“We Understand”
 
At American Foodservice, ground beef patty manufacture is a matter of efficiency, safety, and technology. Oh, and a very long-term workforce, too.
 

Meat Processing October 2002
By Steve Bjerklie
 
Founded in 1972, American Foodservice Corp., located in the famously rolling countryside of eastern Pennsylvania – Chadds Ford, the hometown of the painting Wyeth family, is just down the road from American Foodservice’s headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa. — has quietly become one of the most respected processors of ground-beef patties in North America. The company is a member of an industry segment that has endured more than its fair share of media notoriety and regulatory burden in recent years, but crises and headlines have avoided the firm. The reasons are several, but boil down to this: American Foodservice knows how to process meat patties efficiently, productively, and safely. It maintains a long-term, well-trained workforce, and employs the best new technology it can find to support a continuing effort
to be the very best in its kind of business.

“We understand we are ground beef manufacturers,”
says Ron Allen, chairman and CEO. “We understand the commitment that’s needed.”

The company’s great and enviable processing expertise has grown in part as a result of close partnerships with some of the largest major fast food accounts, which American Foodservice supplies with ground beef patties up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as Arizona. Initially, one of AFS’s customers had on-site inspectors inside American Foodservice’s plant around the clock, checking to make sure exacting specifications were met by each and every patty. In cooperation and conjunction with their customers AFS has developed what it believes to be the best food-safety program in the ground beef industry. These customer expectations, which came on top of obligations to meet ever-stricter USDA regulations pertaining to ground-beef processors, produced at American Foodservice the kind of meat-plant management that impressed even a professional skeptic like Eric Schlosser, the author of “Fast Food Nation.”Schlosser described American Foodservice’s sister plant in Fort Worth,Texas, in his best-selling book, as “new and clean.” The Pennsylvania plant processes a one and a half million pounds of patties every week, Fort Worth processes about a 2.5 million pounds.
 
The company’s roots draw down to the days when it was a patty-and-chicken processor and distributor for Gino’s, an eastern fast-food chain. This business was spun off of Gino’s in 1972, and bought by a partnership, establishing American Foodservice as an independent company in King of Prussia. The present plant was built in 1974 – “our ticket to expansion” — and a year later the company got a large fast-food account, which it has proudly serviced ever since. “We’ve watched one of our major customers change ownership several times,” comments Allen, “but that’s never changed our relationship with them. We have developed strong relationship with all our customers and strive daily to not only meet but exceed their expectations.”
 
“In 1993, we expanded our market by developing a rewarding vendor partnership with another major fast-food company that has an exceptional focus on food-safety. This customer’s dedication helped both of us better define food safety in ground beef,” recalls Barry Renninger, president and COO of American Foodservice. “We were confident that we could help improve our new customer’s food safety program. And with their help, we did. Sure, it was challenging, because our customer was not going to do what had been done before. They wanted something at a much higher level. The ongoing relationship with all of our fast- food accounts continues to bring new ideas and technology to American Foodservice.”
 
Recently, the company began using DNA tests developed by DuPont Corp. to get E. coli results within 24 hours from raw materials as well as finished products.American Foodservice is a big proponent of testing.
 
An earlier and defining situation had brought American Foodservice to the point where it could be just the kind of meat supplier the fast-food industry needed. Back in the 1980s, American Foodservice went through what Allen calls “an identity crisis.” Though its major fast-food business was constant, some other accounts changed and a slowly diminishing ownership partnership involving the Marriott Corp., which had bought Gino’s in 1981, caused other changes. Allen and his partners took stock.“ We decided to focus strictly on ground beef. We decided that’s who we are. ”He credits then-president Don Blackburn with guiding the company through some difficult transitions. “He was a very focused, very practical individual. He was my mentor,” comments the protégé. When the identity-decision was made, American Foodservice refurbished the King of Prussia plant to concentrate strictly on patties, and in 1984 the Fort Worth plant was built to help supply a major fast-food customer’s southern, midwestern, and southwestern units.
 
Today American Foodservice comprises the King of Prussia operation; Texas American Foodservice in Fort Worth, which processes IQF meat products for the fast-food and casual-dining trade (this is the operation described in “Fast Food Nation”); American Fresh Foods, a joint-venture operation inside the Fort Worth plant with Fairbank Farms, which produces case-ready MAP retail fresh ground beef products; and Fort Worth Foods, which processes fresh patties and meat products for fast-food, retail grocers, and the USDA school-lunch program. Allen comments: “We entered the retail market in the year 2000. We teamed up with Fairbank Farms, a leader in case-ready MAP technology. Our synergies were terrific from the start. Once we were in the retail business, we opened a second plant in 2001 in Fort Worth to service the growing needs of our retail customers.”
 
These two new businesses will do $50 million in sales in 2002. Allen expects consolidated sales in 2002 to total about $250 million, and overall the company employs 360.
 
