[Cover Story] U.S. Foodservice

The game of football can be basic: In backyard play, friends vie to get the ball across a self-defined goal line without being touched. No refs. Few rules. A few family fans.

Or it can be complicated: Professional games are based on massive playbooks with x’s, o’s, arrows and lines combining to create single plays, which must build upon each other for successful drives. The hundreds of plays, penalties and regulations are closely watched by officials; "customer" fans and rivals, and the media.

Food distribution is much the same.

It can be basic: Back up a truck to the dock. Load it up. Drive to a store or restaurant. Unload it. Go back for more.

But professionalizing basic distribution—integrating safety and quality, meeting the expectations of customers and going beyond regulation play under the watchful eye of officials, rivals and the media—takes it to an entirely different level. Or as U.S. Foodservice-Indianapolis Vice President of Operations Don Johnson put it, "It complicates it up."

Complicating for Quality. "We back trucks in. We unload trucks. We take orders. And we load trucks. And that’s all we do in operations. It sounds so simple," Johnson said.

"But, then we go out there and complicate it up."

Like professional football teams, U.S. Foodservice has an intricate playbook with extensive plays. "We have 2,000 different plays between bringing merchandise in and delivering it to the customers," he said. Plays that are applied to every step from incoming product to customer delivery to ensure the integrity of the product throughout the chain of custody.

And, just as the quarterback provides the leadership to drive the ball from the middle of the box, so, too, does U.S. Foodservice strive to provide such leadership, driving food quality and safety from the middle of the food chain.

With some variation, food products originate on a farm; move through manufacturing and/or processing; get distributed to a retailer; are sold on a menu or store shelf; and are consumed by the end customer.

"Because we are in the middle, we have to work with both ends – with our suppliers and our customers," said Jorge Hernandez, senior vice president, food safety and quality assurance. "And because we are in the middle, U.S. Foodservice believes that we have the unique opportunity to help drive food safety."

"We have to maintain that chain of custody—the integrity chain, all the way to our customer," said Indianapolis Division President Kurt Cummings. "It’s imperative that we protect the integrity of a product from the time it hits our dock."

Chain of Custody. U.S. Food-service’s product custody may start at its dock, but its quality controls start with the supplier and don’t end until the product arrives in the customer’s hand. The distributor defines its link in the chain of custody as a six-step flow of foods:

supplier management

inspection & unloading

put away

selection & staging

loading

customer delivery

Johnson used the example of product temperature to illustrate the first step: upstream supplier management. Because of the effects that temperature variation can have on virtually any food product, it is one of the distributor’s key control points.

"The moment we start to unload the truck, we’re looking for the temperature checks and things of that nature," Johnson said. "If we run into anything that doesn’t look correct, we shut the system down right on the spot."

No product proceeds further until it is inspected by product specialists, as well as outside resources if needed. "The first thing we do is protect the product to be sure it comes in okay since we’re the middle person," he said.

"Because we are directly in the middle of the food chain," Cummings said, "we have a lot of quality controls in place to see to it that the processor, the manufacturer and the carrier protect the integrity of that product."

To ensure this integrity is maintained throughout its custody, U.S. Foodservice has strict requirements for customer receipt, particularly for ready-to-eat product. With its own fleet of 6,000 tractor trailers that travel more than 250 million miles each year, "We have a policy that I would think is probably the most stringent in the industry," Cummings said. "To protect the chain of custody, we hold ready-to-eat product all the way to delivery to the customer. If that customer refuses any of that product, we want them to refuse it at the time of delivery so we don’t lose custody. If they do accept the product, we can never take it back into our facility."

"Once it’s out of my hands and it’s been at a customer’s for, say, 12 hours or 24 hours, I don’t know what they did with it," Johnson said. "So the moment it comes back and they refuse to put a reason, we have to throw it away. It goes right in the dumpster. It never goes back into stock."

Temperature & Technology. While U.S. Foodservice has stringent requirements both up and downstream, the bulk of its 2,000 plays take place on its home field. For the Fishers, Ind., team, that is a 6,066,000 cubic-foot warehouse, from which more than 200,000 cases of food are shipped each week, with temperature and technology taking top focus.

