Rick (00:04): It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right. And having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That's where A. B. Maury North America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artists and bakers that help optimize success. We'll discuss more on this episode of The Oven Light. So let's get going. Flip the switch. Welcome back to The Oven Light. The Switch is on episode number four. Boy, I tell you what, we've had some great episodes in the past. We've talked a little bit about different areas of the business, from baking mixes to our executive leadership, to chemical leavening. Today, we're going to get down and dirty with supply and procurement. So let's get going. Let me introduce our two guests today. Both are veterans of the business. The first is Dave Hufford.

Rick (00:59): I'll call him Huff because that's probably what I'll call him during the program here. He is our senior vice president of procurement, quality assurance and regulatory compliance. Might as well be going against the Klingons for global and interstellar domination because he's got a lot in that title. Joined A. B. Maury in 1995. And you have to disprove if I'm getting anything wrong here, Dave. Nestle Purina, Boeing experience, has an MBA from SLU, undergraduate from Missouri State. And the reason I like him a lot is he's a high school basketball legend. And from what I understand from Clayton High School, he is one of the top three alums of this really renowned high school in town. Scott Foley, actor from Felicity and the Unit. And Louise Post, lead singer of the rock band Veruca Salt, one of the greatest rack names of all time. Okay, so that's our first guest.

Rick (01:54): Our second guest is going to be Trey Pope. He is our VP of baking, ingredient manufacturing, regional planning and logistics. Boy, I tell you what, we like those long titles, guys. 11 years at A. B. Maury was actually a plant manager of ours at a time in Greenville, Texas. Spent some time at Sara Lee, not baking, but engineering, whatever that is. He was also a project engineer at Anheuser-Busch, and actually we crossed paths for six years, but never shared a beer until we started working together here. Also has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Arkansas and an MBA from Webster University. And it's only official because this guy is a real Boy Scout. An Eagle Scout does that activity with his son. And I mean, he is the true AB Mawry Boy Scout here in St. Louis. So Dave, Trey, welcome.

Dave (02:39): Thank you. Thank you.

Rick (02:40): All right. So let's get into it a little bit. We're going to warm it up. We call them rapid fire questions. So Dave, I'm going to start with you. Real easy. You walk into a bakery. What are you buying first?

Dave (02:50): I'm going indulgent. I'm getting a donut.

Rick (02:52): And what kind of donut would that be? East or chemical leavening, baking powder, cake donut?

Dave (02:57): Chemical. Love iting.

Rick (02:59): Where you

Dave (03:00): Can get bacon, maple, strange donut type thing.

Rick (03:03): Okay. I got you. That's a good one.

Dave (03:05): There's a strange donut in Kirkwood.

Rick (03:07): Yeah, he's got to stay local in Kirkwood. I like that. Since you're a basketball fan, what is your favorite spot on the floor to take a shot?

Dave (03:14): About two feet out. Nobody's around me.

Rick (03:16): Was that a layup question or what?

Dave (03:18): Yeah, exactly. Just to keep things honest. I was like the last man on that basketball team. Well, here's

Rick (03:23): The thing. I don't want to overstate it. He says he was last man, but he was the only man. He invited me to play basketball once with his pickup group. We get out in the middle of the court and he goes, "Hey, look up in the rafters. There's only one guy here on the floor who actually has his name on a banner." And it was Dave Hufford. And then also, since you're a baseball guy, baseball's back in session now. Who's your favorite Cardinals player of all time?

Dave (03:45): Bob Gibson, Lou Brock. I got two.

Rick (03:47): Legends. Legends of game. All right, Trey, we're going to come back to you. So let's say you walk into a bakery. What's the first thing that catches your eye?

Trey (03:54): Chocolate filled croissant is my thing of choice. Very

Rick (03:58): European. Done well.

Trey (03:58): Flaky. The right dough. Absolutely.

Rick (04:01): A lot of butter in there.

Trey (04:02): Absolutely.

