Outbound: CVA Ripples
Inbound: More Business

In October last year, D&D formalized its Core Values — principles the company had followed since its founding in 1976 but had never written down. For example, Doc and Dorothy Miller built the business by putting customer needs and relationships first — that’s Customer-Focused.

D&D President Arnie Miller told us that our Core Values “will be key to growing the business in the future. They will guide us — all of us D&D employees — in meeting the challenges ahead and turning them into business opportunities in 2021 and beyond.”

Our Core Values — Integrity Matters, Quality First, Customer-Focused — have helped make D&D a Partner-of-Choice among hundreds of customers and scores of vendors.

For sure, 2020 dealt us plenty of challenges, starting with the global coronavirus pandemic devastated public health and disrupted economies around the world. We’ve had many of the same challenges in 2021, with added twists, including persistent supply chain problems that continue to slow supplies of some key ingredients necessary to our business.

But we’re proud to say our customers and vendors in the animal feed and pet food industries largely survived the Covid-19 onslaught of 2020-21. We were with them, helping whenever possible, putting our Core Values into action every day. We made a positive difference for them.

As a result, D&D’s business continued to grow throughout the pandemic. And we were able to make major new capital investments — premix blending plant, rail and transloading expansion, state-of-the-art warehouse — as well as to hire new employees in order to support future growth.

What it means for D&D — a pet food example

“Sustainability” is a “hot trend” in pet food marketing today, says Lindsay Beaton, editor of Petfood Industry magazine. Pet food companies, she adds, know that their customers “care about who they’re doing business with and why they should continue to be loyal.”

Like their customers, pet food companies also care about who it is that they do business with. Which is us! So, why should they remain loyal to D&D?

On one hand, our Core Values help ensure our customers’ current sustainability and future growth. On the other hand, they respect us and enjoy doing business with us because of our CVA.

We’re still riding a positive ripple effect from helping pet food companies deliver an amazing variety of new products over the past 18 months. They were responding to diverse new demands associated with an unexpected boom in “pet parenthood” during the pandemic.

“There’s more opportunity ahead to do what we do best,” says Mike Wright, Director of Operations & Business Development, “especially putting our Core Values into action for pet food manufacturers.”

Mike points out that Hill’s Pet Nutrition just announced a $17.5 million investment to expand production capacity and make new types of products at their plant in Richmond, IN, which is only two hours from Delphos.

When we honor and follow our Core Values, the ripple effect can build into bigger and bigger waves!