Brookshire's Wins Dairy Awards 2008

AMY SUNG

TYLER, Texas — Brookshire Grocery Co. manufacturing plants here received national awards for operations, sanitation and product quality at the All Star Dairy Association convention in San Antonio.

As a member of the All Star Dairy Association, the manufacturing facilities received “Best Ice Cream Plant,” “Best Sour Cream Plant” and “Best Yogurt Plant” awards and placed third for its dairy milk fluid plant for exceeding industry standards, Jim Pitner, vice president of BGC manufacturing, told SN.

Although taste is a big factor, it didn't account for everything in this competition. Products were also evaluated for composition, texture and other qualities. Judges also factored in the results from unannounced plant audits, where record keeping, sanitation and other procedures were measured.

Brookshire's incorporates the standards of the All Star audit into its own audit, which is conducted once a month.

“All Star only audits us twice a year, and we audit ourselves every month, so that in itself brings us to those standards at which we ought to be,” Pitner told SN.

“In other words, it's an operational standard. It's not, ‘Get ready for an audit — they're going to be here sometime within the next two or three weeks, so we need to be ready.’ We stay at that level because we audit ourselves with the same audit standards once a month.”

Brookshire's brings in two auditors who are not connected to the plants in any way, but are internal operators and work directly for Pitner, he said.

This award marked Brookshire's ice cream manufacturing plant's seventh award in eight years.

“Any time you win seven out of eight years, it looks easy, but it's not,” Pitner said.

The company's dairy plant is also a repeat winner, having received five “Best Fluid Plant” awards in the past 10 years.

“One of the things that we do that other ice cream plants may or may not do, we receive our ingredients from our own dairy, which allows us to get the top quality,” Pitner said.

In October, Brookshire's also won first place for its sour cream and lime sherbet products in their respective categories at the World Dairy Expo Championship Dairy Product Contest in Madison, Wis.

BGC Manufacturing products can be found in Brookshire's and Super 1 Foods stores under the Goldenbrook Farms, Dairy Pride, Sunnybrook Farms, Economize, Flavor Pride, Tampico, Red Diamond, Premier Mountain and Tasty Bakery labels. Products include ice cream, sour cream, yogurt, ices, fresh-cut fruits and dips, bakery items, milk, juice, water, tea and other beverages. Some products are available in natural, organic, low-fat and no-sugar varieties.

“You can probably pretty well understand that I'm very proud of what we consider to be an all-star team,” Pitner said.

“We have just an outstanding team, from our office staff all the way through to our maintenance staff, and management and in between. Everyone takes ownership of this — they know that their families and friends are all going to be purchasing this product, and they want to stand behind it, and they do. The results of what you get is an excellent product.”