Rick (04:03): That's good stuff. It's only way

Trey (04:03): It's

Rick (04:04): Good. Okay. Let's talk about, since we have a little shared history in beer, what's your favorite beer style?

Trey (04:10): Pure drinking is a logger, but good old IPA, not real happy. And then Cheme, if I'm going to be indulgent, Belgian.

Rick (04:19): By the way, we're not sponsored by anybody, but we're open to it, Shmay.

Trey (04:22): Well, I noticed you don't provide when you ask these questions.

Rick (04:24): No,

Trey (04:25): I'm looking for one.

Rick (04:27): Boy, Huff, this is in tough. I thought he'd say I like them all. But all right, let's switch to music since Trey and I have seen a couple concerts together. Favorite album. It could be the art or it could be the actual band that you enjoy.

Trey (04:38): I don't know, but album, it's been my favorite artist is Breaking Benjamin, which I've probably seen a hundred times at this point. Maybe not that many, but close.

Rick (04:46): Still, hey, you know what? Whether it's breaking Benjamin or breaking bread, we're going to have a goodtime today. All right. So Huff, let's get into some of the details. I'm holding million baking news and I see stats like Russia supplies, 78% of the world's sunflower oil, or we're talking about propianic acid, which is important for calcium propanate going up in costs. Give me your lay of the land. What's going on? We had shipping and trucking issues a couple years ago. Then we had this little thing called the pandemic that hopefully is on its way out. And then here we are with different inflation costs and just the problem of getting materials. What's in your crystal ball here?

Dave (05:22): Well, looking back first, we're going on a third year of incredible difficulties and challenges in the industry overall, but especially from the supply side, which Trey and I live in. But 2020 was all about COVID. 2021 was COVID supply chain. 2022 now is supply chain, Ukraine, Russia. And each one has its unique set of circumstances and conditions and all the things that impact us as part of the supply chain. But it's about cost, but it's also about supply where it's the most challenging we've seen just because previous economic crisis, say 2008, it was just about price, which that made it easy. You just had to buy, but you had to buy higher. Now it's about price. It's about lead times. It's about supply. It's about, can you even get the product? Can you pass the cost on to your customers? So we are just seeing every day more and more items going up to prices that we just never thought they'd be at.

Dave (06:14): And we're just having to deal with that.

Rick (06:16): And there's a quote from somebody at Barron's who's talking about all these changes that are going on. And the quote is, "Like our normal life in the post-pandemic era, normal supply chain operations will take at least a couple of years to restore." What does that make anybody nervous in the room or is just like, here we go. It's just got to wait it out and work through it. Trey, what's your impression?

Trey (06:35): Well, as Dave said, I mean, it just keeps evolving. So from the manufacturing base, we were just trying to keep the plants running at the beginning of the pandemic, trying to keep our employees safe. And we did that very well and that moved on to the next stage of just working with the everyday new ways of working with COVID. And now we're dealing with every day, not knowing if we're going to get some raw material or something because there seems to be something new. And it's almost on a weekly basis that there's something new happening. So the team has done incredibly well to keep going, but we are struggling just with the fatigue of going on two plus years now of what's next. So it's been a bit of a ride at this point.

Rick (07:14): You've had a displaced kind of employee base too, right? A lot of people working from home, new scenarios, different ways of working, but your teams have done a great job to kind of manage this and mitigate some of these hurdles that keep coming in your path.

Trey (07:27): Well, I'm proud of that. From the manufacturing base, we did not miss a single shipment. I don't think in the two years that we had because of COVID issues directly related to our employees, even this January when we had the worst absenteeism we'd seen because of COVID, we still maintain. So it's been a tough ride, but the plants just absolutely killed it with trying to get through all that. And here- He

Dave (07:47): Didn't miss any deliveries because procurement got him all the stuff he needed to do that.

Trey (07:51): Well, and there's no doubt. I mean, we rely so heavily on the procurement team because of all the difficulties that are going on. We have a complex manufacturing base. We use 400 raw materials. All those have their own challenges at the moment to try to get the products out the door. So it has been very, very interesting, but well done.

