CMA 2023 Preview: Craft Food & Beverage

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When we sit around a dinner table — or a campfire — with family and friends, food and drink made by local businesses enhance our lives. Tasty beer and wine. The fixings for flavorful meals — as well as the healthy snacks we reach for in between them.

The Colorado brands within the Craft Food & Beverage category at the 2023 Colorado Manufacturing Awards are forging pathways, developing desirable goods, and promoting sustainability. They stress good relationships with their workers.

Some represent Colorado from coast to coast: Denver’s Polidori Sausage can be found in grocery stores across the country.

Others have responded to unique challenges at home. Perhaps, the most extreme case of overcoming adversity would go to Aspen Peak Cellars, which lost one location to fire and then had its next building destroyed by a runaway truck. Yet, the married couple who operate the Bailey winery, Marcel and Julie Flukiger, still approach their business joyfully.

Speaking of family meals, many of the businesses in this category are — or began as — family businesses. For example, Matt Davis started Packaging Express with his father, before buying the Colorado Springs business outright himself.

As Sanitas Brewing Company CEO Michael Memsic notes, many people are choosing to live, work, and raise families in Colorado out of an appreciation for the state’s amenities — not because they’re forced by circumstances to reside here. “I think that you end up with a culture of people who are happier,” says Memsic..

Aspen Peak Cellars (Bailey)

Photo John Fielder

Here’s the secret ingredient behind Marcel and Julie Flukiger’s success at marrying Colorado, Washington, and California grapes into their award-winning blends: This husband-and-wife team utilizes the palates they developed as chefs (they met working at the Brown Palace) to create balanced wines that pair spectacularly with food, says Marcel.

Not only does their winery serve award-winning vino, it offers a gustatory experience, as well. In the late winter, there’s snowshoeing followed by an authentic Swiss-style fondue. (Marcel originally hails from Switzerland.) Naturally, they had a wine recommendation for the 1,300 visitors who partook at this weekend seasonal event: their crisp, dry Pinot Gris–selected for the 2022 Governor’s Cup Collection–complements the creaminess of the cheese. It also pairs well with the seafood dishes they prepare for diners, sometimes at three course Colorado Wine Club meals.

Instead of snowshoeing, summertime visitors can sit with bare feet alongside the adjacent river, enjoying red selections which won platinum at the Great American International Wine Competition. The Flukigers employ a special crusher machine to create super-fine “sand” for their riverside “beach” from the winery’s retired bottles, while also sustainably cleaning and reusing 25 percent of the ones in their tasting room.

A beloved boon to the town of Bailey, Marcel invites visitors to take a “trip to the hills — and leave with a pleasant memory.” And also with bottles of their wines — primarily sold direct-to-consumer.

Packaging Express (Colorado Springs)

Matt Davis’ company serves as an asset for food and beverage companies in Colorado, making the cardboard boxes, often with branded printing on the outside, which meet their specific shipping and delivery needs — whether that’s sending-off containers of yogurt to stores inside boxes with protective dividers or getting a boxed pie from a pizzeria to a customer on their couch. Packaging Express makes attractive holders in which a selection of whiskey bottles fit into their own slots, as well as those folding cartons for six packs of bottled beer. The company also produces catering boxes.

“Anybody and everybody who puts something in a box is a potential customer,” says Davis. That goes for the makers of fishing rods, skis, snowboards, and bicycles, as well.

Davis describes his 94,000 square-foot facility in Colorado Springs as a “boutique plant.” And it recently made a major investment in a Swedish machine that can create 500 boxes per minute, with three-color printing on them. “It’s the fastest one in the state,” says Davis.

The process of making “millions” of boxes per year results in tons of cardboard scraps. Last year, the company sent over 600,000 pounds to a recycling plant. As Davis notes, “A typical box is 58 percent recycled.”

CompanyWeek profile (Jan. 2017): https://companyweek.sustainment.tech/article/packaging-express

Claremont Foods (Longmont)

Caremont Foods, which once co-manufactured a variety of healthy snacks, now exclusively makes energy, protein, and nutrition bars for around 20 different clients. The narrower focus has translated into massive growth. “In the last 2.5 years, we’ve almost tripled our production volumes,” says CEO Alex Cioth. In addition to adding a few new customers, the company’s existing clients have experienced booming business, as well.

