ARTICLE
Food far and Wide The Eugene are food and beverage sector posts strong gains and reaches global markets view pdf version of the article see the full issue of OPEN for Business Magazine (June / July 2015) By Cara Roberts Murez For Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce Whether it’s a healthy muesli breakfast, a dish of ice cream, a chilled glass of beer or a mug of hot tea at the end of a long day, it is made here. These foods and drinks are just a few of the many edible products that workers brew, mix and bake at Eugene-Springfield area business. Food and beverage manufacturing is thriving right now in this community, but it’s also an industry that has deep roots, with manufacturing of consumables dating back many decades in Lane County. Thanks in part to the fact that food is essential, the local industry was resilient during the great recession, and has been growing since the recovery with gains both in employment figures and in number of businesses. Projections suggest this is just the beginning. “We lost a lot of manufacturing during the great recession, but the food and beverage sector just kind of flattened out and then continued to grow right when the recession was over,” said Brian Rooney, regional economist for Lane and Douglas counties for the Oregon Employment Department. It “has had substantial growth since then,” Rooney added. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of businesses that make up Lane County’s food and beverage sector grew from 125 to 144, according to Oregon Employment Department figures. The sector includes businesses that manufacture food and beverages, as well as merchant wholesalers of grocery, farm products and distilled spirits, beer and wine. Jobs in the sector increased by 23 percent during that time frame, from 2,907 to 3,572. Even in 2011, when other manufacturing had not climbed out of the recession, food and beverage manufacturing was building. Projections made in 2012 were that employment would grow by 13.2 percent over 10 years in sector. So far business is on track to significantly bypass that number, Rooney said. Growth was a little over 15.6 percent in the first three years. That would represent a 52 percent growth rate overall if the growth continued over the full 10-year period, Rooney said. “It looks like 2015 is going to be the second strongest growth year since the end of the recession in 2010,” Rooney said. Looking ahead The growing success of the products crafted here has made this industry something the area is now known for throughout Oregon, in other states and even internationally. In recent years, especially, Eugene has developed an identity as a manufacturer of quality craft beer, cereals, frozen desserts, teas, snack foods and honey, making it a highly important sector that brings money back into this community and provides family-wage jobs. This also has set the tone for what it’s like to live here. The Eugene Chamber wants to capitalize on this opportunity for local businesses. The Chamber supports traded-sector businesses, helping them solve issues and take advantage of the many growth opportunities, with the goal of retaining and creating jobs in the Eugene-Springfield area. The Eugene Chamber along with EWEB and Lane Workforce Partnership identified the Food and Beverage sector as one of the economic engines of the community with a great amount of room for growth potential, more even than the nearly 150 food and beverage companies already here and the nearly 3,300 people they employ. The Chamber is committed to working with our partners in economic development to be a leader in developing and implementing a plan to grow the food and beverage manufacturing sector in our region. In January 2016, the Eugene Chamber convened more than 30 food and beverage leaders to discuss barriers and opportunities for growth in Lane County. The sector identified six top areas where the sector strategies team can work to better support the industry. The team is working to start, grow and attract more food and beverage companies, to streamline regulations and permitting, and to smooth the cost of utilities, said Leigh Anne Hogue, director of economic development for the Chamber of Commerce. It also is formulating plans for branding and promoting Lane County, building a stronger workforce and increasing collaboration within the industry, Hogue added. SnoTemp Cold Storage The success of the industry is on display at SnoTemp Cold Storage in West Eugene, where at any given time the fruits – and vegetables – of many local harvests, as well as cases of craft beer created by Eugene brewers, ice cream mixed a few miles away and granola baked in ovens in the Whiteaker neighborhood, wait in cold and freezing spaces for their next destinations Here at this family-owned freezing and storage business, it is possible to see a snapshot of the vast diversity of Lane County’s food and beverage manufacturing industry. Each dome that tops SnoTemp’s 235,000 square-foot structure represents an expansion, from the original 1957 building to the 8th expansion in 2014 resulting in over 5 football fields of space storing everything from raw goods to finished desserts awaiting shipment to local grocers and far off locations throughout the United States and the world. “We are only successful if our customers are successful,” SnoTemp CEO Jason Lafferty said. “It’s been really encouraging to watch the food and beverage ecosystem build out.” At SnoTemp, the company provides an integral link in the food supply chain, keeping food cold and safe. The Lafferty family has owned its freezing and storage businesses in Eugene and Albany since 1957 and 1974, respectively, uniting them under the same name in 2010. The business employs about 100 people, three-fourths of them in Eugene where temperature-controlled