CK Products: We’ve doubled our business since 2006
To those people that think food manufacturing is boring, mucky and repetitive, spend an hour with Steve Burdick, general manager of bakery products manufacturer and distributor CK Products, and then see how you feel.
Burdick, who took over the Fort Wayne-based business in 2006 and moved into a brand new facility last July, makes more than 10,000 products and deals with more than 13,000 customers in more than 60 countries, many of them small businesses with unsophisticated IT systems.
Inventory management is a huge challenge
But managing that kind of complexity and still running an efficient manufacturing facility is not for the faint-hearted, he says.
“We’re continually deleting SKUs, but we also pride ourselves on being able to develop customized products and get them to market very very quickly, so you have to strike a balance. Inventory management is a huge challenge for us.”
He is obviously doing something right, however, as volumes have doubled in the past six years, and the company continues to recruit more staff - employing 115 people today versus 74 in 2006.
There has been a real explosion in interest in baking
Growth is coming from across the portfolio, from royal icing, edible glitter and candy-fillings, to mats with customized designs that customers can roll icing on, leaving an imprint of anything from a very particular donkey (requested by a Japanese customer) to leopard skin, he says.
“There has been a real explosion in interest in baking as people watch baking TV shows and the Food Channel.”
Longer term, he says he would like to have a distribution facility on the west coast in addition to the existing site in Atlanta, Georgia, as shipping to scores of individual customers in California is not very cost effective.
In all honesty, you’re talking to the sales force now
Meeting the increasingly stringent food safety requirements of customers as well as the FSMA is also a challenge, says Burdick, who has recently been testing cupcake liners to ensure that their dyes do not secrete into cakes as they cook.
“It does put a lot of pressure on the bottom line, and it can slow things down, but it’s just the cost of doing business now.”
But his immediate priority is recruiting a new sales and marketing director so that he can devote his time to more strategic initiatives: “In all honesty, you’re talking to the sales force now,” he says.