Our Newest book and a Proud Moment!

Lon LaFlamme (our Marketing Director) and I wrote a book called 'Brewing a Hot Brand'. It's basically a branding book focused mostly retail businesses, not just coffee, but any retail business. Our newest book is going to be called 'Brewing a Hot Business'. It will be about the Business principles that our company has used to become successful over the last 17 years no matter what is going on in the economy. It will be written, in a way that any business can adopt our principles into their business. So to get started on the outline, I asked each and every one of our 80+employees to write the 10 reasons that they thought Dillanos was successful. I was so amazed at the e-mails. I literally got choked up on several of them. Not because of how great we are, but the fact that everyone was totally on the same page. Our culture is working! They were all incredible, but the best one came from our newest employee Lorin Seeks. he had only been with us for 3 months, but had already fully understood and embraced what we stand for. Anyone who has ever been on a tour of the roasting plant, know that it's the people here that make dillanos so special. Here is Lorin's original text:

David,

Since embarking on my adventure with Dillanos it has been abundantly obvious to me why we have such a successful company. What follows are 11 reasons (I had one extra that I didn't want to leave out), in no particular order, why I feel Dillanos is so successful. After each reason I have provided a brief example or description.

• Continuous Leadership Development - Dillanos works with it's leadership to help them learn and grow, and encourages the leadership to pass these lessons on to their teams. For Example, we have discussed personality profiles, ways to communicate with different employees, and lessons in leadership from other great leaders.


• Fiscally savvy - Dillanos does a great job of balancing resources. This year for instance, the operations team is working incredibly hard to become lean and efficient, saving money wherever possible, which allows the company to focus its spending on our counterparts in sales so they can aggressively pursue new business.


• Hire great people - I am amazed every day by the quality and caliber of people I work with. I can say with no hesitation that I work with the best group of people I have ever worked with in my career thus far. The time and effort we put into finding people with the right balance of skills, experience and cultural fit, and then assuring they are properly trained, pays incredible dividends.


• Culture of continuous improvement - Dillanos has fostered an environment in which people feel free to express their ideas, where managers and supervisors attentively and enthusiastically listen to those ideas, and where people with great ideas are recognized. There are so many challenges in our work, and yet somehow Dillanos makes those challenges fun! Rather than getting stressed out about challenges, we have an environment where people tackle them head on, have fun with it, and are proud of their accomplishments.


• Maintain a fun atmosphere - On Sunday night there are so many people in this world that are bummed that the weekend is ending, but not Dillanos employees. When my alarm wakes me up at 5:30 am I am actually excited to come into work! A big part of this goes back to hiring the right people. I love the people I work with and have a great time with them. The company also makes an active and conscientious effort to make work fun. Our MMMs, Dodge Ball, BBQs, Culture committee, our Halloween Party, Christmas Party, Skee Ball Tournaments, Etc., Etc. Etc. The list could go on and on! There is no question that happy employees are productive employees. When people can work hard and have fun in the process they are enthusiastic, exited, and have a lot less stress.


• Focus on Brand Awareness - We achieve success by branding in two distinct areas.




• First, we brand ourselves and do a great job of it. We put ourselves in events like the Barista Competitions, we get great publicity in trade magazines, we brand everything that leaves Dillanos including our delivery trucks, we make a name for ourselves by actively being involved in the industry - writing articles, giving seminars at Coffee Fest, etc. And now we are on the cutting edge, branding ourselves on Face Book, our Blog, Twitter, on our website.


• Second, we help our customers create their own unique brand identity, something many of our competitors don't do, which helps us sell a lot more coffee. Big props to the amazing job our art department does in creating logos, signs, menus, and a lot of other stuff for our customers. This is a big selling point for Dillanos.


• Produce a consistently superior product with a focus on quality - We don't rest on our laurels once we create a great blend or source a new single origin coffee. Our roasting department is constantly testing, tweaking, adjusting, sampling, judging to assure our coffee is of a consistently high quality. Our good name rests on the quality coffee we produce.


• Go the "Extra Mile" for customers - Dillanos goes above and beyond to help out the customer. Our customer service is exceedingly friendly and accommodating, and our delivery and shipping departments assure the customer gets their coffee on time no matter what. If a customer is out of coffee we don't tell them to go get some at the store until their next regular delivery comes, we drive it out to them! Even if it means driving to a place like Bellingham. Doing this ensures loyalty from our customers and keeps them coming back for more week after week.


• Encourage ALL employees to build their knowledge of the companies product and industry - Everyone from our CEO to our delivery drivers, from our director of sales to our packagers knows coffee. When employees are not only interested in, but passionate and knowledgeable about a companies product, it makes a huge difference in their enthusiasm and devotion to a company.


• Give something back to society - This one is tough to quantify in terms of how "successful" it makes us, but I feel it is tremendously important none-the-less. You could call it Karma, you could say were following the Golden Rule, you could say "good things happen to good people". However you look at it, service to your community, city, country, world, or humanity plays an important role in the success of a business or individual. I have always been a big believer in doing service and one of the things that really drew me to Dillanos was that this company makes a conscientious effort to do good. Dillanos sponsors a child for every employee that works at the company. We give to Toys for Tots. And recently there has been interest in initiatives to make Dillanos a "greener" more sustainable business, which benefits the earth and every person in it. (By the way, I am really interested in doing more to make Dillanos a more environmentally sustainable business. Not only is it a great thing to do, it would be a great boost in marketing and selling our product. If we ever form a committee to focus on these issues I'd be thrilled to volunteer to head the effort)


• Ease of Doing Business - We are a one stop shop for our customers. They can order just about everything they need from one company (us) and have it delivered/shipped to them on a regular schedule. If I was one of our customers I would LOVE the ease of doing business with Dillanos. This also goes back to one of my earlier statements that Dillanos "Goes the Extra Mile for Customers".

Well, there you have it. Take care and good luck with all the potential customers you have been out visiting. See you when you get back.

Lorin Seeks

Fulfillment Manager

Dillanos Coffee Roasters