The Crest Foods
Tech Team at Your Service by Al Duthie
Nate McKnight, Nathan Tippie, Jake McKnight, Joe Buckner Al Duthie, Steve Starke, Lee Hall
Crest Foods has a group of remote “hidden” employees in the field, residing throughout the country, that in con- junction with a similar sales force group, assist dairy plants with their dairy products. After the sale of a custom built stabilizer blend much of the service responsibility rests with The Crest Technical Service team. This activity in- volves product troubleshooting, plant employee training, cost saving analysis, and product performance reviews, to name some services available to customers. Prior to the final sale of stabilizer the dairy plant has had a plant sur- vey conducted, a plant trial, and a plant start-up assisted with by Crest Foods. Under the leadership of Nate McK- night, Director of Technical Service, all these aspects are coordinated with the plant and Crest Foods Sales Man- agers, and then executed. Each of the 7 members of Technical Service possesses unique job strengths, which com- bined result overall to a highly competent group. The Crest Technical Service team is diverse and experienced enough in dairy products to solve any dairy issue or challenge presented. In fact, with the emergence of UHT pro- cessing, and its continued growth for the future of dairy products, Crest Foods has evolved with this by adding our own resident “expert”, Jake McKnight. And as plant equipment becomes more complex and complicated to main- tain and use for efficient product scheduling Joe T. Buckner, with his background in production scheduling, be comes even more valuable as a resource. Our newest member is Joe T. Buckner, Jr. He has been with Crest Foods for 16 months. Joe currently lives in Il- linois with his wife Stacey, but they will be moving to North Carolina in the near future. Joe immediately fit into the Technical Service group and with the Crest Foods culture. Joe and Stacey have 2 daughters, Summer (27) and Jaicee (26). Summer has a daughter, Ameera, who is a year old. Joe loves to spend time with his family, read, garden, work on home projects, and fish. Joe really enjoys his job, especially being able to work with so many different dairy plants around the country and help educate them. One of Joe’s most rewarding moments of the job so far has been, with short notice, significantly helping an HTST operator pass a required state exam. Jake McKnight has been with Crest Foods for 18 months. Jake lives in Idaho with his wife Toni and 2 dogs, Shelby and Roxy. Jake immediately fit into our Technical Service group. In fact, Jake’s first week with the company he at tended our Crest Sales Meeting with the entire Tech/Sales team. Jake is an outdoors person, who loves to explore the streams, rivers, and mountains of Idaho and surrounding area. Jake really enjoys sharing his knowledge with others, whether that is during training sessions, or during a troubleshooting visit. Jake gains great satisfaction at the end of a long week helping a customer by receiving a simple handshake and thank you. Nathan Tippie, our Training Coordinator, has been with Crest Foods for 14 years. Nathan began his career with Crest as a sales person, then he shifted to part sales responsibility and part technical service responsibility, and finally he was converted to 100% technical service. Nathan lives in Ohio and has 2 nieces, Avery 7 years old and An-
20 Crest Ink October, November & December 2022
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