He and Renninger quickly pass credit for the company’s processing success to its workforce. “We have world-class employees who want to be world-class in what they are doing,” says Renninger. “We train our employees in their responsibilities, and then we trust them with those responsibilities.” He adds:“We pay well, we provide great benefits, and we have an incentive plan.” One result, in addition to a focused, productive processing operation that produces microbiologically clean and safe meat products, is one of the meat industry’s most stunning statistics: The average length of employment of an American Foodservice employee in the King of Prussia plant, which employs 90, is 25 years. There are plants in the industry that’d be satisfied with 25 months – there are plants where 25 months would be a big improvement. “I’m the new guy,” says Renninger. “I’ve been here 10 years.
 
“You can read lots of things in books about how to do it, techniques and such,” he continues. “But you’ve got to make things happen in the plant. What really matters is the relationship between you and the employees. For example, we ask a lot of questions about what our employees do and how they do it. We want them to think about their jobs; we want to know what’s working for them. They know best. After all, they do it everyday. We do a lot of things that a consultant might label ‘total-quality-management,’ but it happens here without us ever setting up a formal program. We simply made our employees our team.”
 
Granted, processing ground beef patties does not seem like a complicated or messy procedure, as opposed to, say, high-volume steer slaughtering. Inside the King of Prussia operation, the processing lines are linear and straightforward. Combos of raw materials are lifted and dumped into two huge blenders after micro testing, and the meat is ground through Weiler grinders after fat-lean ratios are calibrated on an Anyl-Ray unit. Patties are formed on five high-volume Formax 26 machines. The plant runs two shifts a day, five days a week, processing, as noted, about 1.5 million pounds per week.
 
On a tour, Allen wants to get to the rear of the plant to show off American Foodservice’s newest technology: automatic patty loaders from F.R. Drake (see sidebar, page 20). “I could watch these things all day,” he says. “They’re amazing machines.”
 
Allen himself is one of the company’s longest-term employees, having been with American Foodservice since the Gino’s days. His quick speech and consonant-tapping accent betray an upstate New York childhood – his parents owned an IGA store, in fact. “I grew up seeing all this from the customer’s end,” he observes. “I think that has helped me understand our customer’s point of view better. It comes down to meeting needs. The important part all the way around is listening – listening to what the customer wants, talking to customers clearly about what you’re capable of, and listening to your employees about how they can contribute to the company and the business. I know that sometimes it can be difficult to listen inside a noisy meat plant, but just go into a quiet room. Really, it’s the key to everything. Helping my parents run a grocery store, I saw what worked and what didn’t. Listening definitely worked, I tell you.”
 

Mesmerizing technology: “I love watching it”
 
The newest technology at American Foodservice has increased production as well as productivity, keeps product clean and moving — and is among the coolest things to watch in any meat plant. Earlier this year, the company installed patty-loaders from F.R. Drake, which rapidly and automatically align and stack frozen patties right out of nitrogen tunnel-freezers and put them into boxes.
 
The first step was getting the tunnels in place. American Foodservice had space for 45-foot tunnels, and a need for the tunnels to freeze up to 7,000 pounds of patties per hour. After a couple of suppliers shook their heads at the seeming impossibility of the job, BOC Gases came through with just what the company wanted. But now American Foodservice was faced with the problem of hundreds of patties emerging from the tunnels every minute. The company figured it had to hire more people, or try to automate the process and remain competitive. Not that American Foodservice is against human employees – the average length of employment in the King of Prussia, Pa., plant’s workforce is 25 years – but, as chairman and CEO Ron Allen says, “You put a person on patty-stacking, and right there you’ve increased your food safety risk. I’d rather have my people doing something where they can think.” Three Drake units, installed this year, solved the problem, splendidly.
 
Each loader receives rows of patties directly from the BOC nitrogen tunnel, gathers them into exact-count stacks, and delivers them to a carousel. Stacks are transferred from the carousel to a station where they are organized into a programmed stack pattern and loaded into polybag- lined boxes (erected on a K&R unit). Empty boxes are automatically fed to the loaders and filled cases are automatically taken away to a weigh station. The automatic conveyors were also supplied by Drake. It’s a quick and surprisingly elegant operation – mesmerizing, even. “I love watching it,” says Allen.
 
Drake is well known for its hotdog-loaders. When Drake presented a new concept for a patty- loader that was both fast and versatile, American Foodservice was immediately interested. “Our maintenance and manufacturing personnel knew they could make this work, and their focus and ability to work as a team with Drake personnel toward a common goal helped make this a successful project. As always it’s our employees’ consistent dedication and our vendors cooperation that makes our company successful,” boasts Allen, before returning to the technical strategy involved in the decision to install the patty loaders. “Too often, I think, processors think about a line from the beginning point, from the raw materials and blending aspects, and put a lot of technology and investment there. What helped us is thinking about our freezing needs, which got us thinking about what to do with all the patties coming out of the freezers. We thought it out from finish to start, if you will. But the result is a what I’d call a perfect frozen patty, properly stacked and boxed.”