warehouse space ranges from 20 degrees below zero to ambient temperature. In addition to preservation, the business offers food and beverage manufacturers inventory control and order fulfillment services. Lafferty has witnessed firsthand the boom in craft brewing and in local frozen dessert manufacturing. He said he has seen the area transition from being a good incubator for these business to being a place where they can mature, as well. SnoTemp has invested in its own future by adding a second entrance for trucks in 2013 and investing more than $1 million in energy efficiency in the past half-dozen years. “If we didn’t exist, everybody would have to build their own warehouse,” Lafferty said. “The value that we provide is that we take the whole warehousing and logistics piece from our customer, and let them focus their capital on making products and selling products.” Ninkasi Brewing Company Eugene’s own Ninkasi Brewing Company has experienced that first-hand, using SnoTemp’s services to keep its beer cold and ready for customers. Craft beer’s brewing success during and since the recession is certainly among the reasons that the sector is successful. At Ninkasi – which started in mid-2006 in leased space within a Springfield Restaurant – is at the center of that success, producing more than 100,000 barrels this past year, making it the 36th largest craft brewer in the country. The beer manufacturing company, owned by Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge and aptly named after the Sumerian goddess of fermenting, also operates in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Its extensive space spans a city street, its campus framed by walls in the brewer’s signature teal-and-black color scheme. The company operates a 55-barrel and a 90-barrel brewing system, has a tasting room and tours for beer fans, and runs its own metal shop. Ninkasi employs 109 people, a majority of them locally, and sells its beer in 14 states. Its first beer – Total Domination IPA – is still one of its flagships, but now shares the limelight with six additional flagships, five seasonal beers, special releases each quarter and a single-batch research and development series that lets the brewers flex their creative genius while taking the company back to its small-scale roots. “For us it was the right time with that right beer and it’s just kind of grown from there,” said Communications Director Ali AAsum. Ninkasi wants to make great beer and support its community, AAsum said. The company works closely with local business, including SnoTemp and printer Shelton Turnbull. “A lot of things that we do here are within the community,” said Jennifer Olson-Morzenti, vice president of operations for Ninkasi. “We’ve tried to stay within that and help grow the economy as well.” “What we bring to the community, along with the other food and beverage (manufacturers), is the sustainable jobs, the living wages and working together as a group to continue to support that,” Olson-Morzenti added. Wildtime Foods The thriving industry is great news for local food manufacturers like Wildtime Foods, which has operated in this community for 35 years. When this natural foods business began in the early 1980s, the owners sold granola delivered by bicycle. Though it has come a long way in sophistication and sales, Wildtime Foods has never veered from its hand-made beginnings. In the first floor of its two-story space in the Whiteaker area, not far from carefully organized boxes of cashews and tubs of oil, employees pour in grains, nuts and dried fruits by hand to make products such as its Organic Swiss Muesli sold in stores under the Grizzlies Brand. Many of the granolas, cereals and trail mixes that the company produces are mixed by hand, baked in small ovens and packaged in the same building before being distributed to local stores and shipped to natural foods grocers in Manhattan, Vermont and Tampa, Florida. “There’s a level of consistency and quality, but there’s also a uniqueness when it comes to texture and appearance and flavor that can be achieved” through the handmade process, said Whit Hemphill, who has been co-owner of the company for about four years with Brad Averill, who bought Wildtime Foods in 2001. Wildtime Foods employs about 30 people now, almost doubling its numbers after moving to its new location about a year and a half ago. One of the perks of being an employee is a food allowance for Grizzlies products, which creates an effective quality control at the company, as well. “If anything changed, we would certainly hear about it because we have a vocal – in a good way – crew that takes pride in what they make,” Hemphill said. The national movement to eat food sourced locally, organically or with familiar ingredients, has been a boon to natural food manufacturers. Sales of organic food in particular were up 11 percent in 2014 from the previous year, according to the Organic Trade Association, nearing a milestone of a 5 percent share of the total food market and totaling $39.1 billion in sales. Yet, Hemphill said, his is not a company that has ever pursued the latest trends. “We’ve been pioneers in the sense that we’ve been doing it a long time,” Hemphill said, “but at the same time we haven’t had to go out and spend a ton of marketing dollars to try to get the message into people’s heads.” Attune Foods In recent years, many local businesses have received national attention and dollars, which in some cases has led to major capital investments (see related story). These companies include the Peace cereal line that was a part of local natural foods company Golden Temple and is now made by Attune Foods, owned by Post Holdings. Attune Foods, which produces Peace, Sweet Home Farm, Erewhon, Uncle Sam, Attune, Willamette Valley and Golden Temple bulk brands, makes