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Cake, Pastry & Pie Fillings
Monday, August 01, 2005
Michigan Dessert Corporation
Our company is a custom developer and manufacturer of specialty dry mix products for major restaurant chains and food processors in the United States and overseas. Richard Elias and Gary Freeman have owned and managed the company since 1983 and have seen a tremendous growth in customer base and product variety. We are based in a 50,000 foot technical development and manufacturing center in Southeastern Michigan and we design a wide range of custom foods and process them from there. Michigan Dessert handles regular and sugar free puddings, meringues, cakes, bakery items, pie fillings, mousses and glazes.
Our company has seen an increasing demand from food processors that use our dry mixes in their finished retail applications that we offer more and more kosher items. Upon investigating the wide range of koshering agencies available we found that the one most universally accepted was the Orthodox Union. Our choice was simple.
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Friday, January 21, 2005
Dawn and the OU: 2 Perfect ‘Matching Circles’
Few companies understand bakery and kosher as much as Dawn Foods. Dawn Foods has a rich lexicon of kosher terms that includes the
word hamantasch (special pastry for the Purim holiday), which the company helped make for a carnival at the Shaare Shamayim-Beth Judah synagogue in Philadelphia. This wasn’t any ordinary hamantasch, but one that weighed 738 pounds and measured at least 20 feet on all three sides. The giant hamantasch pastry contained 96 pounds of sugar, 84 pounds of allpurpose flour, 108 pounds of cake flour, four gallons of eggs and water, 60 pounds of margarine and 323
pounds of pie filling, all donated by Dawn Foods. Additionally, Dawn contributed supplies and equipment, including a brand new sheeter. Mr. Mike Goldinger, a Dawn Edison sales representative and resident
bakery expert, acted as head baker and hamantasch expert for the event. The festive hamantasch was baked and assembled by a team of 100 volunteers using the synagogue’s two convection ovens and 130
pans of cake, and took nearly 13 hours to complete. Aside from Dawn Food’s magnanimous gesture in assisting in the Purim obligation of giving gifts of food, what was left of the world’s largest hamantasch
after the carnival was donated to the Saligman House, a Philadelphia senior citizens home. Feats like this are quite commonplace for a company that is accustomed to doing things in a big way and with the most exacting of standards. It is those same exacting standards
that make OU Kosher a perfect match for Dawn Foods.
The aforementioned exacting standards manifest themselves in the constant communication between the kosher contacts at the various Dawn Foods plants and my office. Hardly a day passes without requests for new ingredient or product approvals being submitted to me. And invariably these same applications are thoroughly complete, using the proper request forms accompanied by the necessary Letters of Kosher Certification or batch formulae. Simply put, all the kosher
contacts at the various Dawn Foods plants know what has to be done so that all their raw materials and products are properly registered onto their respective schedule A’s and B’s. Critical time is saved in properly registering these new ingredients and finished goods because of the proper training and knowledge these kosher contacts have. The high priority Dawn Foods makes for maintaining the exacting standards of OU Kosher is a reflection of the outstanding reputation
Dawn Foods has in the quality of its products and the service it provides for its customers.
Not enough can be said about Dawn Food’s Quality Training coordinator, Mr. Jim Peacock, who also doubles as the company’s Kosher Coordinator. (Mr. Peacock demonstrated his fluency in kosher by getting a perfect score on Rabbi Stone’s Kosher IQ Test in the
Behind the Union Symbol!) He plays an integral role in the education of the various Dawn Foods plants’ kosher contacts and in the maintenance of the high standards of the OU kosher program in
general. Although all of Dawn Food’s dry mixes and fully baked products are dairy, Mr. Peacock’s unique expertise is invaluable in ensuring the kosher integrity of the thousands of fillings that are either dairy or pareve. This includes communicating with my office all products that are made on the designated pareve “fruit line” and the minimal kosherizing of some kettles to make them pareve after being used for dairy.
Also Mr. Peacock is masterfully meticulous in troubleshooting with my office any potentially compatible dairy ingredient that may be used in a pareve filling. He ably assists our dedicated and most efficient RFR, Rabbi Yosef Levy, in using the “where used” search in locating any of these compatible ingredients that may pose a problem. As Dawn Foods generates its own packaging labels, Mr. Peacock also carefully scrutinizes all labels to make sure that a dairy product is not inadvertently branded as pareve.
After all is said and done, Mr. Peacock is like a Kosher Coordinator’s Kosher Coordinator, who counsels others in keeping the OU’s exacting kosher standards. I personally couldn’t ask for a better business
relationship with anyone. This is one important reason out of the many cited above why the OU is proud to display its world-renowned OU designation on the thousands of products that bear the Dawn Foods
equally world-renowned “Circle of Excellence” logo.
