Milling & Baking News - August 27, 2019 - 34

Signature Interview

c.e.o. sees online
effort as win for
customers
Carrie Jones-Barber says Digital Bakery
Platform gaining momentum

he focus on customer relationships that Ron Jones, chairman
emeritus, said was a cornerstone
of Dawn Food Products' growth over
the last 50 years is the same force behind a bold initiative spearheaded
by his daughter Carrie Jones-Barber,
Dawn's chief executive officer.
Digitization stands among the most
promising long-term initiatives currently
being pursued at Dawn Foods, Ms. JonesBarber said. Having completed proof-ofconcept testing, the company currently is
in the pilot phase with a number of customers of a Digital Bakery Platform that
ultimately will allow a wide range of customer interactions, beginning with online
ordering. She described initial customer
response as "phenomenal."
"We are building a successful platform because of the feedback we've
received and because of the amount of
care and customer input we took in designing it," Ms. Jones-Barber said. "It's
that ease of use that makes our customers want to come back."
Just as consumers broadly embrace
apps and web sites that are easy to use
and meet specific needs, Ms. Jones-Barber
said customers also will reject one that is
complicated or requires too many clicks.
"So we are building it for ease of use for
our customers," she said. "We've found

34 / August 27, 2019

Milling & Baking News

that they are spending more time on our
site than we imagined, clicking through
and discovering items they didn't know
we carried, shopping and ordering repeatedly."
Dawn partnered with 50 artisanal bakery customers for the proof-of-concept
phase, which began in mid-April, and the
number of participants in the pilot phase
was expected to reach 200 by early July.
Updated/modified versions of the Digital Bakery Platform are released every
two to three weeks, with enhancements
based on feedback from customers. Committed to "getting it right" and "keeping
it simple," the company is projecting a
broad roll-out of the technology some
time before the end of 2020.
The idea behind the project is to allow
customers to order product at their convenience when they have time to go to
the web site, Ms. Jones-Barber said. The
company's sales team continues to visit
customers with discussions moving beyond routine reorders.
"Our sales teams now have the luxury of time - talking about new items,
insights, products and capabilities," she
said. "Which is really what we are aiming for. The early numbers are, like I
said, remarkable, phenomenal. It's very
exciting. We believe we are onto exactly
what we designed it for."

DAWN FOOD PRODUCTS

So far, about 25% of orders with the
system have been made using mobile devices, reinforcing Dawn's sense that bakers are using it at their convenience, Ms.
Jones-Barber said.
Looking to the distant future while
keeping a careful eye on the present
stands among valued lessons Ms. JonesBarber has received from her father in
the years since she joined the company
in 1985.
"I learned from my dad the importance
of both long-term and short-term thinking," she said. "Because we are a family
organization we can think long term on
some of the decisions we wouldn't be
able to make if we were public."
A graduate of Western Michigan University, Ms. Jones-Barber also holds a
master's in management from the Kellogg
School of Management at Northwestern
University. Her interest in business and
Dawn pre-date her secondary education
by a number of years. Ms. Jones-Barber
remembers when ambition struck.
"I can tell you exactly," she said. "I
was 12 years old. People would visit our
house, and so I just was part of the what
was going on. I didn't know what was
going on, but at an early age I saw my
dad was the go-to person.
"People would call him up in the middle of the night. That's when phones had
long cords and the phone happened to be
in my bedroom because that's where the
plug in was from the wall. He got a call in
the middle of the night, and it was somebody who said, 'Hey, Carrie, can I talk
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Milling & Baking News - August 27, 2019

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