nearly 50 million pounds of granola annually in Eugene. The company employs 300 people at its Eugene location. “When I started (15 years ago), we had one oven and one packaging line,” said Chris Cameron, senior director of supply chain for Attune Foods. “We now have two ovens, two extruders and five packaging lines.” Attune Foods specializes in the natural and specialty cereal market. The company sells its products in almost every state, as well as abroad in places such as South Africa and Singapore. It also has a commitment to feeding the hungry, donating 1.2 million servings of cereal to school kids, in a collaboration with other local businesses Grain Millers and GloryBee, since 2006, Cameron said. Among the reasons for the company’s success are its location. The Eugene location ensures easy access to food technologists for testing products for safety and quality at area universities and in Portland without having to deal with the congestion and higher cost of doing business that would come with being located in Portland, Cameron said. Catalysts for growth Eugene is a good place for food and beverage manufacturers in part because it has close access to a broad range of agricultural products grown in the Willamette Valley and along the West Coast between the Yakima Valley and California. We also have access to great water to support the breweries. Infrastructure, including commercial space, access to energy due to other types of manufacturing, and proximity to Interstate 5 and railways have also contributed to the growth, regional economist Rooney said. The Lane County Sector Strategies Team led by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce will continue its focused work in this sector over the next three to five years, Hogue said. The goal is to build upon those strategies and increase food and beverage sector growth. This has the potential to positively affect food and beverage manufacturers, but also would impact many other related businesses, including printing, packaging, shipping, advertising, food storage, real estate and construction, and would create jobs. Food and beverage manufacturing can help define a community, Rooney said. If the products have a good reputation, that helps with overall perception of the area. We also have a strong talent base, partially because the talent moves between businesses in the cluster, gaining experience that makes everyone stronger. Lane County has long had a variety of grassroots food manufacturers, and the growing number of these businesses says something about the community itself, said Hemphill from Wildtime Foods. “In terms of the innovation and the different products that are here and the small businesses,” Hemphill said, “I think that speaks a lot to the independent nature of people that move to Eugene and that want to live here.”
Food far and Wide The Eugene are food and beverage sector posts strong gains and reaches global markets view pdf version of the article see the full issue of OPEN for Business Magazine (June / July 2015) By Cara Roberts Murez For Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce
Whether it’s a healthy muesli breakfast, a dish of ice cream, a chilled glass of beer or a mug of hot tea at the end of a long day, it is made here.
These foods and drinks are just a few of the many edible products that workers brew, mix and bake at Eugene-Springfield area business.
Food and beverage manufacturing is thriving right now in this community, but it’s also an industry that has deep roots, with manufacturing of consumables dating back many decades in Lane County.
Thanks in part to the fact that food is essential, the local industry was resilient during the great recession, and has been growing since the recovery with gains both in employment figures and in number of businesses.
Projections suggest this is just the beginning.
“We lost a lot of manufacturing during the great recession, but the food and beverage sector just kind of flattened out and then continued to grow right when the recession was over,” said Brian Rooney, regional economist for Lane and Douglas counties for the Oregon Employment Department.
It “has had substantial growth since then,” Rooney added.
Between 2010 and 2015, the number of businesses that make up Lane County’s food and beverage sector grew from 125 to 144, according to Oregon Employment Department figures. The sector includes businesses that manufacture food and beverages, as well as merchant wholesalers of grocery, farm products and distilled spirits, beer and wine.
Jobs in the sector increased by 23 percent during that time frame, from 2,907 to 3,572.
Even in 2011, when other manufacturing had not climbed out of the recession, food and beverage manufacturing was building.
Projections made in 2012 were that employment would grow by 13.2 percent over 10 years in sector. So far business is on track to significantly bypass that number, Rooney said.
Growth was a little over 15.6 percent in the first three years. That would represent a 52 percent growth rate overall if the growth continued over the full 10-year period, Rooney said.
“It looks like 2015 is going to be the second strongest growth year since the end of the recession in 2010,” Rooney said.
Looking ahead
The growing success of the products crafted here has made this industry something the area is now known for throughout Oregon, in other states and even internationally.
In recent years, especially, Eugene has developed an identity as a manufacturer of quality craft beer, cereals, frozen desserts, teas, snack foods and honey, making it a highly important sector that brings money back into this community and provides family-wage jobs. This also has set the tone for what it’s like to live here.
The Eugene Chamber wants to capitalize on this opportunity for local businesses.