To meet the increased volume of orders, the company now utilizes a couple of different IT programs which help, for instance, manage inventory and track production (one being Redzone). “Because when you grow that much, you can’t do things the same way as you did them before,” notes Cioth.

The company also went from 50,000 square feet divided between two buildings in Longmont to four — although Cioth says it will be down to three by the end of the year, totaling 130,000 square feet. The production facility is filled with mixing equipment, extruders, and enrobing equipment — the latter making Claremont Foods still one of the few contract manufacturers able to coat a bar with pure chocolate. At least a hundred different flavors of bars are produced, spread between its clients’ orders, necessitating hundreds of different ingredients.

It’s a family business: In addition to Cioth as CEO, his wife is the controller and one of his brothers is chief operating officer. And employees have increased from 85 to 185, with the company providing health insurance and 401 (k) plans. “We’re always striving to be a high-quality workplace where people who are outstanding can thrive,” says Cioth.

CompanyWeek profile (Apr. 2016): https://companyweek.sustainment.tech/article/claremont-foods

Sanitas Brewing Company (Boulder / Englewood)

CEO Michael Memsic has seen the frontier for his brewing company — and it’s in Englewood, Colorado. That’s where Boulder-based Sanitas is in the process of completing its second taproom location, expected to open up by June 2023. Although the Front Range of Colorado is jam-packed with breweries, Memsic describes Englewood as a “beer desert” in an area where many young families are moving due to affordable housing.

The expansion reflects a change in the craft beer business, which has experienced phenomenal growth over the past two decades. When Memsic co-founded Sanitas in 2013, the plan was “to become a regional player, and to fill semis full of cans and ship them all over the country.” But nowadays, worthy craft beer crowds store shelves, both locally and nationally.

But Memsic observes about taprooms, “They’re drivers of community. The margins are great. And they help us become a more profitable business and they give us a path for growth.” Although there will be a small R&D brewery on the premises, much of the beer will be coming from its Boulder location. There will also be a coffee shop and a food vendor on site, allowing people to socialize on Sanitas’ outdoor patio — something it’s already well-known for at its Boulder location.

While store shelves may be getting crowded, Sanitas still has retail and tap accounts at about 450 outlets along the Front Range served by its majority-owned Brewer’s Star Distributors.

CompanyWeek profile (July 2016): https://companyweek.sustainment.tech/article/sanitas-brewing-company

Farm to Summit (Durango)

Photo Taylor Fulton

“It’s been really fun to combine all of our passions together to solve multiple problems,” says Jane Barden about Farm to Summit, the instant food company she co-founded with her partner in marriage, Louise Barton.

First off, flavor-wise, there was the problem of less-than-satisfactory backpacking meals made by some other brands — which was something Barton noted during her extensive field trips as a Forest Service employee.

For Barden, who grew up on a Michigan farm, there remains the issue of perfectly-nutritious produce going to waste since food stores won’t accept vegetables which display “blemishes.” Nationally, the annual total of unused produce totals billions of pounds. And there’s also the issue of truly sustainable packaging that’s safe for the environment.

Today, Farm to Summit dehydrates vegetable ingredients and prepares its meals at its Durango facility. It works with regional farms to obtain the produce — such as the bell pepper, green beans, kale, chard, spinach, carrots, onion that go into its Thai Red Curry. And it packages its ready-to-eat meals — just add hot water for the recommended amount of time — in “omnidegradable” packaging, which decomposes without the need for composting first.

The brand has been winning over customers locally, as well as in additional states, since its first products became commercially available about a couple years ago. Several outdoor gear stores across the US carry the brand. And Barden says about Durango, “The community here is not only a perfect demographic for what we’re producing and marketing, but the town itself has just been incredibly supportive.”

Polidori Sausage (Denver)

As a longstanding family business, Polidori Sausage is a couple of years shy of celebrating its centennial. And the company has boomed ever since Vice President Melodie Polidori Harris’ Sicilian great-grandmother made her first Italian sausages at the family’s Denver grocery and market.

Today, Polidori Sausage prepares about 70 different products, with sales taking place in 24 states — from New York to California.

While the brand’s Italian sausages and best-selling chorizo can be readily found at King Soopers, Safeway and “boutique grocery stores” in Colorado, about 75 percent of the business consists of food service accounts nationally. That includes “stadiums and arenas, hotels, restaurants, university campuses, ski areas,” says Polidori Harris. The company has partnerships with Ball Arena, the CU Buffaloes, and the Colorado Rockies, as well as having its own branded concession stand at Coors Field.

