Business relocation is always a tricky ride, but when it is done in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression the stakes grow even higher.
Despite the uncertainties, Gillette Creamery is right on schedule moving from Ellenville into a larger facility in Gardiner. And prospects for the company and their partners look promising despite the economy.
Meanwhile, their former facility is also being put to good use, as Gillette company officials, who recently won an award for their entrepreneurship, are arranging new outlets for their expanded capacity in ways that will help new business ventures in the region.
Gillette Creamery started as Tri-County Ice Cream in Ellenville in 1985 with four employees and two trucks. The company now has more than 70 employees and 26 trucks, with 3,000 accounts in 19 counties and a secondary depot in Albany. It distributes popular brands including Häagen-Dazs, Edy”™s and Good Humor to such major outlets as 7-Eleven and Cumberland Farms stores, Walmart, Stop and Shop, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid and Blockbuster video. It has distribution stops from Yonkers to Lake George.
J.B. Gillette, company president who worked with his father and three brothers to start the business, noted this is the company”™s second expansion in five years, and that planning for the move to Gardiner began three years ago, before the economy went bad.
And though the move itself is right on schedule to meet a longstanding target date for the physical switch from Ellenville to Gardiner on Thanksgiving weekend, the economic roar that originally drove the move is now muted.
“What has caught everyone off guard is the economic downturn,” said Gillette, who said this summer, despite official prognostications of a turnaround, business was slower than expected. But he said the move must go on. “We”™ve been three years in this process, having looked for a facility, acquired the land and done the planning. When we started the economic downturn hadn”™t hit yet, but once you get that ball rolling (on relocation), what are you going to do?”
Gillette”™s move has two components, a new facility and creative and potentially lucrative reuse of its old facility. The company was pinched by the tight quarters around their 12,000-square-foot facility in Ellenville, so acquired a nine-acre site on Steve”™s Lane in Gardiner, buying a 33,000- square-foot building that is now customized to their needs, which in effect required construction of a huge freezer.
To utilize the new space, Gillette said, the company is pursuing new partnerships for DSD, “direct store door” delivery of additional products, using the company”™s existing routes and contacts. “We are exploring how people can partner up and put their products onto our trucks,” Gillette said.
And reuse of the old facility in Ellenville will involve a new agricultural products company that could help rev the Hudson Valley economy as a whole, and help area farmers in particular. Farm to Table Co-Packers is a startup commercial kitchen that is able to quick-freeze produce such as broccoli and process other crops, such as tomatoes, into sauces and salsa.
They need a place to store the goods at a variety of temperatures, including freezing, refrigeration and cold storage, and Gillette said they have already begun working together. Additionally he said, the company is investigating options to transport the products on their trucks to outlets throughout their service territory.
The company, perhaps not surprisingly won the 2010 Business Recognition Award given by the Chamber of Commerce and the Ulster County Development Corp.
“My father would be proud,” Gillette said.