The Chamber supports traded-sector businesses, helping them solve issues and take advantage of the many growth opportunities, with the goal of retaining and creating jobs in the Eugene-Springfield area.
The Eugene Chamber along with EWEB and Lane Workforce Partnership identified the Food and Beverage sector as one of the economic engines of the community with a great amount of room for growth potential, more even than the nearly 150 food and beverage companies already here and the nearly 3,300 people they employ.
The Chamber is committed to working with our partners in economic development to be a leader in developing and implementing a plan to grow the food and beverage manufacturing sector in our region.
In January 2016, the Eugene Chamber convened more than 30 food and beverage leaders to discuss barriers and opportunities for growth in Lane County. The sector identified six top areas where the sector strategies team can work to better support the industry.
The team is working to start, grow and attract more food and beverage companies, to streamline regulations and permitting, and to smooth the cost of utilities, said Leigh Anne Hogue, director of economic development for the Chamber of Commerce.
It also is formulating plans for branding and promoting Lane County, building a stronger workforce and increasing collaboration within the industry, Hogue added.
SnoTemp Cold Storage
The success of the industry is on display at SnoTemp Cold Storage in West Eugene, where at any given time the fruits – and vegetables – of many local harvests, as well as cases of craft beer created by Eugene brewers, ice cream mixed a few miles away and granola baked in ovens in the Whiteaker neighborhood, wait in cold and freezing spaces for their next destinations
Here at this family-owned freezing and storage business, it is possible to see a snapshot of the vast diversity of Lane County’s food and beverage manufacturing industry.
Each dome that tops SnoTemp’s 235,000 square-foot structure represents an expansion, from the original 1957 building to the 8th expansion in 2014 resulting in over 5 football fields of space storing everything from raw goods to finished desserts awaiting shipment to local grocers and far off locations throughout the United States and the world.
“We are only successful if our customers are successful,” SnoTemp CEO Jason Lafferty said. “It’s been really encouraging to watch the food and beverage ecosystem build out.”
At SnoTemp, the company provides an integral link in the food supply chain, keeping food cold and safe.
The Lafferty family has owned its freezing and storage businesses in Eugene and Albany since 1957 and 1974, respectively, uniting them under the same name in 2010.
The business employs about 100 people, three-fourths of them in Eugene where temperature-controlled warehouse space ranges from 20 degrees below zero to ambient temperature.
In addition to preservation, the business offers food and beverage manufacturers inventory control and order fulfillment services.
Lafferty has witnessed firsthand the boom in craft brewing and in local frozen dessert manufacturing. He said he has seen the area transition from being a good incubator for these business to being a place where they can mature, as well.
SnoTemp has invested in its own future by adding a second entrance for trucks in 2013 and investing more than $1 million in energy efficiency in the past half-dozen years.
“If we didn’t exist, everybody would have to build their own warehouse,” Lafferty said.
“The value that we provide is that we take the whole warehousing and logistics piece from our customer, and let them focus their capital on making products and selling products.”
Ninkasi Brewing Company
Eugene’s own Ninkasi Brewing Company has experienced that first-hand, using SnoTemp’s services to keep its beer cold and ready for customers.
Craft beer’s brewing success during and since the recession is certainly among the reasons that the sector is successful.
At Ninkasi – which started in mid-2006 in leased space within a Springfield Restaurant – is at the center of that success, producing more than 100,000 barrels this past year, making it the 36th largest craft brewer in the country.
The beer manufacturing company, owned by Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge and aptly named after the Sumerian goddess of fermenting, also operates in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Its extensive space spans a city street, its campus framed by walls in the brewer’s signature teal-and-black color scheme.
The company operates a 55-barrel and a 90-barrel brewing system, has a tasting room and tours for beer fans, and runs its own metal shop. Ninkasi employs 109 people, a majority of them locally, and sells its beer in 14 states.
Its first beer – Total Domination IPA – is still one of its flagships, but now shares the limelight with six additional flagships, five seasonal beers, special releases each quarter and a single-batch research and development series that lets the brewers flex their creative genius while taking the company back to its small-scale roots.
“For us it was the right time with that right beer and it’s just kind of grown from there,” said Communications Director Ali AAsum.
Ninkasi wants to make great beer and support its community, AAsum said. The company works closely with local business, including SnoTemp and printer Shelton Turnbull.
“A lot of things that we do here are within the community,” said Jennifer Olson-Morzenti, vice president of operations for Ninkasi. “We’ve tried to stay within that and help grow the economy as well.”