Since 2016, the company has worked out of a modern 15,000-square-foot facility. But now, Polidori Harris says, “We’re out of space so we need to move again” sometime in the next three to five years.

The company emphasizes quality assurance and food safety, as well as worker appreciation: Polidori Sausage has profit-shared with its employees about five years now.

Polidori Harris says her great grandmother remains a spiritual guide on the company through all its changes. “She’s beaming down. And she is so incredibly humbled, like we are. And she’s very proud,” says Polidori Harris.

CompanyWeek profile (Jan. 2017): https://companyweek.sustainment.tech/article/polidori-sausage

Join us on the afternoon of Thursday May 11 for the CMA Gala & Winners Reveal to celebrate one of America’s most compelling manufacturing outposts.

Photos by Jonathan Castner except where otherwise noted.

Why manufacturers should reconsider Department of Defense business, Part II in a series

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Manufacturing’s enduring relationship with America’s defense establishment has again reached a pivotal moment. Against the backdrop of recovering supply chains, cyber threats, and a ground war in Europe, today a crisis in attracting qualified, capable suppliers into the defense ecosystem threatens to substantially degrade America’s ability to arm and sustain its service branches and allies.

But this perfect storm has awakened the beast. Those charged with developing and maintaining the sprawling, trillion-dollar defense ecosystem seem clear-eyed about the challenge. The National Defense Logistics Agency’s (NDIA) recent Vital Signs report — Posturing the U.S. Industrial Base for Great Power Competition — begins with this gloomy assessment:

“There is a mismatch between what our national strategies aim to achieve and how our defense industrial base is postured.”

It’s downhill from there.

“Key industrial readiness indicators for great power competition are going in the wrong direction,” the report concludes, citing lower budgets and less predictability in how dollars are allocated.

But the report makes clear the Department of Defense’s (DoD) seminal challenge: industrial readiness measured by participation in the defense supply chain. The numbers are eye-opening:

  • Fewer People. In 1985, the U.S. had 3 million workers in the defense industry. By 2021, the U.S. only had 1.1 million workers in the sector.
  • Fewer Companies. In the last five years, the defense ecosystem has lost a net 17,045 companies, and the Department of Defense estimates the number of small businesses participating in the defense industrial base has declined by over 40 percent in the last decade.

There’s also consensus for what’s needed to reverse the trend: make it easier for small manufacturers to participate in defense contracting. Full stop.

NDIA member surveys drive home the point: companies make it clear that it’s “easier to work with non-government customers than DoD,” and, that “defense companies find it harder to do business with DoD than other federal customers.”

And if perception is reality, companies don’t see the situation improving:

If part of the solution is understanding the problem, mission accomplished. That said, what’s the path forward?

“I don’t think there are any silver bullets here,” says Sustainment president and retired Brigadier General Chris Hill. (Read more from Chris Hill in Part I of this series.) Hill’s job today is, in part, to help the government tap the untapped potential of small- and medium-sized manufacturers.

“For companies, the truth is that they’re going to have to put more into it the first three to five years than they’re going to get out of it,” Hill says. “That’s a tough order for somebody to do. Even given the scale of the challenge, the Defense Department is not going to come knocking on their door.”

Hill’s thinking is shaped by several years managing the largest repair station in the DoD and United States Air Force at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex. And for every step companies can take to improve their operational posture relating to DoD opportunities, many more must be taken at the federal level.

“What we’re really talking about here is a whole-government approach to supporting SMMs,” adds Hill. “This is bigger than just the DoD, and there are more tentacles [within the federal government] that may be better positioned to support this. For example, it’s not really the DoD’s sole job to support small business — that’s the role of the [Small Business Administration centers]. MEPs, [which are NIST-sponsored manufacturing extension partners], are out there supporting manufacturing through the Department of Commerce in more of a functional role. All that is to say that I think the imperative is to knit together the disparate government resources to help SMMs.”

And to reform others. One significant change currently underway is the relaunch of the national network of PTACs — Procurement Technical Assistance Centers — to the APEX Accelerator network. Lori Haozous is program manager at the Arizona APEX Accelerator and is already seeing an improvement in the program’s ability to partner with appropriate resources to better serve SMMs, along the lines of Hill’s suggestion.

