2018 Suppliers of the Year by Jeff Meiners, Matt Richardson & Ed Baylor
We as a company spend a lot of time focused on the concept that we don’t exist without our employees...in fact, the employees of Crest Foods are Crest Foods. Take just a small step back from that concept and the same line of logic can be applied to our suppliers…we don’t exist without them. The buildings don’t get built, the equipment doesn’t get bought, the lines have nothing to run and the product doesn’t get shipped without suppliers. There is literally no part of our business that functions without the support of one of our many suppliers. We’re probably not easy on them – we ask them to expedite, be creative, be cost effective, have world class quality and ser- vice and occasionally just flat out do the impossible. The most calloused of the business world would explain that they do that because we pay them to do so…that is business. Indeed, at its most fundamental level that is definitely true. We, however, feel that the pinnacle of a supplier/customer relationship is not reached by the consummation of a financial transaction, but by the development of a true partnership relationship where both sides benefit. The best supplier relationships are not defined by the amount of money that exchanges hands or the quality of the legal arrangement between them, but by the quality of the personal partnership forged by the individuals that work to- gether. Sound corny? Absolutely. Does it produce the best results? We think so. Our suppliers do incredible things for us on a regular basis. We’d like to think that part of the reason for that is that we’ve taken the time to get to know them as people, built a relationship based on trust, taken the time to understand each other’s business and ultimately done everything we can to make our relationship more than a financial transaction. Part of any good partnership is occasionally taking a step back from the day-to-day to simply express your gratitude for how well things are going…to say thank you. We have been doing that with our suppliers at a supplier recogni- tion event for the past twenty-nine years. Every year we recognize a top performer for exceptional performance. This year we just couldn’t just pick one, so we are recognizing two suppliers for outstanding performance over the past year. The first supplier we recognized is Gary Wilhelm from SupplyWorks. Gary provides us with a lot of different supplies ranging from cleaning chemicals, janitorial supplies and HVAC filters to now include lighting and lockout padlocks. Gary has been a salesman to Crest Foods close to 25 years now. Gary continues to bring value to Crest Foods not only in the current items he sells to Crest but in new products for us. Gary has gone above and beyond this year picking up the slack of a vendor that started to slip in the service
4 Crest Ink October, November & December 2018
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