Niagara College grows meals advertising program with ‘who’s who’ of business leaders

Ashley Decker had simply transferred from Baylor College in Texas to Niagara College in Lewiston to be near house in 2018 when she discovered her future profession.

She was already thinking about advertising and realized she needed to reside and work again house in Buffalo. She realized Niagara had a singular partnership with meals business giants Wealthy Merchandise, Wegmans and others to provide expertise to feed a giant phase of the job market that was hungry for progress.

Western New York has some 1,200 firms concerned in meals manufacturing, distribution, retailing and/or warehousing, placing it within the high 5 markets for the business nationally, in line with Niagara’s Meals Advertising Middle of Excellence.

One in every of Decker’s professors, Peggy Choong, urged that if she needed to remain in Western New York, she might differentiate herself from different advertising majors by gaining a meals business focus via Niagara’s specialised program.

“She launched me to the totally different courses and business experiences, and inside 10 minutes she bought me on it,” Decker mentioned. “I modified my main that day.”

By way of the Niagara middle of excellence, Decker grew to become the primary recipient of an Worldwide Meals Service Manufacturing Affiliation scholarship and landed an internship at Wealthy Merchandise. After graduating in 2019, she was employed by Wealthy’s as a digital advertising coordinator and has since been promoted twice, most just lately to affiliate digital built-in and efficiency advertising supervisor.

Decker’s expertise illustrates precisely what Niagara’s Meals Advertising Middle of Excellence has labored to realize – constructing robust partnerships with a rising native business that gives a direct pipeline to employment that advantages college students, the area and the businesses concerned.

Founding associate Wealthy Merchandise has employed about 40 Niagara graduates via this system and helps domesticate their careers to retain them. Whereas working at Wealthy’s, Decker went on to earn an MBA in meals advertising at Niagara, additional accelerating her profession.

With school enrollments in decline, partnering with giant employers to coach their future staff has change into a key aim of upper training. Niagara’s meals business program was forward of the sport, planting the primary seeds 10 years in the past and nurturing this system to handle altering business developments and workforce wants.

It started within the mind of Invoice Chiodo, a meals retail skilled for Affinity Group Retail, in 2013. A good friend had recruited Chiodo onto the advisory board of St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, thought-about one of many world’s finest meals advertising colleges. Chiodo discovered it “hilarious” that his hometown of Buffalo had a far greater meals market, “however no funnel for folks to affix the business.”

“Wealthy’s, one of many largest meals firms on the earth, is headquartered right here,” Chiodo mentioned. “Wegmans is likely one of the finest employers within the nation. Tops [Markets] is a Prime 20 right here – and anyplace else it will be a Prime 10. But we had no meals business pipeline right here. It drove me nuts.”

Chiodo started speaking to universities about making a program, and Niagara was “ecstatic across the thought,” he mentioned. Meals firms had been additionally enthusiastic. The middle has since grown from just a few giant companions to “a who’s who of meals business leaders,” he mentioned.

Mark Frascatore, dean of Niagara’s Holzschuh School of Enterprise Administration, mentioned the middle of excellence is concerned with “each main meals firm in Western New York, with each main retailer represented on our advisory board.”

It has additionally gained consideration from firms exterior the area, together with Pepsico, Huge Hen and the Clorox Co. Its largest occasion of the yr, the Meals Advertising Summit held every fall, attracts about 250 meals business representatives, “about half from {the marketplace} and half from exterior Western New York,” Chiodo mentioned.

Lately, this system has expanded to incorporate different disciplines and sources, mentioned Jamie McKeon, senior vice chairman for demand creation at Wealthy Merchandise and a founding member of the Meals Advertising Middle of Excellence advisory board.

McKeon mentioned the middle’s first focus was to provide meals advertising professionals like Decker, however they realized there may be room to groom every kind of expertise, from accounting to communications to human sources to information analytics, for careers in meals.

The middle of excellence now has a Meals Trade Management Program open to college students of all majors that gives myriad experiences, from nationwide conferences, commerce exhibits and competitions to firm excursions that take college students to see how the sausage will get made – or the pizza, soda, pasta or baked items, for that matter.

“The sphere journeys alone are superb,” Decker mentioned. “You might need class at Entire Meals someday and be at Wealthy Merchandise making pizza the subsequent. So it’s a altering surroundings from the classroom the place you’re studying one thing new and really hands-on.”

McKeon mentioned the shut relationships with business maintain this system related because it has tailored to huge change.

Because it began, advertising, buying and most business-to-business interactions have all gone digital. E-commerce, branding and client analytics have remodeled with new applied sciences. Sustainability has change into extra of a necessity than a priority. Diet and “meals as drugs” have change into essential well being care points.

Era Z has performed a giant position, embracing vegetarian, vegan and natural, demanding extra “plant-forward” choices in addition to sustainable packaging and inexperienced practices from firms they assist. They use social media as inventive shops for meals content material sharing that generates pleasure for innovation and new merchandise.

“We will help college students see that their curiosity in meals affords alternatives from a profession perspective,” McKeon mentioned. “The expertise wars have solely elevated because the pandemic,” and we’re all the time on the lookout for inventive methods to construct that pipeline to gas our progress ambitions, construct connections throughout the business and create a win for college students by readying them for careers.”

The pandemic additionally introduced the phrase “provide chain” into the vernacular, bringing visibility to a beforehand ignored phase of the business. In response, Niagara added a Middle for Provide Chain Excellence to show abilities like logistics, transportation administration and world commerce.

“I don’t need to thank the pandemic for something, however 5 years in the past no one knew what provide chain was,” Frascatore mentioned. “Now we’ve got mother and father at open homes saying, ‘So what’s this new provide chain factor?’”

One other pandemic development that caught round: Snacking.

“With folks working from house, snacking exploded,” McKeon mentioned, “I feel as a result of we had been all trapped in these small rooms, we wanted to go down and snack as a result of we didn’t have time for a full meal. And customers, particularly Gen Z, nonetheless need to indulge. They need to deal with themselves, however with smaller, wholesome parts.”

Chiodo mentioned the inventive aspect of meals is fueling extra entrepreneurship regionally than another business. The middle of excellence has simply added a mentoring program to pair college students with members of its advisory board who will help them pursue their targets and concepts.

“It’s simply out of this world to have folks on the senior stage of the meals business function mentors to our college students,” Chiodo mentioned. “We’re actually proud to have constructed this program and it’s one thing your complete business right here ought to be happy with.”

Decker mentioned she’s so happy with the middle of excellence that she talks it as much as everybody she meets. One one who listened: her older sister, who adopted her to Niagara to pursue the identical profession.