It was no coincidence that Johnson chose temperature to illustrate the company’s supplier management controls. Throughout the two-day visit at the Indiana facility, there was not a single quality control or area discussed in which the word temperature did not come up at least once.

In fact, the facility has six distinct temperature zones, ranging from the -20oF ice cream freezer to the 65oF produce-ripening area. Even on the 42oF refrigerated dock, no product is allowed to sit for more than 30 to 45 minutes, so product temperature will not vary more than two to three degrees. The temperature is set and foods carefully determined for each zone so as to ensure the highest quality and longest shelf life for each product.

The temperature in each zone is regulated with state-of-the-art systems, so that if any area varies by more than three degrees from its optimum temperature, an alarm goes off, the system is immediately checked and corrections are made.

Incoming Goods. But it is not just within the facility that temperatures are so closely monitored and controlled. During transportation, all high-risk products are required to have Time Temperature Recorders (TTRs). The instruments, nicknamed "tattle-talers," provide a continuous electronic tracking of the product temperature throughout the distribution chain.

In fact, as far as refused deliveries, "the biggest issue is temperature," Johnson said. If a delivery of seafood salad were to come into U.S. Foodservice without a TTR, the load would be refused, he said. "When you’re long-hauling across the country, you need a record to know the temperature is not cycling."

The TTR enables a flow chart print out indicating temperature recordings. The chart is important for finding if temperature has dropped too low as well as if it has risen too high. With produce, for example, a freezing temperature can have a significant impact. "There," Johnson said, "it is not a food safety issue, it is a food quality issue."

This is one area that Outbound Manager Mark Kerfoot sees as having a strong technological evolution in his 33 years with U.S. Foodservice. "Thirty three years ago there was not a lot of technology to secure the proper temperature," he said. "We had trucks that were refrigerated or dry, but we didn’t have the ability we now have to have frozen, cooler and dry all in the same truck."

In addition, he said, temperature is a regular part of training and shift meetings. "We educate and train on how critical it is to maintain temperature."

The Ultimate Win-Win. Not only was his statement applicable to the temperature maintenance of the product but to the technology U.S. Foodservice implements for the "picking" of product.

Three years ago, the company began using a Voice Activated System (VOX). Not only did the system speed up production, it also reduced errors and enabled workers to increase their rate of pay.

When a worker starts his shift, he dons his headset, logs onto the system, and a pleasant woman’s voice directs him to his first slot, and each one thereafter. "She’ll tell me to go to slot 103-1 and pick two or three cases," explained Receiving Supervisor Kevin Shipp. "I place them on the pallet, then read her the check digits to ensure I picked from the right slot."

The system has been the ultimate win-win in quality, profitability and worker satisfaction. On the previous paper-based system, workers were pulling about 900 cases during an eight-hour shift. Today they average 1,600 cases in the same time, with a high of 2,000 cases picked during a regular shift. At the same time, the company has seen a 50 percent reduction in mispicks.

Not only has this increased the company’s profitability and quality, but also, because workers are paid by the case, they are now making more money per shift with less stress.

"I’m the perfect example of the benefits of VOXware," said Warehouse Order Filler Jim Suits, who has been with the company for 11 years. "Honestly, I struggled with errors in the past. Now I look like a god. There’s no more worrying about errors."

The system sped up his rate because he no longer had to worry about errors, he said. "It took away the worry. It made my life easier.

"You can’t go wrong if you do what you’re supposed to do."

A Culture of Safety. Just as integral to U.S. Foodservice quality is its focus on food safety. "When we talk about food safety here, it truly is ingrained in our daily operating practices, or our DNA if you will," Cummings said. "It’s part of everything that we do every day.

"It’s very important for companies that want to excel," he said. "It has to be part of your everyday practices. It can be top of mind and completely out of mind at the same time. When it becomes second nature to you, then you know you have the right policies and procedures in place."

"You can have all the procedures in the world, but you have to follow them. You have to do them," Johnson said.

That’s really an important point, Cummings affirmed. The distribution business is very labor intensive and costly, but it works off relatively low margins, he explained. "So, productivity is critical to us in terms of achieving our profitability goals. In an organization where productivity is servant to food safety, that really tells you an awful lot about the culture and the priorities of the organization."

