Alan Reed With Chicagoland Food And Beverage Network

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois, it’s time for Chicago Business Radio brought to you by FirmSpace, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firmspace.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey everybody, and welcome to Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kantor. And before we dove in today, just want to give a shout out to our sponsor firmSpace. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories that we are so special thanks to firm SpaceX for sponsoring today’s show. On today’s show, we have the executive director of the Chicago Land, Food and Beverage Network, so please welcome to the show, Mr. Alan Reed. Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Reed: [00:00:47] Thanks so much. Glad to be here.

Max Kantor: [00:00:48] So let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit. What is the Chicagoland food and beverage network?

Alan Reed: [00:00:55] Well, we are a about four year old industry organization that brings together the food and beverage industry of the greater Chicagoland area to do great things. Sometimes just compare notes to network, but also talk about innovation and growth and how to make our industry better, how to make our communities better and everything in between.

Max Kantor: [00:01:18] So how big is the food and beverage industry in the city of Chicago?

Alan Reed: [00:01:23] It’s huge. Everyone knows us. Chicago is a is a food and beverage town. But there are, if you’re there are forty five hundred food and beverage companies. So not not just restaurants. We’re not counting restaurants in there, but these are the companies that actually manufacture, distribute and market food products. And over one hundred and fifty thousand people in the greater Chicagoland area work in food and beverage. So it’s an important industry for our economy here. We consider ourselves the Silicon Valley of food and beverage here. And again, we are a we are a food city and again full of just, I’ll say, terrific companies and terrific people who sort of make this amazing ecosystem work.

Max Kantor: [00:02:12] How did Chicago become such a hub for the food and beverage industry?

Alan Reed: [00:02:19] Wow. It goes back a long time. And actually back to the world’s fair back in while I think eighteen, seventy one and Chicago was sort of a showplace for what was happening in in the meatpacking and sort of the meat industry and some of the signs of the progress that we were showing, like we have these amazing trains so you can get the the processed meat all over the country and incredible sort of factory equipment, et cetera. And it really started started from there. A lot of the companies that call Chicago home had their had their origins around sort of this meatpacking industry that we were really leading the way in and have for a couple of hundred years.

Max Kantor: [00:03:10] Oh, that’s interesting. That’s a that’s a history I was not familiar with. So I found that very interesting that all all about that with the Chicago Land, Food and Beverage Network, like you talked about the history of the meatpacking industry in Chicago, now there’s so much more such a broad industry with all different types of people. So what type of members do you have in the Chicago land, food and Beverage Network?

Alan Reed: [00:03:33] Wow. So we have big members, small numbers and sort of everywhere in between. So some of our some of our large members are the are the names that people know. So the Kraft Heinz, Mars, Wrigley, Kellogg, Tyson, PepsiCo and then some of our we would call them emerging brands. Some of our emerging brands are they’re great, just innovative growing companies here like like Simple Mills and Farmer’s Fridge and Blake seed based snacks. And and so many more. I’m forgetting hundreds of them. And then we also have this, I’ll say amazing. Sort of only in Chicago do you call a company that that does a billion dollars in sales mid-size. But we have these mid-sized companies who are sort of like plus or right around a billion dollars in sales. And those are the Eli’s cheesecakes and mini meats and and and Toronto bakeries, et cetera. So it’s a really big, small and everywhere in between, which is part of what makes Chicago just such an exciting place to be in the food and beverage business.

Max Kantor: [00:04:52] Yeah, for sure. And it’s it’s really interesting how you have all these types of businesses and companies under this one network. So I have to know how do you help these smaller you mentioned emerging brands and even mid-sized brands, how do you help them learn from some of the bigger brands all within your network?

Alan Reed: [00:05:11] Well, so we would say that we want them to learn from each other. There are amazing things that are large global companies that they can do, that small companies cannot. And also, I’ll say knowledge and resources and consultants and contractors and others that large companies have access to. But I got to tell you those startups like they do amazing things, and I will tell you we hear this all the time that the big companies learn as much from the small companies as the small companies do, the big companies, they’re really again, I think it’s really what makes Chicago just such a vital, amazing place. Because, yeah, again, a a three year old company run by a 30 year old who’s never run a food business before stands toe to toe with executives from again. Some of our great members like like Adam.

Max Kantor: [00:06:10] Yeah, it’s a great atmosphere for collaboration. So with that collaboration, do you guys put on events to help companies get together to network and learn from each other?

Alan Reed: [00:06:23] Absolutely. It’s one of the things we we pride ourselves on and sort of built our organization around. So we go back pre-COVID, starting back in twenty nineteen. We put on 40 in-person events a year, and we don’t believe in going and putting those in sort of, let me say, windowless hotel ballrooms. We like to put them in exciting places around Chicago with great views or inside amazing companies or inside great agencies, or I mean, really so that people can not just network, but they can also see what is the rest of the industry doing and what does it look like and what’s exciting to me again, because we have so many great companies here that engage in food and beverage.

Max Kantor: [00:07:10] You mentioned COVID, and I’m sure COVID had a big impact on not only the events you were putting on, but your members of the network as well. I know how it impacted the restaurant industry and not just the restaurant industry, but the food and beverage industry at large. So how did you guys help companies within the food and beverage industry cope with COVID? And how did your events adjust to the pandemic?

