American Made Tour Visits Two Valley Manufacturers
BOARDMAN, Ohio -- Nathaniel McGill had to call his wife and tell her they couldn’t buy the brand of frozen pizza they favored after meeting with the family-owned business that makes the Palermo’s Pizza brand on the tour to promote his feature-length documentary, American Made Movie.
“I never thought that I would have a relationship with frozen pizza,” he joked during a visit to a local stop on the tour, Summer Garden Food Manufacturing.
Encouraging people to examine their relationships with the foods and goods they purchase and the companies that make them is one of the objectives behind producing American Made Movie, said McGill, co-producer and co-director of the film. McGill and Vincent Vittorio, who also produced and directed the film, visited two area manufacturers -- Starr Manufacturing in Vienna and Summer Garden here -- before a preview screening of the movie in Austintown last night. The local screening culminated one of 32 stops on the tour before the film goes into wider release Aug. 30.
The producers’ interest in manufacturing was spurred in part by looking at the organic food movement, McGill said. “The organic label grew in popularity because of demand. People started out at farmers' markets and then there were entire sections of grocery stores designated to organic foods,” he said. “It made us think about food manufacturing.”
McGill's family had been involved in auto manufacturing in Georgia but by the time he was ready to enter the workplace, the factories were gone, so he went “a different route,” he recalled.
“As a filmmaker, I thought it was an interesting to look back on and explore and wonder what happened to the Made in America label,” he continued. “Much like that organic label, if consumers knew the people behind their products, would they be more likely to search out those goods?”
American Made Movie wants people to “think differently” about the relationship they have with manufacturing on a national and local level, said Vittoirio, “realizing there is a business in their community that they could support by making sure to purchase things that are made locally.”
The producers selected the Mahoning Valley for one of the screenings because part of the film discusses the history of manufacturing, and included several segments on Youngstown and Warren. “We wanted to come back, take a look at what’s going on in Youngstown, and we were really happy when we found a resurgence of manufacturing, McGill said.
During the visit to Starr Manufacturing, the film producers, who were joined by U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, and representatives of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, presented company owners Andreas and Dale Foerster with their "Be A Part Award."
The filmmakers created the "Be a Part Movement" as a “call to action,” Vittoirio said. “When a film is done, you want that conversation to go further,” he explained.
The goal of the movement is to “continue the conversation about the relationship people have with manufacturing and the rlocal economy and national economy,” he added. In each community on the tour, they select a company that represents "bringing things back to America or keeping things here.” Starr Manufacturing came to mind “as a group that was doing it right,” he said.
“This is a company that had to reinvent itself over and over again throughout the years.When it comes to business you always have to reinvent yourself,” McGill said. “If you’re not constantly changing, constantly tweaking, constantly finding that niche for your business, you’re really dying.”
Starr’s latest reinvention came with the advent of regulations that impacted one of its primary markets, mining, says Dale Foerster, vice president. She estimated nearly 80% of the business was “tied to that so we had to do some fast reinvention.”
Among the products Starr manufactures is heavy equipment such as oil and water separators and bases for transformers used in the energy industry, Foerster said. The company also entered into an agreement with Germany-based Braun to manufacture equipment.
“We are so excited and honored that we were chosen for this award,” she said. “Our employees deserve this award because they have stuck with us through thick and thin. They had faith that we would reinvent ourselves.”
Plant superintendent Dennis Yommer, a 33-year employee, credited the Foersters, who took over in 2007. “As the business changed, we changed with it,” he said.
The plant will generally have 15 or so large-scale projects under way at any one time. “Plus you have little stuff going on,” he said. Projects he pointed to during the plant tour included a double hopper for iron ore and a heat furnace.
At Summer Garden, following lunch in the company's Culinary Arts Center, its vice president, Tom Zidian, noted his father began distributing a local brand pasta in 1948, then started distributing its own brand in the 1980s. Today Summer Garden manufactures sauces of all types, including barbecue and salsa. “It’s been growing about 30% to 40% a year,” he said.
In recent years, the company began making sauces for celebrity chefs Mario Bateli and Guy Fieri, and Zidian signed a deal last week with Mr. Chow, which has restaurants in New York, Miami and Beverly Hills, to develop a product line.
“I get to eat at the restaurant and then we get to talk about different things we think we can make and do,” Zidian told the producers.
On the tour, which took them from the research-and-development kitchens through the manufacturing plant, Zidian also praised his workforce.
Batches are kept small for help maintain quality, Zidian said. Samples also are checked against a base product that is kept as a control for taste. He noted that magnets within the pipes -- not required by law” he pointed out – help catch any stray metal fragments that could be in the tomato sauce, for example. A metal detector will also remove any products in which stray metal is detected, usually embedded in the glass of the jar rather than in the product itself.
“It’s an extra precaution that we put on the line,” Zidian remarked.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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