This is true not only at the Fishers facility, but across the corporation, for which a proactive program was set up "that could be executed every day with every delivery at every time," Hernandez said. This food safety and quality program includes three segments focused on: safety and quality of the supplier and exclusive branded products; procedures and metrics of the divisions and distribution centers; and food safety and quality regulations and standards, both ensuring the regulations are met and working proactively to ensure all sections of the chain are considered, he said. "We’re in the middle of the chain, so sometimes we are forgotten."

Within the distribution centers, there are then three levels of protection, said Frank Ferko, director, distribution, food safety and quality assurance. These include job-specific training; third-party audits to "routinely measure our facilities against both industry and international standards"; and internal assessments by a team of food safety managers to ensure the divisions are following up on audits, and simply, "doing the right things in the right way," he said.

Cummings referred, for example to the facility’s safety specialist, Kevin Burton. "He really doesn’t care what my productivity numbers are. He does nothing but make sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to do," such as conducting audits and checking product, Cummings said. "The things Kevin does behind the scenes is make sure that we’re not just having procedures on paper, we’re doing it correctly."

Trust but Verify. To extend this safety in both directions from the middle, U.S. Foodservice has a policy of "trust but verify," Hernandez said. Those for whom U.S. Foodservice distributes product are held to strict standards, not only of the distributor but also the U.S. Foodservice customer. "Suppliers we choose have to be able to maintain those safety and quality standards. And we can’t just trust them, we have to verify it."

As a part of these standards, U.S. Foodservice requires traceability practices to ensure that any product can be quickly tracked back to its source. As soon as a product arrives at U.S. Foodservice, it receives a "license plate." This identifier tag includes date of receipt and who received it, then receives a bar code label which is scanned to tell where the product is to be taken and how long it should take to get there.

"It is the first step in protection," Johnson said. "We always know where that pallet is." In addition, because of all the information required on the tag, "Not only can I tell where it is, I can tell who has touched it," he said.

Bringing It All Together. The technologies all come together in the delivery phase of the chain. U.S. Foodservice trailers are equipped with three separate, changeable temperature zones. Frozen items are loaded into the front of the trailer where the temperature is set to 0oF and an insulated wall is erected. Refrigerated items are then loaded and another insulated barrier put in place to keep this area at a cool 36oF. Dry goods are then loaded into the remaining back section of the trailer.

But even this loading is further "complicated up" with what Warehouse Truck Loader Keith Johnson calls "organized chaos." That is, though the mix of products and customers on a single pallet would appear chaotic to an outsider, the technology provides an organization by which the complication is made simple.

Through the technology, each item is labeled as to item, customer, pallet and number of cases per stop. This mapping enables organization in both loading and unloading of the truck.

As Delivery Driver Chris McCloud demonstrated in his delivery to Ginger’s Café, one of his 14 stops for the day, the electronic mapping makes his product selection at each stop quick, easy — and accurate. He simply checks the list for items to be delivered, the exact location of the pallet and the item on the pallet. At this particular stop, he said, the customer preferred to receive frozen items first, so McCloud moved the walls to access the front of the trailer and rapidly selected the items needed.

Each truck also has a side access door, so that frozen and refrigerated items can be accessed even if dry goods fill the back access area.

The culture of safety and quality was just as evident away from the warehouse, as McCloud discussed moving items as quickly as possible to maintain temperature; personal delivery to the customer to ensure all specifications are met, not only for customer satisfaction but because items cannot be taken back if they leave U.S. Foodservice chain of custody; and keeping the truck locked for food defense.

With its more than 60 distribution centers supplying more than 250,000 customers across the country, U.S. Foodservice takes food safety and quality very seriously. It is a practice and a culture that doesn’t reside just in the executive offices or corporate edicts, but has permeated company culture from inbound to delivery.

Inbound Dock Receiver/Checker Kelly Collins has been at the Fishers’ warehouse for 39 years. Responsible for conducting inspections on incoming products, Collins ensures every delivery meets the rigorous standards of the inspection sheet and his own high ethics. And if Collins does not sign off on a delivery, it doesn’t come in the door.

"I’m not known for making too many people happy," he said. "I sure don’t want anyone getting sick on my account.

"I don’t do it just for U.S. Foodservice, but for all the people that will eat the food."

The author is Managing Editor of QA magazine. She can be reached at llupo@giemedia.com.