Rick (08:11): So Huff, let me ask you this. So one of our mottos or our campaign during the initial part of the pandemic was who's behind you matters? And it talks about as a company or commercial baking system, our customers out there have a team at AB Maori that maybe they don't see all the time. They might be in black and white and kind of in the corner, but we're the ones that are helping them make their jobs easier. And hopefully they don't always notice us, but they know we're there to support them. What does that mean to you, especially with all these things thrown at you, this whole who's behind you matters, team behind the team ethic?

Dave (08:42): Originally that came up with long before a lot of these things were going on in the industry, that motto. And it has really become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that with availability of products and growing lead times and seeking more suppliers to mitigate risk and carrying larger buffer inventories to deal with delays, more proactive relationship with suppliers and just a lot of different steps we've been taking so our plants and our customers have the products they need to run their Lance and to run their businesses. So it really kind of goes backwards because we are all about customer satisfaction and taking care of the customers. So it just goes back up the supply chain to Trey and myself to make sure that happens. And all the things we've been doing over the last couple years have been about that with the end in mind about taking care of the customer.

Dave (09:31): So it really has highlighted, I think customers more than ever have realized it is more than just a saying. It's how they do business because we've had a lot of suppliers that just cut out on us, didn't meet commitments, didn't do what they said they're going to do, broke contracts and AB Mari doesn't do that. So it's hard to support that mentality, but we're here to do though, but it's not always the way companies do business.

Rick (09:57): Let me follow up with you on one question too. Your role, you have a global hat that you also wear. So tell me a little bit about that, right? I mean, there's stuff going on globally right now, Russia and the Ukraine, Belarus. So what's your impression? How does that change what you're doing from a global mindset?

Dave (10:12): 25% of my job is related to buying global commodities or leading the procurement of global commodities for ABF and AB Mari. So 20 to 30 plants around the world we're supporting or we're trying to support with different items. I do see this more at a global situation than a local situation because I mean, I'll come in every morning and I got emails from every corner of the earth about supply issues they're facing with the items that I help them buy, whether it's Thailand or Malaysia or it's Western Europe or South America. Everything's a little bit different and the supply chains are different, but everybody is feeling the impact of what's going on in the world, not just in the US. And a lot of times those are more difficult areas because the supply chains aren't as mature and established, and so it makes it even more difficult.

Rick (10:59): Do you think getting that little preview on what's going on around the world helps you even do your job better at North America?

Dave (11:04): Yep, definitely. That part of my job just gives me a global perspective, which allows me to kind of see what's going on here in a broader perspective and a better perspective for me. Yeah, it's very helpful.

Rick (11:15): All right. Trey, I'm going to turn my attention back to you a little bit. Are there any books or maybe authors or anybody that you keep an eye on that maybe you learn a few things?

Trey (11:23): As far as books, I read a lot. I don't stick with one type or genre. I probably go through a book a week and it's always fiction. It's my escape, my getaway, and I move around quite a bit between crime and mystery or anything in that realm.

Rick (11:36): So Trey, you guys have a really unique, hardworking team. We've talked about the team answering the bell continuously. How have you been able to manage it? We kind of tease the idea of people working from home. I mean, this is stuff that none of us has ever seen in our careers, right, in our life. This is such a unique situation and people managed it really, really well instead of being in the office five days a week. Why do you think your team was able to make it work so well? Well,

Trey (12:02): Here in St. Louis, the teams that I managed between planning, logistics, and the project management group, they didn't miss a beat. So they had the systems in place, the ways of working, the relationships with both the plants and our suppliers. If we just look at planning, so things went pretty hectic there at the beginning of the pandemic. So just trying to keep our inventories full in the right place, in the right locations. We supported ACH on the Fleischman brand. The planning behind that became extraordinary because of the pandemic push of making it home, but that team just kept on delivering on the planning side. And then logistics got really interesting there for a while and we just kept going. So the planning and logistics team didn't miss a beat. So it didn't matter if they were in the office or not. And for two years, we've been in that mode.

