With Love and Quiches (19 page)

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.
—Sir Winston Churchill

A
fter 9/11, we steeled ourselves to keep calm, not to panic. We all knew that going forward every step would be important, and as an organization, we were ready to act. We knew transformational changes were needed, and we were prepared to face them head-on.

Every business owner, especially in the manufacturing sector, has to learn how to construct an organization that adheres, above all, to principles of efficiency, or your chances of turning a profit—or surviving in the long run—are slim indeed. Growth is a wonderful thing, but it merely exacerbates problems if you aren’t ready. Our time to
get
ready was upon us. At the heart of our reinvention was our move from an overstuffed, overstaffed operation to a lean and mean one. We went
from having an unnecessary glut of inventory to operating more efficiently than ever before, and it saved Love and Quiches.

Our first steps in the “lean and mean” transformation were to lay off some workers—hard to do, but necessary—and to hire our first CFO. Our director of operations from out West (the one who had pumped us full of more inventory than we could possibly use) was shown the door. We planned our withdrawal from our unneeded space across the street. We trimmed all discretionary spending; if we didn’t need to do it or buy it, we let it go.

It was during this period that we contracted our first consultants, who brought to the table two extremely important developments. First, we adopted a “just in time” (JIT) business model, which completely changed how we had been operating since 1980, the year we had moved into our facility at Freeport. Second, we instituted a “pipeline” approach to our sales efforts.

One word of caution about consultants before we talk about these two developments. When hiring consultants, define very clear parameters when it comes to the scope of the project, the time line,
and
the cost. Otherwise, before you realize it, the costs can easily spiral out of control and eat up all the improvements the consultants suggest. In our first time using consultants, we were too innocent, and although they brought a lot to the table, the experience was very costly and we had difficulty ending it. Since then we have been careful. We
also
have found that it is never a good idea to hire a consultant into a permanent position. Usually, consultants have a very specific area in which their expertise lies, causing them to
lack
flexibility. If we have learned one thing
really
well, it is how to change course, to be flexible, and people who can’t be flexible don’t work well as permanent parts of our organization.

Despite these caveats, it remains true that consultants can bring fresh eyes and expertise to a situation or a process. Sometimes we kept doing things merely because we had always done them that way. Every company—small businesses as well as giants—suffers this same
weakness at some point, and consultants can be a good way to help an organization move beyond it.

In simple terms, JIT means that we keep very tight reins on our inventory, both raw and finished. Theoretically, when we receive an order, we order the ingredients, produce the product, and ship it out as quickly as possible. As a result, we contain our inventory and carrying costs and increase our cash flow. Cash is king. We only bring in supplies for our purchase orders in hand. We turn over our finished inventory every two weeks and are assured that what we produce is already on its way out the door, with no excess or potentially obsolete inventory of either type.

This may seem like a gross oversimplification of our path forward, and a business of our size is, of course, extremely complicated. But the JIT method is now ingrained in our organization and serves as the synchronizing rhythm for all departments.

We have had other very fruitful consultancies since the first one in 2002. Shortly after that first experience, we received a grant from the New York State Department of Economic Development to help us learn lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is also known as the Toyota method because that company first developed it. Its key element is called
continuous improvement
. We changed
everything
: how we did things, where we did things, nothing out of place, and bringing the work to the worker, not the other way around. This new business model transformed us forever; it is the nuts and bolts of how we generate our revenue and profits.

The grant picked up a large part of the cost of hiring consultants to help with the process of educating us.

The consultants we hired taught
all
of Love and Quiches’ employees, from the top down: I participated, as did the line workers, the porters, and everybody in between. Since we still had the building across the
street at the time, our “teachers” set up their “classroom” there to minimize disruption to the day-to-day running of the business.

The consultants set up a simulated clock factory as the model we would follow. It’s not as strange as it might seem: all manufacturing processes have much the same elements in common, whether you’re making clocks or cheesecakes. We were divided into teams to produce these clocks, which were made of paper, plastic, clips, and other simple parts. Rudimentary as they were, the finished clocks actually worked!

We followed the consultants’ procedures from orders coming in to gathering supplies, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping. During each session we were timed and made to start over again and again; with each repetition we recognized more and more efficiencies and shortcuts to help speed the process without sacrificing quality. More often than not, our efficiencies and shortcuts even improved the quality of the product. We got faster and faster, again without sacrificing quality, with each team competing to beat the other with process improvements and completion times. It was absolutely amazing!

There was a second part to the project. This time the teams participated in a virtual order for carrot cake (no actual cake, just the process) from taking the order to shipping it out the door. So many things that we had been doing the hard way became glaringly obvious. We started to institute changes even while the learning process was still under way.

The most obvious lesson was the great advantage that teamwork, team building, and mutual respect can bring to an organization. We reorganized our work centers, brought the supplies
to
the line workers to avoid downtime and cross traffic, and maximized
value added
(in layman’s terms,
productive
) activities. We have never lost these principles; as human nature inevitably dictates, however, when we see some practices slipping, we reboot and retrain. This is ongoing.

Today we more or less measure
all
activities in actual minutes, product by product, but the groundwork was set during that six-week lean manufacturing consultancy as we were beginning to recover from the effects of 9/11. And we all had a great time to boot!

