Recap: R.L. Schreiber’s Customer Story from Aptean’s Food and Beverage Symposium

Last month’s 2022 Aptean Food and Beverage Symposium featured an agenda packed with entertaining and educational sessions that explored opportunities for innovation and navigating a dynamic market. While every presentation given was informative and engaging, one of the most insightful was “R.L. Schreiber’s Sous Chef: A By-Your-Side Partner for Business Transformation Success,” featuring a conversation between our own Bill Macek, senior solutions architect, and Yorck Haase, IT director for Aptean client R.L. Schreiber.

As a manufacturer specializing in spices, seasonings, herbs, special blends, soups, stocks, gravies and sauces, R.L. Schreiber is known as the “purveyors of fine flavors” and has a substantial following among professional chefs. The company has been in business for 55 years and remains family owned, operating out of a 125,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Lebanon, Kentucky, and headquarters in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

An Aptean Food & Beverage ERP client since 2011, R.L. Schreiber has seen steady growth and great success in expanding its reach through the creation of a network of independent distributors. That being said, the food and beverage market continues to evolve, and Haase recognizes that this comes with challenges.

“Our industry is changing rapidly,” he said. “We have automation, AI, business intelligence, product lifecycle management and so on to consider. We hear lots of industry buzzwords like ‘digital transformation.’ A lot of it can be very confusing.”

That’s one of the reasons they’ve come to trust Aptean as not just a solutions provider, but also a strategic partner that can help prepare the company for the future. Haase expressed appreciation for our approach, including the executive business reviews (EBRs) that we’ve conducted in-person to discuss R.L. Schreiber’s goals, pain points and process improvement targets, as well as their path forward in a shifting competitive landscape.

“Through this engagement, we were pleasantly surprised that Aptean is not just an ERP company, but also supports the entire enterprise with a portfolio of capabilities, whether it be product lifecycle management, customer relationship management or OEE, and even things like shipping and EDI,” Haase said.

“The EBR was really sort of an epiphany for us because we learned that there are all these tools, solutions and capabilities that Aptean has that we could take advantage of and would help us tremendously, and they have been tailor-made and designed specifically for what we’re trying to achieve,” he added.

As part of an ongoing initiative, Haase is working with Macek and other Aptean team members to create a phased roadmap for the coming years. They’re considering a shift to a cloud-based implementation of Aptean Food & Beverage ERP to unlock the greater flexibility that the Software as a Service (SaaS) model offers, as well as several of our “beyond ERP” products in Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition, Aptean Process Manufacturing OEE and Aptean EDI.

“That’s what I felt was one of the key advantages—having all these things come together, answer our evolving business needs, help us to stay competitive in the industry, foster year-over-year growth and maintain our reputation for food safety and quality,” Haase said. “It elevates our ability to realize success by leveraging the unique engagement model that Aptean uses, which aligns closely with our business model.”

The EBRs kicked off the process and will continue to serve as a means to flesh out R.L. Schreiber’s plans and vision. Haase is excited about the direction that his business is headed and confident that continued collaboration with Aptean will yield excellent results and pave the way for an enduring and fruitful partnership down the road.

“We learned a lot of things in these sessions—there was a tremendous amount of knowledge-sharing, and when I say that, I mean it happened both ways,” Haase said. “So that was really terrific, and I think that is really the spirit of what the EBR is intended to achieve. We can use these as building blocks toward the future of the company.”

One of the most significant takeaways from the session—the versatility of Aptean’s offerings and expanded value we offer—was paralleled in an anecdote that Macek shared earlier in the conversation. He noted that he’d used R.L. Schreiber’s spices and seasonings to great effect when smoking ribs and chicken for the Labor Day holiday, but also that he looked forward to trying them out with the meat from an upcoming moose hunt.

In much the same way that R.L. Schreiber’s products have many applications and can be great for both traditional items as well as more exotic game, Aptean’s purpose-built, industry-specific solutions—like our food ERP for spices and ingredients—can deliver significant benefits across a number of operational areas and for food and beverage businesses of all varieties.

So, ready to hear more about Aptean Food & Beverage ERP and our complete suite of supplementary software solutions and what we can do for your company? Contact us today or request a personalized demo.

You can also watch the full R.L. Schreiber customer story presentation on demand, browse the complete collection of Aptean 2022 Food and Beverage Symposium presentation recordings or read our full recap blog post.