Baking & Snack - March 2023 - 22

BENESTAR BRANDS
Pellets are evened
out by a vibrating
conveyor before
entering the fryer.
fryer can handle a wide range of products quickly, which
is great since the facility produces every one of the company's
pork rind brands. It also uses less gas.
" The fryer investment has paid off; this facility has
the lowest level of quality complaints from customers
in the entire company, " Mr. Robin said. " We get maybe
one complaint per 200,000 bags of product, which is approaching
world-class levels of quality. "
The tight control of the new fryer is due to the amount
of planning that went into designing it. Benestar's goals
with the fryer investment included being able to run two
different products, eliminate burnt oil, control free fatty
acids, eliminate oil waste, gain more pounds per manpower,
and improve washing and energy efficiency. Mr.
Managing today's supply chain challenges
While the rest of the baking and snack industry struggled to
source raw materials last year and grappled with rising costs,
Benestar Brands found itself thankful for its vertical integration.
For its pork rind business, the company produces both
its own pellets and frying and coating oil. Its external raw
materials list is short: packaging film, boxes, tortillas, seasoning
and frying oil for tortilla chips.
The company orders all raw materials for all four plants at
once at the corporate level. This allows Benestar to get better
pricing and leverage freight across all plants. Benestar uses
dedicated lanes for internal plant transfers as well as deliveries
to customers, which locks the company in with carriers at
the lowest possible pricing.
" This means the truck is more likely to show up, " said Dan
Robin, chief supply chain officer, Benestar Brands.
In the event that a truck doesn't show, the company works
with a broker to recover trucks within hours, a day at most.
" Even when there was a scarcity of truck drivers last year,
we were able to ship most of our orders out on time, " Mr.
Robin said.
22 Baking & Snack March 2023 / www.bakingbusiness.com
Gomez said TNA engineers gathered data on the facility's
environment, process and the product when designing
the fryer. Between that and the many FAT trials
Benestar conducted at TNA's facility, there weren't any
surprises during install and startup.
In addition to the fryer, the low-carb claim on
Benestar's 4505 brand requires tight seasoning control.
Seasoning is key when taking Benestar's product quality
to the next level, as flavor innovation drives much
of snack sales. To meet that need, Benestar invested in
high-quality seasoning tumblers.
" If we want 10% seasoning application, we can control
the equipment and get 10% application, " Mr. Robin said.
In addition to investments in new equipment,
Benestar Brands has also invested in an ERP system and
Power BI, a program that compiles the data from the
ERP system and organizes it into reports that refresh every
hour. Every day, each plant has directional meetings
where the team can use these reports to evaluate whether
the plant is hitting its KPI goals and discuss the why
behind any areas in which the plant may be falling short.
The KPIs mirror the company's values: safety, quality,
delivery and cost. The plants also have weekly meetings
with Mr. Robin to evaluate the reports for the week.
" The reports allow us to look at trends over time in
the company at the plant level, department level and for
the company as a whole, " Mr. Robin said. " The ability to
look at the plant level on a daily and weekly basis is our
competitive advantage. "
Vertically integrated operation
Benestar Brands owns four facilities across the United
States and one in Mexico: Chicago; Arlington, Texas;
City of Industry; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Saltillo, Mexico.
Across all of Benestar Brands plants, orders from the
company's largest customers come in through its EDI
system and are automatically scheduled on a two-week
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Baking & Snack - March 2023

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