UNCONTAINED: Don't freeze out small fry

The caller had a Southern accent and the good manners that so often go with it. More...

The caller had a Southern accent and the good manners that so often go with it.

“I was wonderin’ if you could help me find a new supplier of paper sacks,” he said.

He was a small-scale packager of dry goods, including flour, and had bought sacks from the same supplier for years, located near his plant in Virginia. But that supplier had been bought out, and the new parent company wasn’t interested in his business-not enough volume.

Ordinarily, I deflect such requests because I don’t want to be seen as recommending or endorsing a given supplier. Also, in this case, I didn’t really know of anyone who would supply small volumes of flour sacks. But he seemed genuinely in need, to reach out to a stranger this way, so I broke out the Buyer’s Guide and read off the names and websites of a few companies that designated themselves as paper sack suppliers.

We chatted for a bit afterward. I remarked that magazines like ours can be like that supplier: Sometimes we have a tendency to pay attention exclusively to the Krafts and ConAgras of the world. It’s easy to lose sight of the smaller players in food and beverage, but they’re out there, and they have their own problems...as well as their own potential. You never know who’s going to be the next Kraft-a company which, after all, got started in J.L. Kraft’s kitchen.