How Kozy Shack Produced a Bounty of Waste-Saving Ideas with Financial Upside
Challenge
Following a widely celebrated food waste pilot at Bob’s Red Mill, TripleWin Advisory was asked to apply its food waste expertise to another manufacturing setting: Kozy Shack’s pudding plant in Turlock, California.
As a subsidiary of Land O’Lakes, Kozy Shack was part of a broader commitment to two ambitious waste-related sustainability targets:
- Reduce food waste in standard operational practices 30% by 2030
- Achieve a 50% reduction in waste to landfill from operations by 2030
With food loss in manufacturing representing an economic casualty of $40.3 billion in the U.S. in 2022, and with food waste contributing to global climate change and food insecurity, Kozy Shack recognized the environmental, social, and economic benefits to reducing waste in its operations.
In partnership with the World Wildlife Fund and the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment, TripleWin designed and implemented a waste audit and prevention program meant to jumpstart the company’s progress toward its targets.
Solutions Delivered
Following the same successful approach at Bob’s Red Mill, TripleWin designed a program that would maximize the involvement and contribution of the Turlock plant’s 125 employees. This program was founded on four basic principles:
- Employee education: Informing employees about the broader environmental, social and economic problems caused by food waste inspires them to take ownership and action.
- Employee engagement: Employees need to be informed and incentivized in fun ways to build a sustainable culture of proactive waste prevention.
- “GEMBA”: Employees on the ground or in the field are closest to the problem and can provide some of the best insights for reducing waste.
- The power of quick-wins: Success with implementing a high-impact, low-cost idea is rewarding and builds momentum for continued engagement and action.
Following these principles, TripleWin designed and implemented a set of programs to generate ideas, identify the best, and test them:
- Facility walk-throughs (AKA “gemba walks”) to view firsthand where food waste was occurring.
- A five-week Food Waste Reduction Challenge to create excitement and solicit high-potential ideas from employees.
- A Food Waste Opportunity Register for recording ideas from employees. Opportunities were categorized and ranked based on degree of savings, speed of impact, and cost
- Testing one “quick-win” solution from the ideas gathered.
Project Learnings
The GEMBA walks and Food Waste Reduction Challenge produced 277 employee-identified ideas for preventing food waste in the plant’s operations, all recorded in the Food Waste Opportunity Register.
During the GEMBA walks, one employee noticed a portion of condensed milk going unused in the step of combining ingredients for making flan. Their idea was to use a silicone rubber spatula to scrape out all of the remaining milk from their 50-pound pails, rather than simply leaving the condensed milk residue behind. This idea was recognized as a minimal-effort, “do it now” solution with potentially high material savings.
To gauge its impact, TripleWin guided employees in measuring the amount of material loss in two phases: before implementation of the spatula solution and after. Employees recorded 60-80 measurements during each production cycle over the course of several weeks, and TripleWin calculated the results.
Client Outcomes
The simple idea of using a spatula showed a material yield savings of 74% — meaning that three quarters of the wasted milk was rescued by this method. In financial terms, this one small quick win is estimated to save the plant $3,500 per year in lost condensed milk used in flan production.
But the benefits of the project went beyond this single action. A high-quality employee engagement program, also developed by TripleWin, helped transform employees from passive observers to proactive thinkers and doers. Their meaningful participation generated 276 other ideas for reducing waste — including 50 “gem” ideas with high savings potential. A post-project survey showed that nearly half of employees thought the best of these ideas should be tested, and a quarter more wanted them to be shared across the workforce to encourage further action.
With TripleWin’s help, the Turlock plant employees made a significant contribution to building a waste prevention culture at Kozy Shack and pointing the company down a reliable path to meet its waste mitigation goals.
Experts
- Carbon inventories and setting science-based and Net Zero carbon goals
- Materiality assessments and sustainability roadmaps
- Building circular business models supported by financial analysis
- Risk scenario models using the TCFD framework
- Workshops and courses to build employee agency and corporate competency
Kozy Shack is a leading manufacturer of premium dessert products, with production facilities in Hicksville, NY, and Turlock, CA. The company, acquired by Land O’ Lakes in 2012, has grown from a neighborhood favorite in 1967 to the #1 branded pudding in the U.S. and Canada.
Headquarters:Arden Hills, Minnesota
Industry:
Food Manufacturing
Main Product:
Puddings and Flan
In their words
“TripleWin leveraged actual collected data and metrics from the plant floor to provide analysis and opportunity assessments to Kozy Shack. Our ESG team highly recommends TripleWin as a value-added supplier and collaborator for project work and ESG strategy.”