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Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Dawn Food Products: Where Bakery Success Starts
Since out beginning in 1920 as a thriving bakery in Jackson, Michigan, we have grown to become one of the world’s largest full-service, family-owned bakery industry suppliers. Dawn is a single source supplier to the bakery and foodservice industry providing a complete
range of mixes, bases, icings, fillings, frozen and ready-to-bake
products, ready-to-sell products and equipment, plus commodities, packaging, ingredients – literally everything one needs to run a profitable bakery. We know “Bakery” – it’s all we do, and we do it with 14 manufacturing facilities and 19 distribution centers in North America. We are American-owned and operated to provide friendly local service to our customers through 46 manufacturing and distribution locations worldwide. Visit our website at http://www.dawnfoods.com to contact one of our 2,600 employees near you.
All our North American production facilities are certified kosher, the majority by our OU partnership that began in 1985. We have never had a customer’s rabbi reject OU certification. Many consumers
don’t realize that our industry is inspected by organizations such as the
American Institute of Baking and the Food and Drug Administration. But they do see the OU and they realize that an outside agency is certifying our facilities and look upon it as a seal of approval.
Strict vegetarians and some Islamic communities seek OU certification
as well. In 1991 we began pareve production of many fillings and
icings at our plant in Louisville, KY, and can now serve bakeries that produce only pareve products. Lactose intolerant consumers know that OU pareve means that there are virtually no traces of dairy allergens in the product. Rabbi Yisroel Bendelstein in New York and Rabbi Yosef Levy in Louisville assist me in maintaining the OU’s high standards.
Dawn became so famous for our donuts in 1920 that our competitors
would ask for our prepared mix. Demand for our mixes became so large that we closed the bakery and opened the nation’s first mix company. Dedicated employees, outstanding products and valued customers have made our name synonymous with excellence for
over 80 years. Dawn Donut Company was incorporated in 1925 to become Dawn Food Products and we expanded our product line to a complete range of food products for the baking industry.
In 1966 we moved to our new mix plant in Jackson, MI. In 1982 the acquisition of Besco Inc. (Dawn Louisville) was completed and we began producing and distributing quality fillings, icings, and glazes to the baking industry. The first addition to Louisville was a dry mix production line fashioned from the state-of-the-art technology used by Dawn to provide mixes and bases to the Southeastern United States. With great support from the OU, Louisville became kosher-certified in 1986. Customer demand increased and in 1994 we completed an
expansion that doubled our Louisville capacity of both wet and dry products. Of the original 32 Besco employees, 17 of us are still serving Dawn and our customers today. Dawn’s Louisville family has grown to over 170 and our sales have increased more than ten-fold.
With the Eastern United States being serviced properly, it was time in 1985 to move west, which we did with the purchase of Baker Boy in Denver, CO, our first OU certified company. Dawn Denver provided both wet and dry products and was our first distribution center in the
west. 1987 brought us our first frozen plant in Crown Point, IN, producing mainly puff pastry, danish and muffins certified OU-D. Dawn initiated international expansion in 1989 with the purchase of a facility in England producing both dry and frozen products. In 1997 we acquired Knaubs cake plant in York, PA, giving Dawn the capability to produce decorated finished cakes certified OU-D; we also acquired Mixco Internacional SA de CV in Mexico.
Construction of our newest automated Decorated Cake Manufacturing Facility (OU-D) was completed in 2001 adjacent to Dawn Atlanta Distribution. We greatly expanded our presence in the Canadian market with the purchase of CSP Foods in 2002, adding production operations in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Etobicoke, Ontario (OU-D). We also gained sales and distribution centers throughout Canada. 2002 additionally brought us a new manufacturing location in St. Peter, IL (OU-D). 2003 added additional OU-D production in Fort Wayne, Avon and Ossian, IN as well as Taylor, PA.
Our largest acquisition came at the end of 2003 with the purchase
of the bakery business of Bunge Foods, which now continues to focus on its edible oil business. Bunge’s bakery mix-related assets in Seattle, WA, Bradley, IL, and Modesto, CA were included in the
sale, as were its frozen bakeries in Mexico, MO and Tustin and
Modesto CA. The syrups and toppings plant in Seattle, and research
and development facilities in Seattle and St. Louis, were also included.
Our second manufacturing facility in Holland was added in 2004 to
increase our European capacity.
Over the years Dawn has invested in strategically located sales
and distribution facilities to ensure on-time deliveries, backed by outstanding technical support and attentive customer service.
Our mission statement says, “Dawn is…an innovative, ethical, international organization with outstanding, dedicated people…the
most cost-effective buyer, producer and distributor of quality food products to our customers.” This is accomplished through our “Circle of
Excellence”: good people with outstanding work ethics, making excellent products, taking great care of our customers. At Dawn, we do the right thing, the right way, just because it is the right thing to do.
I’ve personally known the family that owns Dawn for over 20 years
and they live and breathe this philosophy. Ethical questions are broken down to simple right or wrong answers and the family’s high standards have rewarded them with a reputation of honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness that all employees have a responsibility to protect, preserve and enhance.
Part of my personal responsibility to the Jewish community and to
our other customers is to maintain the high standards of the OU to
keep our products kosher. As Ron Jones, CEO of Dawn, says to our customers, “We’re here to serve you and God and to be a blessing to each other along the way.”
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