“What we bring to the community, along with the other food and beverage (manufacturers), is the sustainable jobs, the living wages and working together as a group to continue to support that,” Olson-Morzenti added.
Wildtime Foods
The thriving industry is great news for local food manufacturers like Wildtime Foods, which has operated in this community for 35 years.
When this natural foods business began in the early 1980s, the owners sold granola delivered by bicycle. Though it has come a long way in sophistication and sales, Wildtime Foods has never veered from its hand-made beginnings.
In the first floor of its two-story space in the Whiteaker area, not far from carefully organized boxes of cashews and tubs of oil, employees pour in grains, nuts and dried fruits by hand to make products such as its Organic Swiss Muesli sold in stores under the Grizzlies Brand.
Many of the granolas, cereals and trail mixes that the company produces are mixed by hand, baked in small ovens and packaged in the same building before being distributed to local stores and shipped to natural foods grocers in Manhattan, Vermont and Tampa, Florida.
“There’s a level of consistency and quality, but there’s also a uniqueness when it comes to texture and appearance and flavor that can be achieved” through the handmade process, said Whit Hemphill, who has been co-owner of the company for about four years with Brad Averill, who bought Wildtime Foods in 2001.
Wildtime Foods employs about 30 people now, almost doubling its numbers after moving to its new location about a year and a half ago.
One of the perks of being an employee is a food allowance for Grizzlies products, which creates an effective quality control at the company, as well.
“If anything changed, we would certainly hear about it because we have a vocal – in a good way – crew that takes pride in what they make,” Hemphill said.
The national movement to eat food sourced locally, organically or with familiar ingredients, has been a boon to natural food manufacturers.
Sales of organic food in particular were up 11 percent in 2014 from the previous year, according to the Organic Trade Association, nearing a milestone of a 5 percent share of the total food market and totaling $39.1 billion in sales.
Yet, Hemphill said, his is not a company that has ever pursued the latest trends.
“We’ve been pioneers in the sense that we’ve been doing it a long time,” Hemphill said, “but at the same time we haven’t had to go out and spend a ton of marketing dollars to try to get the message into people’s heads.”
Attune Foods
In recent years, many local businesses have received national attention and dollars, which in some cases has led to major capital investments (see related story).
These companies include the Peace cereal line that was a part of local natural foods company Golden Temple and is now made by Attune Foods, owned by Post Holdings.
Attune Foods, which produces Peace, Sweet Home Farm, Erewhon, Uncle Sam, Attune, Willamette Valley and Golden Temple bulk brands, makes nearly 50 million pounds of granola annually in Eugene. The company employs 300 people at its Eugene location.
“When I started (15 years ago), we had one oven and one packaging line,” said Chris Cameron, senior director of supply chain for Attune Foods. “We now have two ovens, two extruders and five packaging lines.”
Attune Foods specializes in the natural and specialty cereal market. The company sells its products in almost every state, as well as abroad in places such as South Africa and Singapore.
It also has a commitment to feeding the hungry, donating 1.2 million servings of cereal to school kids, in a collaboration with other local businesses Grain Millers and GloryBee, since 2006, Cameron said.
Among the reasons for the company’s success are its location.
The Eugene location ensures easy access to food technologists for testing products for safety and quality at area universities and in Portland without having to deal with the congestion and higher cost of doing business that would come with being located in Portland, Cameron said.
Catalysts for growth
Eugene is a good place for food and beverage manufacturers in part because it has close access to a broad range of agricultural products grown in the Willamette Valley and along the West Coast between the Yakima Valley and California. We also have access to great water to support the breweries.
Infrastructure, including commercial space, access to energy due to other types of manufacturing, and proximity to Interstate 5 and railways have also contributed to the growth, regional economist Rooney said.
The Lane County Sector Strategies Team led by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce will continue its focused work in this sector over the next three to five years, Hogue said.
The goal is to build upon those strategies and increase food and beverage sector growth. This has the potential to positively affect food and beverage manufacturers, but also would impact many other related businesses, including printing, packaging, shipping, advertising, food storage, real estate and construction, and would create jobs.
Food and beverage manufacturing can help define a community, Rooney said. If the products have a good reputation, that helps with overall perception of the area. We also have a strong talent base, partially because the talent moves between businesses in the cluster, gaining experience that makes everyone stronger.
Lane County has long had a variety of grassroots food manufacturers, and the growing number of these businesses says something about the community itself, said Hemphill from Wildtime Foods.
“In terms of the innovation and the different products that are here and the small businesses,” Hemphill said, “I think that speaks a lot to the independent nature of people that move to Eugene and that want to live here.”