While the rest of the baking and snack industry struggled to source raw materials last year and grappled with rising costs, Benestar Brands, Chicago, found itself thankful for its vertical integration. For its pork rind business, the company produces both its own pellets and frying and coating oil. Its external raw materials list is short: packaging film, boxes, tortillas, seasoning and frying oil for tortilla chips. 

The company orders all raw materials for all four plants at once at the corporate level. This allows Benestar to get better pricing and leverage freight across all plants. Benestar uses dedicated lanes for internal plant transfers as well as deliveries to customers, which locks the companies in with carriers at the lowest possible pricing. 

“This means the truck is more likely to show up,” said Dan Robin, chief supply chain officer, Benestar Brands. 

In the event that a truck doesn’t show, the company works with a broker to recover trucks within hours, a day at most.

“Even when there was a scarcity of truck drivers last year, we were able to ship most of our orders out on time,” Mr. Robin said.

This article is an excerpt from the March 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Benestar Brands, click here.