Trey (12:45): We're slowly getting back in the office. We're going to get back that little spark that we missed by not being together. We really look forward to taking that next step. That's

Rick (12:53): An important spark, right Huff? I mean, you've got a small team, but they're mighty as well. How have you seen your team kind of come out of this?

Dave (12:59): They were really effective working from home as well, really got used to it, like it a lot. And there's benefits to it, the commute and not having to get ready every morning and all that type of thing. So they save a lot of time in that respect. So slowly getting more and more back into the office, but there is that camaraderie of working together and being together that we don't get when we're separate all the time like we used to be. But like I said, they prove very effective at home. So it's not something hardcore that the company's looking to ... You will be in the office so many days a week or it's going to be kind of an organic growth of people coming back as they want to. It's

Rick (13:32): A nice flexibility, right? Moving in.

Dave (13:34): It is.

Rick (13:34): So both of you guys live in really nice parts of town, right? You live in smaller, very close-knit community. Kirk was

Trey (13:41): Nicer than Webster.

Rick (13:42): Well, I don't know about that. What do you say? There's two

Trey (13:44): Against one in this

Rick (13:44): Podcast. Yeah, exactly. Webster Groves and Kirkwood, Missouri, great communities. But I've noticed, Dave, and I went back and I looked up some materials here and I saw that you were on the park board. Is that right at one point for the city of Kirkwood? I was on the Parkboard. So why did you get involved? You've been involved in the community and that's kind of a

Dave (14:01): Unique position. Yeah, I've done various things. I've participated a lot in the Green Tree Festival Committee and the park board, and it's more about not really being able to say no. So people ask to participate, so I participate. And Kirkwood has some really fantastic parks, 13 of them, and they do a great job with them. So a lot of work to be done on those as far as the committee's concerned. Like I say, you're on it for six years. I just got off, but it was a good ...

Rick (14:23): You know what? It's a good part of the year right now, right? As we're coming into spring, the weather's getting warmer. It's a good time to visit a park, right? Get out there, take a walk, get out, get away from the screen. All right, that's our little public service announcement. So Trey, how about you? You live in Webster Groves. You can be seen floating around to local establishments and shops and things like that.

Trey (14:42): We like to walk from where we are to the restaurants and the bars and the area, big dog walking area. So you can see us out and about with our dogs and trying to get the kids into the parks and out of the house, especially now that springs come along. So yeah, we love Webster. We've been there for a while. It's better than Kirkwood.

Rick (15:00): Tell us about the dogs. So what kind of dogs we got here? I mean, dogs, right? Anytime you talk dogs or kids, people are going to immediately flock, right? Whether it's a Super Bowl commercial or this podcast.

Trey (15:10): Yeah. So we've got two small dogs, poodle types that are brother or sister that we've had for five years now that are just part of the family. So they're terrors and squirrels and rabbits and everything else in our yard, but they're the kids' other siblings, so they're definitely part of our family.

Rick (15:26): Huff, no pets, right?

Dave (15:27): We have had big dogs, labs. Not right now though. He and I are totally the opposite, aren't we?

Rick (15:32): Yeah, boy, this is an awkward show. Can't wait for the next episode. All right. So looking ahead, Trey, what does the future hold? What does the future hold in the next 12 months? What do you see? Some of these pressures, right? They may be front and center, but over time, things are going to loosen up. Things are going to alleviate, right? People are traveling now. People are going global. So what's your impression? Anything that's on your mind?

Trey (15:52): Well, the manufacturing side, it feels like we've been on a marathon for two years. So we're getting back to some semblance of normalcy. We removed the mask out of the sites a couple of weeks ago, so people are starting to breathe it better and easier compared to the last two years, but no issues on that. On the logistics side, it's still very difficult market that we're in, and we don't see that subsiding anytime soon. So we're managing the best we can. We have great carriers that are our partners for the specialty areas that we cover. Prices are pushing on us, but availability of equipment is a problem at the moment with the global supply chain issues. It's just managing through the logistics and getting that part done. And then on the planning side, we're getting more where we can look forward. So we're not so reactive as we were before.

