Packaging Bird Vitamins by Jeff Meiners One of the stranger packaging opportunities that has been presented to Crest over the years was the project of packaging bird vitamins. We should have just declined the opportunity based on the fact that there probably wasn’t much of a demand for bird vitamins, but in 1985 any business was good business, so we regrettably said yes. Short- ly after having agreed to do the business, we came to the conclusion that we simply did not have a good place to isolate these products well enough to run them in the plant because they smelled pretty bad and we were concerned about having bird vitamin flavored products. What happened next should lead you all to question the ability of some of your now senior management staff to exercise any form of good judgement when making a business deci- sion. In a weak moment, the decision was made that Steve, myself and our very understanding wives would package bird vitamins in the basement of my house. Remember that we couldn’t run them at Crest because they stunk so bad and add to the circumstances that Erika and Garett were both around 2 years old at the time. Despite the obvious obstacles, we were solely motivated by greed…we individually could keep all of the profits associated with pack- aging bird vitamins! We moved an old, foot operated volumetric filler to my house – ran empty pouches of the two flavors (Ornabac and Vitaflight) – brought home a couple of drums of each product – set up a couple of hand seal- ers on a card table and were ready for business – no doubt an SQF approved facility if there ever was one! The plan was in place, what could go wrong? Our bird vitamin line would start up around 6 after work and often run until midnight. We quickly discovered that leaving Erika and Garett unattended for any length of time while we were working in the basement lead to prob- lems, but we couldn’t afford to lose one of our line members to dealing with kid disputes so we did the only reason- able thing...we moved our production line to the living room where we could keep an eye on the kids. Did I men- tion that this stuff smelled really bad? Several weeks of this set up left a smell that might still be in the carpet and the distinct possibility that I might have to learn to cook because I would be living on my own, so we made they only possible decision…we moved our operation to the laundry room at Steve’s house. Now that we had our production line in a somewhat isolated area that could be washed down as well as in an area where we could keep an eye on the kids until they fell asleep, we were in a position to do some serious packaging of bird vitamins. It took us about three months to complete the project. The smell seemed to get worse every day – to say that we were tired was an understatement – Erika and Garett took to biting each other to solve disputes – heck, I started to worry that we might start to sprout feathers, but thankfully we finally filled our last pouch of Vi- taflight. When all the vitamin dust settled, we had made enough to take the kids on a trip to Florida that we enjoyed very much. Was it worth it? Oh – heck no, but we had a story to tell and an experience that we would never forget. Shortly after the last pouch shipped we let the customer know that we were out of the bird vitamin business and learned the valuable lesson the hard way that not all business is good business.
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October, November & December 2019 Crest Ink 19
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