What a week! Right on the heels of winning the 2011 Quality Award from Pepsico Americas Foods last week, our own DePaul Industries’ President & CEO Dave Shaffer was named the winner of the 2012 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Pacific Northwest! The award was presented at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue outside of Seattle at a special gala this past Friday, June 15, 2012.
This is a huge accomplishment for Dave, as well as for DePaul’s innovative demand-driven business model of employing people with disabilities. For years, we’ve focused on developing solutions for businesses by leveraging the unique talents of people with disabilities. To be acknowledged by Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award—an award that has recognized the likes of Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy and others—is a major milestone in our history.
Dave put it best when he said that his long-term goal would be for our customers and another companies to put DePaul Industries out of business, by fully integrating people with disabilities into the workforce and making high unemployment rates a thing of the past. “In the interim, though,” said Dave to the audience on Friday night, “I ask you to take a risk (that’s what entrepreneurialism is all about): Hire people with disabilities. The rewards will dwarf the risk 10 times over.”
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We’re thrilled to announce that DePaul Packaging has won the 2011 Pepsico North America Foods Contract Manufacturing Quality Award, achieving #1 in quality metrics out of all Pepsico Americas Foods contract manufacturers across the country.
Our DePaul Packaging management team attended the Pepsico 14th Annual Contract Manufacturing Meeting at Frito-Lay headquarters in Plano, TX from June 6-13 to accept the award and learn the specifics of the honor. Prior to attending the meeting, DePaul Packaging’s team was aware that it was first in quality of all Frito-Lay co-packers for Back to School season last year, but received the great news that it was first in quality for all Pepsico Americas Foods chain of multi-packers for the entire calendar year of 2011.
“We’re a bit stunned and extremely proud to learn that we’re number one across the entire country for one of our biggest and best customers,” says Travis Pearson, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of DePaul Industries. “It’s great to know that the quality work of DePaul is getting national recognition.”
To top it off, we learned that we achieved #1 in quality while the volume of product we moved for Frito-Lay increased by a sizeable 15% from the previous year—in other words, we moved more product than ever before, and still maintained the best quality across the country. Rest assured, DePaul Packaging employees will receive a big party for their achievement.
More information to come on the Quality Award next week. Stay tuned!
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