Two Chefs on a Roll, Dishing up success

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Agility and a diverse workforce are key ingredients in the success of custom-food manufacturer Two Chefs on a Roll, as Jeffrey Goh and Humberto Villagomez explain to Bernie Sheehan

Depending on what’s cooking, the scents wafting from the Two Chefs on a Roll factory in Carson, CA, will transport you from a Parisian patisserie to lunchtime on the Mediterranean, from an Asian open market to late-night dining in the Yucatan.

“We supply everything off the menu: appetizers, dips, sauces, soups, and desserts,” says Jeffrey Goh, CEO. “We create a breadth of products usually within our core competencies but occasionally stretch beyond that core competency to meet our customer’s special need. We don’t look at the SKU or the individual item; we look at the relationship with the customer.”

Founded by Lori Daniel and Eliot Swartz in 1985, Two Chefs on a Roll started as a wholesale dessert company. Today it employs 195 people and custom manufactures, packages, and distributes a wide range of savory and bakery products for many of the biggest casual dining restaurants and leading retailers in the US.

Its 91,000-square-foot facility at Carson is the company’s sixth expansion in 18 years. This rapid growth can be attributed to strong culinary, R&D and manufacturing operations. “We’ve invested in senior people from Unilever, PepsiCo, and other Fortune 100 companies,” explains Goh. “Our state-of-the-art R&D facility has all the latest equipment you’d assume, but also the same ovens that people have at home, to ensure the food we manufacture is usable by the end consumer. We have trained chefs from the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson and Wales; we’re on the boards of many large trade organizations and we participate in culinary tours of Europe, Asia, and Latin America to stay on top of trends.”

To encourage its chefs and customers to brainstorm, Two Chefs has its own Blue Sky room, complete with astroturf and a painted forest to enhance their creative experience. This kind of innovative thinking has made the company an expert in several areas, including packaging and shelf-life, and organic, GMO-free and natural foods. Working in both the restaurant and retail sectors also has advantages for Two Chefs, as popular products and trends in casual dining tend to be adopted by supermarkets.

Agility is a key part of the company’s philosophy and this is particularly evident in manufacturing, as Humberto Villagomez, vice president of operations, explains: “We have two work groups. The bakery group is more flexible. It uses modular equipment, which we can move in and out for the specialty product we’re making that day. The savory group is also flexible but its equipment is based on a common platform of packaging.”

Speed and flexibility are important, since in the first quarter of this year alone Two Chefs launched 35 products, the equivalent of three per week. “Our products are tailored to our customers and we have the mentality that our product range is constantly changing,” continues Villagomez. “Sometimes people are resistant to change, but we understand that it’s our business, our livelihood, our niche. Our SKU cycles are very quick and our batch runs can be small; our system is geared to small batches and frequent changeovers. But we’ve set up the system so that it’s equally efficient for running large batches and longer runs.”

Goh sees the manufacturing group leading the way for the rest of the company—a mechanism for change and continuous improvement. “Manufacturing is a revenue generator that gives us a competitive edge. We recently launched a new product with a customer in four weeks from concept to shipment. We want to apply more lean techniques in our operation, perhaps implementing six sigma.”

Two Chefs’ diverse workforce is one of its particular strengths. “We have staff from many different backgrounds,” says Villagomez. “Because of this diversity we design processes, work cells, and product flows so that our people can work efficiently within the system, reduce waste and ensure our products are of high quality.”

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