“Going to the DoD Office of Small Business (OSB) program gives us more flexibility,” says Hazous. “Now, I can partner with the Arizona Commerce Authority and have autonomy in creating programs to fit Arizona companies.” (Illinois manufacturers can find more information on local PTACs through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). California manufacturers find your local PTAC here.)

She continues, “Today, we need to increase participation in the Defense supply chain. And I know we have clients we can get involved. We can now do what’s necessary to find the resources to get these clients up to that level — or refer them to a reliable resource partner that can help in this area. It’s just educating them and letting them know that we’re here to help them through those parts that they are unsure of or they think is a barrier for them.”

In the end, defense contractors will decide who’s qualified and who’s not, and it would seem that any meaningful reform would include primes and tier-ones that ultimately control the DoD supply chain. They’re on Hazous’ radar — but not yet engaged. “We actually don’t have those strong relationships, yet. I know that moving forward, we need to incorporate these voices to discover processes or whatever requirements our clients need. That’s where we’re headed.”

It’s good news for an ecosystem that needs it. Sustainment’s Hill sees another precedent that bodes well. “There are organizations like the National Security Council, for example, that coordinate these whole-government approaches,” he says.

But as we await the systemic, overarching change in how the government does business, industry has a responsibility as well.

“There has to be some sort of meeting in the middle,” says Hill. “The nation recognizes that we have a gap. We’ve heard about it the last two years since COVID, and through the supply chain woes, inflation, and now geopolitical trade, tariffs, and all the different instruments that are putting pressure on supply chains.”

How, then, to meet a calling that private business has met for years? “The companies I worked with that are successful, they hustle,” says Hill. “That’s how they get it done. Just like every SMM in the country, does. They work their tail off trying to be competitive, agile, and build relationships.”

There’s an indication that in the future, they’ll be rewarded by more receptive DoD suitors. We’ll explore more changes being contemplated at their level in Part III of the series.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

The Arizona APEX Accelerator program (formerly Arizona PTAC) is hosted by Maricopa Community Colleges and funded in part by the DoD Office of Small Business Programs (formerly under the Defense Logistic Agency).

Welcome to the IL Manufacturing Report!

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Today I’m pleased to welcome Illinois manufactures to the inaugural edition of the IL Manufacturing Report. This digital publication is about you: the companies and people reimagining one America’s most important industrial outposts.

For us, Illinois is now part of a regional network of Manufacturing Reports that includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas, and Utah. Which means Illinois is our first publishing foray into America’s historic industrial heartland.

It’s exciting — having everything to do with the stories we’re about to tell.

We’re manufacturing geeks — we’ve written in-depth features on more than 2,000 companies across the West since 2013. We predicted a domestic manufacturing comeback in 2013, and since then have followed America’s manufacturing revival through the stories of family-owned companies; of entrepreneurs reinventing manufacturing industries in aerospace, bioscience, craft food, brewing, and distilling; of companies moving production back onshore, because today, “Made in America” matters more than ever.

We’re fascinated by the prospect of showcasing your background and character, but more, to publicize your collective attributes.

The fact is that economic developers, elected officials, and other business leaders have again embraced manufacturing — and are working harder than ever to attract it. Today, we’re helping states communicate the virtues of manufacturing by shining a light on their most valuable asset — you.

In every edition of the IL Manufacturing Report, we’ll profile several Illinois companies across a mix of industries — always focusing first on small and middle-market manufacturers (SMMs). Why? We believe they’re the backbone of U.S. manufacturing.

In each story, we ask company leaders about challenges, opportunities and needs shaping their business trajectory. It’s our editorial “secret sauce.” It’s why you’ll continue reading: Regardless of the industry you’re in or products you make, as a SMM, you share the same workforce challenge; innovative products or processes are critical to your future; and you’re working out a digital roadmap for your company.

You’re also working to optimize, grow, or build out a more capable supply chain. Or, you’re a supplier for an OEM or brand that is. Today we’re part of Sustainment — a national supply-chain portal and software platform that will help you find buyers or manage your supplier network.

We’re here to help, to work with Illinois’ world-class manufacturing ecosystem and add value by reporting on you and connecting your company with resources and new business partners.

Reach out to me with questions — or to have your company featured. There are NEVER any fees to write about your company.

We’ll publish every two weeks, so buckle up. We’re excited to be part of your journey.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.