This is not to say that you need to hire consultants to benefit from lean manufacturing and just-in-time processes. There are plenty of great books on this subject (see my favorites in Recipes for the Mind). As you continue to build your organization—whether you teach yourself about lean operations by reading such books or you decide to spend money on bringing in lean consultants—you must focus on reducing waste and increasing efficiency. Bring on people who have experience with these methods, and work consistently at keeping the dynamic going.

The purpose of any business, first and foremost, is the pursuit of profit, and all the changes we made after 9/11 going forward would assure that we stayed on that path. We are survivors, and each change to the company strengthened us.

Our first round of post-9/11 consulting also taught us the importance of pipeline. At the end of the day, everything depends upon the orders in hand. Everybody waits for the phone to ring, the faxes to come over, the electronic orders to be emailed because no matter how carefully and detailed the sales budgeting process may be, no one has a crystal ball. Unexpected changes—from a hurricane down south to a change in management or ownership of a very large account—can affect gross sales. Adjustments can be made to produce goods more efficiently and with less waste, and equipment can be kept running smoothly with less downtime. Yet the sales numbers inform it all.

So many things compete for your attention when you’re running a business, but it’s imperative that you not lose track of your pipeline. We now keep our pipeline filled, making sure enough new prospects are waiting in the wings while we work on closing current new customers and bids. A robust pipeline doesn’t mean everything is going to fall in your lap, so we track our
potentials
, our
in-process
, our
decision pending
, our
closed
, our
lost opportunities
, and
why
the opportunities
were lost. We have gotten rather good at it, and each salesperson is required to update a Pipeline Report weekly.

So, even though it’s the bottom line that counts, the top line has to be healthy too. No matter how efficient the operation is with all its parts, if the phone doesn’t ring, you have nothing. With few exceptions, after 9/11 we managed to hold on to all of our customers, and we rebuilt together.

________

By 2003 we
knew
that although there was a lot of work ahead, we would be okay. Thanks to the improvements we had made on efficiency and pipeline, we were going to make it through. In September of that year, we were invited to a franchisee conference by our big Middle East customer—the one who’d just happened by our NRA booth in Chicago about ten years before—and Andrew and I flew to Dubai to attend. The temperature in Dubai at that time of year never falls below 100 degrees—even at night; it’s a fabulous city, but hot! Our hosts did everything just right, top drawer. Attendees were assigned places for all of the meetings, and all of the vendors were rotated to assure that they got to interact and sit with all of the franchisees at least once. There I was, a Jewish female business owner from New York among a sea of Middle Eastern men, quite a few of them dressed in flowing robes and headdresses, but I was treated as if I were one of them. Andrew blended in much better than I did! At the closing banquet, much to our amazement, Love and Quiches was honored as Vendor of the Year for the region. They recognized us for coming through the 9/11 tragedy with no lapses in our quality or service levels. I will never forget that evening.

9/11 set in motion what became a decade of change and improvements for Love and Quiches. By examining every aspect of our business and going from overstuffed to lean, we created a strategy that has allowed us to survive, thrive, and grow in any economic climate. First
were the short-term survival strategies while we developed our new forward vision. We changed or refined our policies and procedures, instituted cost-savings initiatives, and didn’t forget to count the paper clips. We revolutionized our manufacturing procedures, developed quicker changeover times between products, staggered lunch breaks to keep the lines moving, scheduled all-chocolate days on the production floor, and so on. When it comes to improving efficiency, if you can think of it, do it!

After years of intense work, we’ve come out with a clear vision of where we are going and how we are going to get there. Even if lean operations and building our pipeline were our top priorities and ruled everything that came after those changes, our focus after 9/11 went toward the goal of becoming an organization that had a strong control of all its complex parts so that we could produce our excellent, high-quality quiches and desserts with efficiency and, above all, at a profit.

All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it—walk.
—Ayn Rand

T
hrough every new development in the relatively short history of Love and Quiches, one common theme always held firm: we were constantly moving to the next level. No matter what we encountered, we were always upping our game, building our organization, and preparing for future growth. If your company is going to truly thrive, you must be ready to constantly revolutionize your operations—sometimes in ways you never foresaw—and take the business to the next level.

In the years following 9/11, we continued our habit of forward momentum and took some giant steps. The sense of urgency created by that crisis and, later in the decade, by the financial crisis and the Great Recession became a significant lever for change for us to once
again move to the next level—and to keep doing so even through the present day.

Even before those tragic events, as we crossed over into the twenty-first century, it had become apparent that too many decisions were still being made at the top, and we knew this had to change. We had learned to be lean, but an equally crucial achievement was the building of our organization from the bottom up with strong, high-performance teams and equally strong directors and middle managers. We needed to further develop an organization that could support the demand we had created.

One of the rewards of successfully growing an organization is seeing it develop from humble beginnings—perhaps just you and some part-time help—into a real fleshed-out and well-organized team. After the early years, when we hired our first rudimentary team, I was no longer alone. As our organization grew, more and more of us had the same goals at stake. We were all climbing the mountain together, solving and overcoming each obstacle. Now there are a lot of us, and each of us is skilled in his or her particular area. All the parts have come together, and, finally, we have more of a dance than a struggle to the top. But we
do
need to keep climbing. There is no other way to do it.