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Anderson-DuBose distributes your Big Mac
By Kalea Hall
LORDSTOWN
How the food at local McDonald’s and Chipotle restaurants makes it to those eateries isn’t really a thought to hungry customers taking a bite into a Big Mac.
Little do they know that their meal — down to the cup they drink out of — was distributed out of the Anderson-DuBose Co. on Tod Avenue in Lordstown, where about 200 diligently work to take orders then unload, stock, replenish and deliver food and paper products to area restaurants and places in three other states.
The company relocated its Cleveland and Pittsburgh operations a few years ago to Lordstown to centralize the operations between the two markets.
“It has great access to the turnpike,” said Warren Anderson, owner of the company. “We were able to add rail.”
Just one of those rail cars represents four truckloads of hash browns and french fries.
“That’s a tremendous amount of efficiency in taking those trucks off of the road,” Anderson said.
The story of the local plant’s efficient operation really starts with Anderson. The Ypsilanti, Mich., native became a businessman after he was fired from a job as a media professional.
“I decided I didn’t want to work for anyone again,” Anderson said.
He started networking with a few contacts he had from his previous job and learned about the distribution side of McDonald’s. In 1991, he bought a McDonald’s distribution center in Solon.
“I had a tremendous support system,” Anderson said. “My business is about managing people and resources. I think you can in any business manage [those]. I was able to translate my skill set.”
Anderson later took on another distribution center in Carnegie, Pa.
Just six years after owning his first business in 1997, Anderson received the Ernst & Young Recognition for entrepreneur of the year. He said he is most proud of this achievement because it is the equivalent to a Tony Award.
“It is the pinnacle of a business award,” he said.
As Anderson-Dubose grew its distribution list, so grew the company’s opportunities.
The Solon and Carnegie plants were both older plants in need of improvement, Anderson said. Also a study showed it made sense, economically, to build the Lordstown plant.
The $28 million investment here began with a groundbreaking in July 2011.
“Lordstown was business-environment-friendly,” said Dave Aubin, director of distribution. “We had looked at a location in North Jackson, and this location came in at the 11th hour and the 59th minute.”
The plant sits on about 20 acres of a site that extends to 39, so there is room for growth. The process of serving 479 McDonald’s restaurants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and about 90 Chipotle restaurants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York is constant. The 160,000-square-foot plant is basically in operation 24/7 to make sure those restaurants have what they need to serve.
“The McDonald’s system is very advanced in its way of handling inventory,” Aubin said. “The orders we take today we will start delivering tonight.”
The orders start coming through the system at 8:30 a.m. every day. These orders are generated electronically the previous day. Chipotle also has an electronic ordering system that is completely separate from McDonald’s.
“It is pretty complex,” Aubin said of the distribution process.
But the team at Anderson-Dubose appears to work as efficiently as possible. Inside the plant, forklifts are on the move to place products on pallets, or move them out. The warehouse has a separate section for the dry products, the 35-degree produce cooler and the minus-5-degree freezer section.
The modern facility has allowed for improved operations at the plant.
“It has improved our capabilities for food safety,” Aubin said.
The Anderson-Dubose company has received a plethora of awards that are on display in the company lobby, in addition to the Ronald McDonald pictures and several articles on the company.
The company won the 2014 McDonald’s U.S. Supplier Summit “Teamwork Award”; McDonald’s North American Logistics Council Platinum Award for food quality programs in 2013 and 2014; and several others.
The company placed No. 6 on Black Enterprise magazine’s Top 100 largest black-owned businesses in the nation.
Black Enterprise notes the company’s 2014 revenue at $545,701,000.
Anderson, who also owns Anderson-Dubose of Rochester, N.Y., a beer-distributing company in Oklahoma and a leasing company, is happy with the way things turned out after he lost that job.
His tip to business owners and future business owners: “Have the ability to withstand a lot of pain.”