Since A.E. Illes first opened for business in 1927, our customers have always come first. To illustrate how important customer relationships are to us, and always will be, we thought we’d share a few stories you’re not used to hearing about a big company – unless you’re one of our customers.
We don’t keep our chefs in the kitchen; they’re always visiting customers to share new ideas, and hear about new issues. On one recent trip to a customer’s kitchen, we learned about a problem they were having with potatoes. Their new dish required potatoes to be cut at the beginning of the day, but the potatoes kept turning brown (as potatoes will do). Our chefs brought the problem back home and worked with R&D to solve it. The customer was ecstatic, and their new dish is a hit.
From senior management to our newest employee, everyone at Illes understands the customer comes first. Period. One of our VPs, for example, regularly volunteers to drive shipments out to the airport to catch the last FedEx shipment out and get product to our customers on time. How often does this happen? When a FedEx employee came in with a new hairstyle one evening, our VP noticed. That’s great customer service and an outstanding eye for detail.
In the food industry, if you don’t stay ahead of the trends, you get left behind. When our Culinary team began getting increasingly frustrated by the limited information provided by trend prognosticators, they decided the best way to really know what’s out there is to go and see for themselves. Management agreed, and a trip to New York was planned. After three days of everything from street carts to gourmet restaurants, the team came back to Illes with dozens of ideas and endless inspiration. Today, we call this a “DineAround,” but it’s more than an annual trip; it’s a year-round philosophy. The goal is to search out flavors and trends first-hand – whether around the block or around the world – then share that knowledge with our customers.
One of our customers had a problem. They were buying drink mixes from another (less flexible) company, and had plans to discontinue that line of drinks. But that other company ran out of ingredients before the discontinue date, and told our customer they weren’t ordering any more. Our customer asked us for help, our team jumped to action, and almost immediately, we were air freighting ingredients, turning those drink mixes around and proving, once again, why nobody provides better service than Illes.
When we develop a product, we have a process: 1.) Make sure the customer information is correct. 2.) Test to make sure the product will work in the customer’s kitchen. 3.) Make sure there will be no manufacturing issues. When a customer called us one afternoon to tell us they needed a product developed by the next day, our process was suddenly condensed. There was no time for the customer to ship us control product, so we shipped them one of our Senior Food Scientists, instead. The process wasn’t compromised; it was simply relocated. And the deadline was met.
The R&D group turns problems into solutions every day. But they’re also looking for future solutions. To make sure they stay on top of the latest food technologies, they regularly attend conferences and seminars on subjects like low sodium products, pH reduction, shelf life and many other things our customers care about – or will care about.