Trey (16:36): So it's much more looking out over the next 12 to 18 months and where do we really need that focus in not being so crisis oriented that we have been in the last two years?

Rick (16:46): We call it BI here, but baking ingredients is the side of the business that the tray handles and his alter ego on yeast is a gentleman named John Heilman, and he's got some great yeast plants around the US and Canada. But for you, you've got three core facilities. You've got Cedar Rapids, Iowa that handles mixes. You've got a lot of the technology and enzymes coming out of Wilsonville, Oregon, and then you've got things we mentioned Calpro as we call it, but calcium propionate and other conditioning tablets and such coming out of Greenville, Texas. So anything we need to know about those facilities or anything that's going to be hot? Is there something new that maybe has your attention?

Trey (17:22): Well, the good thing is this same time last year, we were dealing with two major crisises in Greenville with an ice storm that knocked us out for an extended period of time. And then even in Wilsonville, we had an ice storm that was unprecedented that knocked the whole city out. Well,

Rick (17:36): It was a lot bigger than that, right? It wasn't at Houston, Dallas. Everybody was fighting that.

Trey (17:40): Dave was heavily involved in the repercussions of some of our suppliers from that. This year has been much more stable. So thankfully we've gotten through with no major storms this year. As we look forward, the plants are in great condition, great place. We're investing where we need to. Out in Wilsonville, we're putting in a new packaging line as we speak that's starting up this week just to give us stability and long term. There's some expansions we're doing in that site that will be coming online in the next six months. The other two sites, we're just going to maintain, keep them at the high levels that they're performing, keep supporting the volumes that we're seeing, which are very good.

Rick (18:14): David, how about you? What do you think is important for commercial bakers? Our audience is really industrial as well as artists and bakers out there. Some get service through distributors and such, but what's kind of a good core message? What should they take away from the AB Maori team, especially the procurement side of the business?

Dave (18:30): I think that the core values of AB Mari, which should really try and work with my team on basically customer centric, collaborative, accountable, ambitious, proactive, innovative. Those are the six guiding lights for us, if you will. And I think that's what we try and deliver to our customers, which are the plants and sales and a lot of internal customers that we have. I think that's what AB Mari delivers to our customers, the bakers. And it's really just being a reliable, innovative company that does what they say they're going to do, and we're very good at that. So I think that's the most important thing even in the most difficult times we've ever seen the last two plus years, which will continue through 2022. And I don't see things really selling out much until well into 2023, if not beyond. So it's going to be a long ride here to get through all of this if nothing else happens.

Dave (19:21): But I just think that's what we really focus on is, again, the end customer, what do they need and what do we need to make that happen every single day?

Rick (19:29): Awesome. Any final parting shots here? Anything that you got to get off your mind before we-

Dave (19:33): His music is bad. His small dog idea is bad. Webster's bad. Wow. Why'd you put us together?

Rick (19:39): Well, I can tell you this. We're never going to have you two on together at the same time. Moving offices,

Trey (19:43): Dave. We're going to expand out.

Rick (19:45): You can tell there's a lot of love in the room. No, but in all seriousness, these guys do enjoy each other's company. At least they tell me that. But enjoyed having you both on the program. We've got some great episodes ahead. And for those at home, we would love to have your emails. If you've got questions for Dave or Trey at any point, send us an email. And actually, Tricia and I will get it here in the office, the ovenlight at abyari.com. So if you've got something that maybe you just have to get answered, we're here to help. So if you're listening at home or you're listening on the road or listening in the office, don't tell your boss. We appreciate listening to The Oven Light. And for now, the switch is off. Have a good rest of your day. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Oven Light.

Rick (20:28): Until next time when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking technology, trends and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.