Doug Dresslaer of Dairy Farmers of America on the Future Food Show
Doug Dresslaer is the Director of Cultural Innovation for Dairy Farmers of America. Doug works with DFA farmer members and employees to foster a culture of innovation within the Cooperative to help keep DFA at the forefront of emerging technologies and trends in the industry. Prior to joining DFA in 2019, Doug worked with the cooperative as managing director of the T-Mobile and DFA Accelerator program working with startups to help build partnerships between small businesses and T-Mobile and DFA.
This episode is sponsored by the Black & Veatch NextGen Ag Team. Learn more about Black and Veatch at www.bv.com.
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Alex (00:04):
This is your host, Alex. It is good to be back. Thank you for joining us on the Future Food Show. This episode is sponsored by the Black and Veatch NextGen Ag team. Learn more about Black & Veatch at www.bv.com. We’re excited to have Doug Dressler as the guest for today’s episode. Doug is the director of cultural innovation for dairy farmers of America. Doug works with DFA farmer members and employees to foster a culture of innovation within the cooperative to help keep DFA at the forefront of emerging technologies and trends within the industry. Prior to joining DFA in 2019, Doug worked with the cooperative as managing director of the T-Mobile and DFA accelerator programs, working with startups to help build partnerships between small businesses T-Mobile and DFA. I had a great discussion with Doug as we really chat about what innovation means. Let’s jump right in.
Doug. I’d like to welcome you to the future food show. Thanks for having me, Alex. Great to be here. Doug, tell us a little bit about your background and when you started your journey into the food industry.
Doug (01:13):
So my background really is for the last almost 10 years now in running accelerator programs and for anyone not familiar with an accelerator program, it’s a set amount of time where you work with startup companies, small new businesses to help them grow their business. And I started that in the telecom industry with sprint, which is now T-Mobile. And in that part of the journey met with dairy farmers of America, who was also headquartered in the same city as I was. And they were interested in this accelerator model and how they could get involved and focus more on ag tech and new food processes and new food products themselves. And then after working with them for a few years, they came to me and said, Hey, we’d love for you to come join us at DFA as director of innovation and continued to run accelerated program, but do all of the things around innovation, both internally and externally for dairies, having spent a few years learning telecom, I switched hats, put on a cowboy hat and started learning more about dairy and the ag industry and new innovations in that field. And so I’m in year three now of being with DFA and it’s great, great place to be.
Alex (02:14):
And I love the cowboy hat. We’ll get into the accelerator model a little bit later. I’m really excited to hear about that, but can you tell us a little bit about what DFA is and how the cooperative model?
Doug (02:26):
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, DFA was formed in 1998 when four cooperatives merged together to create DFA and the DFA cooperative model means that we are owned by our family farm owners. And so we have more than 12,500 farms that are a part of DFA all across the country. And so essentially what our job is at the end of the day is to make sure that the milk that they are gathering is produced in a way in, into different products and in different ingredients and deliver to the consumer. And so we are a milk marketing organization with the farm owners as our biggest goal on a daily basis. However, last year we also acquired a good portion of Dean foods. And so now we are also a large consumer based company with almost 90 different manufacturing plants, producing everything from fluid milk to ice cream, cheeses, yogurts, and everything in between. And so that’s a large part of what we do. We’re the largest supplier of raw milk in the world. In 2020, we had 17, almost $18 billion in sales. And with all of that together, it makes us the third largest global dairy company. So we produce about 3000 truckloads of milk a day and get that to 400 different customer locations every day. So it’s a large operation, but at the end of the day, we are here to help our family farm owners be better at what they do.
Alex (03:41):
Great. And so it’s really a win-win with the organization as a whole, the individual farmers, and then the brands that are really on the consumer side of it.
Doug (03:51):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we were part of the whole process from picking up the milk at the source and getting it into, onto the shelves after it’s processed and manufactured.
Alex (04:00):
So as you’ve been digging into the dairy industry over the last three years or so, what are some lesser known trends that might’ve been popping up within this dairy industry? You’re really looking into what could be the future
Doug (04:12):
Dairy products? Yeah, so recently in the last few years, we’ve seen a lot around sustainability traceability and new sort of ingredient models, and those are all kind of buzzwords, but when it comes to traceability, I think consumers are much more cognizant of where their products come from. So we have brands within the DFA that are sourced from eight farms in the region. So it’s a cheese in upstate New York. And on the package, it says this cheese came from your area from farmers that are producing milk in your region around sustainability. We’re doing a lot with, especially with on-farm services. We have very aggressive sustainability goals within dairy to reduce carbon emissions. And so we work with our farmers to do and help with that. But also that helps the consumer know that we are using sustainability as a part of our production, and that’s better for consumers, but when it comes to actual food products, we’ve seen a lot recently with the use of way.