Alan Reed: [00:07:35] Well, we very quickly switched all of our events for four, 20 20 into virtual. So that was the first step, and then we realized there was such a need for connection that we actually added events. We ended up doing over 60 events. So I mean, over one a week, if you can even wrap your head around that, sometimes you have trouble to do because so many questions were coming up so quickly. And it’s like, Hey, what are you doing about this? What are you doing about this? And like, what we really found is that people just needed a place to talk about, Hey, here’s what I’m facing. Are you facing the same thing? What are you doing about that? And it truly became a virtual sort of place for conversation or two to move these important topics forward and just keep the industry really up to speed on what others and industry were doing. And I’ll tell you, we actually change some of the way we do our events. We’re like, Wow, we don’t. No one knows what’s right or wrong. Let’s just let’s let people just talk and discuss and and ask questions. And it’s not necessarily about this is the right way. It’s about this. This is how we’re doing it.

Max Kantor: [00:08:53] Absolutely. And getting people together, you give them the opportunity, like you mentioned, to learn from one another and really start to identify kind of what were the old trends in the industry? What are the current trends? And hey, when we put our minds together, what could those future trends be? You know,

Alan Reed: [00:09:09] Absolutely. And I’ll also say giving people connections or companies connections to to resources they need to make their business better on things like the the PPP program. We have some terrific banking members, so we connected with some of our some of our corporate members so that they could actually tap into some of the resources that were being offered.

Max Kantor: [00:09:35] Now, speaking of resources, I know, you know, these networking events are just an amazing resource that we’ve been talking about what other resources are available to members in the Chicagoland food and beverage network?

Alan Reed: [00:09:48] Well, so we have quite a few things. So we we actually keep a virtual library of really all of the events and the contacts within there. We have a searchable database of all of our members. So if you’re looking for a particular person company or expertize, you can you can search by that. In addition, we have and it’s one of our more popular things. We have a co-packer database, so co-packers and co. manufacturers are people you can hire to package or manufacture your products for you. And again, a much, a much requested part of what we do. We also we also work hard to connect people. It’s like someone will have a member ask, Wow, do you know anybody that can do this? I’m like, I don’t just know one. I know. 10. Let me let me make sure introductions are made for you. So we do do an introduction service and we also do do some consulting. We have many companies who are interested in what noncompetitive companies are doing. So we again pre-COVID and we’re ramping this back up for before next year. But we also do. We also do sort of consulting and sort of innovation tours where you can literally see how others are are working in industry.

Max Kantor: [00:11:10] What trends are you seeing coming within the food and beverage industry?

Alan Reed: [00:11:16] Oh wow, there’s they’re all. It’s an odd moment just because there’s so much happening. I’d say the biggest trend right now is everybody is looking for additional suppliers where the big trend is we’re moving from. What we used to call sort of just in time, so you get your ingredients and have everything done just in time to make it and get it to the the retailer exactly when their customer needs it. And with all the disruptions in the supply chain sort of across the world and not just in food and beverage, but in lots of places, we’re now they’re calling it just in case. So now we’re we’re watching companies who used to be great at just in time, moving to having a little more inventory, making sure they’re they have their ingredients, making sure that that they they have the things that are absolutely critical to their business to service their customers needs. So I’d say that’s one big trend is just the world of the supply chain is changing in a really important way to really change the way the food and beverage industry works. And I’ll say the other is it’s this interesting balance between how much are people going to eat out at restaurants and how much are people going to eat at home and making sure that that as a food company, you’re you’re addressing both of those both of those segments. And and nobody knows exactly how it’s all going to play out. We’ve seen restaurants come back in a really strong way, but still not quite as strong as they were pre-pandemic. And grocery stores had a great year in twenty twenty. They’re down a little bit this year, but still up if they look at look back at twenty nineteen in most cases. So lots of exciting things, a lot of lots of exciting things going on.

Max Kantor: [00:13:11] Alan, you sound very passionate about what you do within the network. So what would you say is the most rewarding part of your job?

Alan Reed: [00:13:21] Oh, wow. So first, I love working with all of our members and just sort of being a part of this incredible industry overall. But I have to say, the thing that has been most rewarding, especially in the past year, is we we did a crazy little project where we asked a bunch of ingredient companies if they had ingredients they could donate and then we would turn that into something like manufactured and we donate it to to area food banks just based on what they sort of had lying around that that pilot project has led to something that we call the bigger table and bigger table basically works with ingredient companies, manufacturers, food scientists and others to literally formulate healthy product that we gather the ingredients for manufacture and then donate to area food banks. So last year, we donated five hundred and sixty five thousand servings of healthy food to Chicagoland area to food banks. This year, we’re on track to deliver one point five million servings of healthy food. Wow. And it’s just it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a crazy time to do anything like this. But there are hungry people who are really struggling through the pandemic, and it’s just it’s been so amazing to work with great companies willing to just roll up their sleeves, volunteer, donate and get an amazing project done.

Max Kantor: [00:14:53] That is amazing. And I mean, I can’t imagine the impact that that you’re having on these people’s lives. It’s so great what you’re doing. It’s just amazing for the community. So for anyone that is interested in becoming a member or becoming a sponsor, where can they learn more about the Chicagoland food and beverage network?

Alan Reed: [00:15:13] So easiest to go to our website. That’s W-w-what Chicagoland. Org or w-w-what bigger schlaug if they’re interested in our charitable mission?

Max Kantor: [00:15:26] Well, Alan, thank you so much for being on the show today. I can say that I am both a fan of food and beverage, so I think you’re doing a really great stuff for the community and the food and beverage industries in the Chicagoland area. So thank you for being on the show today. Thank you, Matt. And once again, thank you to firm SpaceX for sponsoring today’s episode. I’m your host, Max Cantor. This has been Chicago Business Radio and we will see you next time.

Intro: [00:15:57] This episode is Chicago. Business Radio has been brought to you by firm SpaceX, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firme Space.com.