Arvco Container Corp. (CONT’D FROM PAGE 26)
As Greg explains, Arvco’s focus on the food business balanced the highs and lows of industrial and automotive sectors. “The food business—it’s a hedge,” he says. "When the economy changes, the food business gets good when the industrial business doesn’t. People realize they can feed a family of four for $20 when they order a pizza. Where else can you do that? So, that helps us get through a lot of these downturns.” Arvco’s specialization in pizza has expanded into other styles of convenience packaging for other kinds of fast- food outlets selling chicken and sandwiches. Giving one specific example, Greg described the on-site packaging space savings they achieved for Subway by transitioning from E flute to F, allowing twice as many packaging units to be held in-store. People, Family Like many an independent, Arvco has a family feel to any visitor touring the plant. The company employs around 220 people full time. Citing longtime employees who have been with the company 20, 30, or 40-plus years, Greg says, “We treat people like people. It’s a culture thing. We treat people with respect; we treat people well.” Arvco has had its share of difficulty finding good em- ployees, just as others in the industry. But the company also takes pride in not laying off employees for economic reasons. “I have never economically laid anyone off in the 30 years I’ve been here,” Greg says. “My job is to make
know anybody else that does what we do. And we’re con- stantly trying to move that along.” Trying to move that along requires continual invest- ment, and Kyle Baldwin, Arvco’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), attributes the company’s success at procuring the right equipment to Greg’s gut feel for what will work. Says Baldwin, “He definitely has more of that entrepreneurial spirit when it comes to capital expenditures and invest- ments.” “I make educated guesses,” counters Greg. Greg’s “educated guesses” serve a unique but evolv- ing mix of business. The company’s market has ebbed and flowed through an eclectic mix of government, au- tomotive and industrial, and food and beverage. “We’re very diversified,” he says. “We actually do a fair number of government contract boxes like weather resistant, Class-2 triple-wall, etc. We’ve always done government work.” Arvco is also a principal player in the pizza box busi- ness, a piece of the market brought to the company in the 1970s by Steve France, one of the company’s sales repre- sentatives at the time. Today, that business represents 45 percent of Arvco’s production. “Steve basically focused on selling pizza boxes,” Greg recalls. “He went out and bought cutting dies. We did a couple of marketing pieces, and we trademarked the name, ‘Pizza-tainer.’”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 30
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