Doug (05:05):
And if you don’t know what way is, it’s a by-product from making cheese and there’s a sweet way that you can come from making yogurt. And then there’s a less sweet way that comes from making cheese, but we’ve seen products now that are coming and using that way as a core ingredient. So last year we worked with three companies. One was taking away and making an actual spirit and alcoholic drink a very clear sweet Ivanka type product with way we had two companies using whey in hydration. So we had a sports drink and a drink. That’s a more of a, just a nice refreshing drink, but whey is the core ingredient. And on the sports drink, the way that they process the whey and the other elements that they get from milk, it is much more hydrating than water. And so it’s using those ingredients to make it much more efficient for consumers who take hydration. Seriously. One of the other companies that we’ve been working with is taking whey, the acidic whey that comes from making Greek yogurt. And they are able to process that at the plant and turn that into biofuels and ingredient oils to replace some of the other products that may be out there. So I think what we’re going to see is up-scaling byproducts and utilizing some of the other elements that are found in dairy products as the core of new ingredients and using different processes like fermentation and others to create those wow,
Alex (06:21):
Whey vodka sounds really crazy.
Doug (06:24):
Yeah, it’s great. They’re called Wheyward Spirit and it’s really good and they’re getting a lot of coverage around it because it’s such a neat process and it’s something new in that market that hasn’t been there
Alex (06:34):
Transition into learning more about the accelerator program. How big is the dairy market what’s going up, what’s going down
Doug (06:42):
Traditionally. We’ve seen every year fluid milk levels out stays the same, but we’ve seen huge uptakes in cheese and yogurt. And especially with the pandemic, the fresh products that people were wanting to have as they hunker down at home, we saw a huge amount of growth in that overall dairy consumption. The U S it’s continues to be strong. We see it up 4% since 20 15, 90 3% of all homes in the U S buy milk each year. It’s really around the whole use of what dairy is an industry provides. We’re total. What we provide is about 620 billion in overall impact. And that’s looking at jobs, wages, the product, but it’s quite a huge industry. And so we’ll continue to see cheese grow snacking, to go snacking with yogurt, drinks, and yogurt containers and cheeses and things like that will continue to increase as we build out those types of products and really listening to the consumers and what they want in those products. Wow.
Alex (07:36):
Okay. $620 billion. So tell us about the accelerator program and why really innovation is important in this type of industry.
Doug (07:45):
Yeah. So the accelerator program really focus on trying to find the new things that will help us in our process. So that could be anything that happens on the farm when the processing of the dairy itself through animal welfare and different technologies. But then we’ve also put into the program a consumer side and trying to find those new products in dairy that consumers are asking for. We’ve seen everything from a super high protein yogurt to a cheese crackers where the first ingredient is actually cheddar cheese and not some sort of powder or something like that. This year, we’re working with a company that’s creating, what’s called a cheeseboard where you cut up some cheese, you’ve got some nuts, you’ve got some dried fruits on a plate. Well, this is all of that in one bar and it’s getting a lot of attention. And so innovation to us is really important because we have to keep growing and changing and finding the technologies and products that will keep people interested in dairy. And this program is the way we do that. We don’t have a massive RD part of DFA. We use this program to see downfield what’s coming. And then how do we get that to either our farm owners or our consumers? And it really helps us to create new avenues for our farmers milk, whether that’s the by-product of whey, or that’s a new yogurt or whatever it may be. So that consumers are still going to that dairy aisle and finding new things, as opposed to just the typical gallon of milk,
Alex (09:07):
Those companies that you’ve mentioned before, the whey vodka or the whey hydration company. Did those go through the accelerator program?
Doug (09:14):
Yes, I did. Actually, both of those were in last year’s class.
Alex (09:17):
Okay, cool. And when we think of an accelerator program, usually there’s a set kind of length of time that the accelerator runs and there’s an application period is the accelerator program with DFA open to really any startup company working in India.
