland. My family and his family have
57:31
known each other for years. We kind of grew up in the same
57:34
area. Tolkoff started on the same
57:37
street that his family started on, you know, the grandparents
57:39
generation. And he was in this group and
57:41
invited me in and that's how I get started.
57:43
They had a an independent facilitator.
57:45
And what was nice is most of them were family businesses.
57:49
There were several that were food and several that were no
57:51
other areas. And everybody kind of clicked
57:54
and we did great for a while and, you know, ebbs and flows,
57:56
people come and go. And then the facilitator retired
58:00
and we ended up moving into another group that's more of a,
58:06
not a national group, but they're, they're professionally
58:08
run and there's groups around the country and stuff like that.
58:12
That's where we are now. And I ended up bringing some
58:14
people from that prior group and we brought in some new people.
58:17
So we've got some young blood in there, but I would highly
58:19
recommend it. I mean, you really need a
58:21
sounding board for a group of people that don't have a dog in
58:25
the fight. There's no political BS going in
58:28
the background. They're not family members.
58:31
It's really helpful. What's the name of the
58:33
organization that that you're part?
58:35
So the one that I'm in right now is called LX Council.
58:38
LX Council, Yep. But yeah.
58:42
And and finding the right group doesn't always happen on the
58:45
first shot, right. You really got to mesh with the
58:47
people in the group. I think you need to find a group
58:50
that has similar like size and stuff.
58:52
They don't have to be of the same maturity, but you don't
58:54
want somebody that has two employees and somebody that has
58:57
200 employees. It's different problems, right?
59:00
So I think that's that's part of it too.
59:03
Phil, I've just got one more question for you, but before I
59:05
ask it, I want to do 2 things for everyone listening today.
59:08
I'm quite sure that you have loved this interview because
59:10
Phil has been a great guest today.
59:12
Go ahead and hit the subscribe or follow button on your
59:14
favorite podcast app so you can get more great content like
59:17
this. Phil, I also want to let people
59:18
know either the best way to get in touch with you or maybe you
59:22
don't want that because you're retiring, or the best way to to
59:26
reach out to Tolkoff or you know, to continue to follow
59:28
either the company story or your.
59:30
Story. Sure.
59:32
So you know when the company we're we're tolkoff.com, TUL
59:36
koff.com you know me personally, I'll still have my e-mail
59:40
address. I think throughout 2025.
59:43
SP Tolkoff at tolkoff.com not too hard.
59:48
And then you can find me on LinkedIn.
59:50
Just look me up on LinkedIn. I'm I'm out there.
59:52
If somebody wants to reach out, be happy to have a conversation,
59:56
you know, and I love the manufacturing environment.
59:58
I don't care what you're making, whether it's.
1:00:00
You know, food or spaceships or motorcycles or whatever.
1:00:03
I'm, you know, up for a tour, up to talk about it, you know, up
1:00:06
for conversations about stuff like that.
1:00:09
It's, it's a lot of fun. I love, I love making stuff.
1:00:13
That's great. Yeah.
1:00:14
Excuse me, Last question for you, Phil.
1:00:16
As you look to the future, what exciting changes do you see
1:00:19
coming to the food packaging industry?
1:00:23
Well, good question. You know, I would say that the
1:00:28
pendulum is swinging back the other way.
1:00:31
I wanted to say that, you know, for a while, I think up until
1:00:36
the new administration took over, you were going to see a
1:00:38
lot of things about, you know, non GMOs and reducing packaging
1:00:45
and you know, the environmental impacts and all that kind of
1:00:48
stuff. And I hate to say it, but I
1:00:50
think that the current administration is not going to
1:00:53
worry about that stuff. And I think we're going to see
1:00:55
the pendulum, unfortunately swing back towards don't worry
1:00:58
about things like that, right? Don't worry about what the
1:01:01
ingredients are and stuff like that.
1:01:02
We'll, we'll see what happens. I mean, with Kennedy coming in,
1:01:05
you know, he claims he wants to push, you know, healthier
1:01:07
environment and healthier foods, which would be great.
1:01:11
But I'm not so sure that that's what's going to happen.
1:01:15
You know, one of the things we did, boy, I think it was like 9
1:01:17
or 10 years ago is we engineered high fructose corn syrup out of
1:01:20
all of our products to stay kind of ahead of the game.
1:01:23
We saw the handwriting on the wall with retail, and we said
1:01:26
let's do it in food service, too.
1:01:28
So we got out of that. But I think there's a lot of
1:01:31
unknown right now. I mean, think like, take the
1:01:33
avian flu, for example. Just two days ago, I saw that
1:01:38
there's a pharmaceutical company that got approval for a vaccine
1:01:41
for that for the chickens. But the question is, yeah, The
1:01:45
question is, will the current administration allow that to be
1:01:49
used? There's two things, right?
1:01:50
One is the FDA saying, OK, it's a safe thing.
1:01:54
But, you know, Kennedy, we know is not vaccine friendly.
1:01:57
He may come and say we're not going to let you use it.
1:02:01
It'll be interesting. It's very going to be very
1:02:03
interesting to see what happens. But avian flu is not going away.
1:02:09
Now that it's back, it's worse than ever.
1:02:11
And it's going to cost you in the grocery store.
1:02:13
And for somebody like me that buys a lot of eggs for all the
1:02:15
emulsions that we make, the price is going way up.
1:02:18
And the question is, are we going to be able to get eggs or
1:02:21
enough eggs to meet demand? I I don't think so,
1:02:24
unfortunately, yeah. Well, it's going to be
1:02:27
interesting to follow for sure. Phil, I want to be the first one
1:02:31
to thank you for sharing your time and your story with us
1:02:33
today. Thank you so much.
1:02:34
Yeah, it was my pleasure. Anthony really enjoyed talking
1:02:36
to you and anything you can do in the future, give me a holler.
1:02:39
All right, folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the
1:02:41
Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:02:44
today.