Doug (09:33):
Yeah. And actually we even say you don’t even have to be in dairy. One of the companies that’s in our class this year is a company called H two, okay. Innovations. And what they’re doing is they are working with manufacturing plants to track water usage, whether that’s in cleaning or waste or whatever it may be to help them see how much water they’re using and how they can reduce that because they’re actually tracking the amount of the usage. They hadn’t thought about dairy. And so when I met them, I said, have you thought about dairy plants? We use a lot of water, not just on our farms, but in our plants for production. And being able to monitor that in a, in a better way would probably help us with cost control. So yeah, we are open to all startups in the ag field and the consumer product side of things that may not have thought about dairy as an option. And we can help them with that, or the really keyed into what dairy is. And our program exposes them to the resources that will help them build out that product or service or whatever it may be by giving them access to industry experts and our farmers and our, all of our logistic experts and stuff so that they understand just how this industry works on a day-to-day basis.
Alex (10:35):
Great. And is there a fixed length of the program?
Doug (10:39):
It’s a typical 90 day program, but really we call our program a corporate engagement or in our sense of cooperative engagement, where we find companies that we really want to work with longterm. So we use the 90 days of the program to get to know the businesses, to help them to learn what their sort of their roadmap, their journey is going to be as they grow. But then it’s after the program where the work really begins and we create a partnership and those have taken on all kinds of different models. We’ve done pilot programs, we’ve helped foster and pay for research around industry trends. We’ve invested in companies, we’ve sold product to companies to build out for their ingredients. And so we really start the program with a blank sheet of paper and say, okay, at the end of the day, how are we going to create a long-term relationship with these companies and how are we going to help them at the end? It’s a two-way street. So they help us by keeping people interested in dairy and keeping dairy more efficient and utilizing the latest technologies.
Alex (11:31):
That’s great. And what kind of stages are some of these companies in? It seems like some of them could be at later stages as well.
Doug (11:38):
So usually on the technology side of the program, we’ll see later companies that have either started in beef industry or that side, and are now transitioning to dairy. So actually have some customers, or have actually had a chance to really validate that technology. The earlier stage companies see on the food side of starting of a food product with the big players of the world is daunting to say the least. And so usually the companies that we see on the consumer side of the program either have a product ready to go to market, or maybe have some regional deals with say a whole foods or some convenience stores in their area, but they’re producing product last year. Our food companies were all just on the verge of launching and then of course COVID and the pandemic hit and that delayed a lot of it. So we’re seeing the delayed launch in some of those food products, but we’ve seen everything from pre-revenue to, like you mentioned companies that are actually have a few customers and making some money, not enough to really scale yet, but enough that they’ve validated what they’re doing.
Alex (12:30):
Exciting. Cool. So as we look into kind of like the future and what innovation means for not really just the dairy industry, but farming and food and manufacturing in general, are there any insights that consumers would be excited to learn about the dairy industry, such that I never knew that that was the thing I could say. One that I never knew that wave vodka was a thing, but now I love the idea of whey vodka tracking back to that. But yeah. Is there anything that people might not know about that they would be interested or excited about either from a scale standpoint, safety standpoint, or even how certain products are?
Doug (13:08):
Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that we were seeing is really being able to listen to our consumers, both what they want from a product standpoint, but how we go about making those. And so I mentioned a lot around sustainability. We are really working on that end, so that customers feel confident in dairy products that they’re coming from a sustainable process. I think from a food tech side, you’re going to see a lot of different things come out in the next few years around ingredients and how to produce those. If you’ve ever had a Dorito nacho cheese chip and had that little orange powder on the end of your finger, that DFA makes that, and that’s a cheese powder. So processes that we use to create new ingredients, whether that’s powders or using the way and different things like that. I think we’ll see an uptick in those types of products. And I think the biggest growth we’ll see as a, is around this convenience, easy to grab and go type. You know, the early days when I was a child, there was always milk in the fridge and you had cereal in the morning and now you’re on the run. You’re grabbing Go-Gurts and build smaller jugs of protein shakes and smoothies. And I think that’s where the growth will be in this new sort of post pandemic economy.
Alex (14:16):
Cause I always tell myself, oh, I’ll fix something up from scratch. And I end up always loving the convenience of just those grabbing grow types of foods. So
Doug (14:25):
Yes, exactly. Awesome.
Alex (14:27):
You can get in touch with Doug on LinkedIn and learn more about dairy farmers of America at www dot DFA, milk.com. Doug, do you have any last insights or announcements for our audience today?
Doug (14:39):
Thank you so much for having me on this has been great. We have a, if you go to that website, keep an eye out and we have a demo day for our accelerate program and then near the end of June 24th. And it’s, it’s all virtual. So you can sit at your desk or home desk and click a link and listen. So watch out for that. And we’d love to have some people join it and hear about our companies.
Alex (14:58):
Awesome. I’m excited for that demo day. And it’s also exciting that it’s open to the public. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to being with you on our next episode.
This episode was transcribed using an automated service.
