Service, volunteering and purpose with the Chief Purpose Officer of Antunes: Jane Bullock (Part 1)

In part one of this two part conversation, Karey and Justin chat with Jane Bullock, Chief Purpose Officer of Antunes. She discusses her role as CPO, volunteering, creating a culture of giving back and more.

Antunes.com

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Forbes Hever & Wallace, Inc. produces the Foodservice for Thought podcast. 

Forbes Hever & Wallace, Inc. produces the Foodservice for Thought podcast.

Please rate, follow and share the podcast. Help us introduce the characters and characteristics of the foodservice / restaurant industry to others.

Transcript

What does people plus food service plus conversation equal? The food service for thought podcast produced by Forbes, Eva and Wallace and hosted by Carrie Clements and Justin Alverez. The bimonthly podcast connects the food service industry through in depth conversations with chefs, restaurant equipment suppliers, food service establishment owners, and so many others that make up our wonderful industry. If you like food people and great conversation, we think you will enjoy the food service for thought podcast.
Hello, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the foodservice for thought Podcast, the podcast connecting the foodservice industry. I am here with Carrie Carrie. Good morning. Good morning, Justin. And dare I say take two with this. Hey, why don't we say Take two? Why is it take to Justin? I don't know. Because technology.
Maybe because we didn't check the audio first, which we have done this morning. We're trying due diligence. Yeah, that Jane just wanted to talk to us more
often see if you'll have to see if my answers are the same, or did I completely change direction with the answers? Oh, James, assuming that I'm going to be able to read my notes.
Look, that penmanship looks like you were getting hit with a taser at the same time you were trying to write but well, we'll make it work. Yes, well, but the assumption is my notes match up the audio and I can go from there. So but anyway, yes, take two for us. Which means we get the pleasure of interviewing Jane Bullock, one of the owners of and Tunis, and also the chief purpose officer. And that's why she's on our call today, because she's got a fascinating job that brings change to people, the community, her team members and the world, I think. So that's what we're doing today. All right. Well, before we do any of that, we need to start with our most boost questions.
So Jane, this is gonna loosen us up, get us comfortable. All right. So the first question that we will ask you is if you were a food, what food would you be? Well, I want to start out thank you, Carrie and Justin for having me on the podcast. Which food would I be
the food I enjoy the most are raspberries. And
so I've gotten a little rounder over the years like a raspberry I'm ripe because I'm old now. And then as much as I love raspberries there's those little annoying seeds that sometimes get stuck in your teeth and I actually can be a little annoying at times so I guess that did I say raspberry last time I wonder yes yeah, I didn't write it down last time. Yep. Because that that was a real that's a really unique answer. That's great. Oh, that's right cuz she was an alcohol like, yes. People would forward would you be a Bloody Mary like no, come on.
All right, so what food do you most often cook or cater or order in for the people that you love? So I don't cook a lot even though we're in the food service industry.
But when I two things that I know I can make and what's funny is people actually asked me for the recipe. Family members asked me one is quiche, and the other is lasagna. And
I tell key tell everyone the key to the quiche that I make is heavy whipping cream. And lasagna. I just follow the box. Definitely nothing special about it. But it is definitely a labor of love. Actually recently. The other thing is we
make really great ribs. Glen smokes them outside on the grill. And our daughter asked us about it. And I said well we boil them for about an hour and a half and she said people don't believe that boiling is part of the process. So I looked it up in my Betty Crocker book which I have and it's it's thumbed through and pages are ripped out and there's food on different pages. And it says invading crackers book to boil and fruit
20 minutes but we do it for almost an hour and a half and they fall off the bone.
Okay, now what ribs for now? I know I know, I agree.
That is totally a Midwest preparation method for ribs. I remember being a kid and my parents doing that the exact same thing roiling ribs. And I always thought that was weird because they just look visually weird. Or they look in a pot with boiling water. Can you put them on the grill? And you're like, What? What? Yeah, we don't do that in Texas. We just put them right on the grill. But we smoke slow smoke for a long time. Yes. I think that was the key to Yeah. All right. Well, ribs for lunch. Ribs for lunch. That's right. Raspberries for dessert. And the last one was boost. Question is what is your go to food? If you are in a mood? I will say right? If it's a good mood, if it's a bad mood, if it's a celebratory mood, what is the go to food for you? Now I'm gonna say ribs.
Talking about it, doing it I listening to her talk half of my brain the other half of my brain is thinking I'm gonna get ribs and BBQ sad. I mean, a potato salad and pinto beans. All right. That's about that time. Yeah.
We got finished with this fast enough. We could go have our lunch. So that's true. Okay, we'll talk really fast.
All right, so that is our moves boosts. Thanks for playing along. Carrie, why don't we do a proper ado here for Miss Jim and give a little background introduce her. And then you can ask the first of 700 questions that we have planned for Jane. Jane is in tune. This is her family business. She and her husband Glenn,
are at the helm of the organization. And they have handpicked some amazing team members, they are one of the factories that
I guess like it's just the whole picture everybody you interact with are on the same page. I know that's not an effortless thing. I know a lot of hard work goes into that.
But what Justin drew me to wanting to have this conversation, my personal wish was because there's this kind of this heart. That's kind of indescribable, really the heart of Aunt tunas. And then
I got interested when I got to tour, Jane hosted us, a women's group women and food service that hosted us, and it was clear that all of their team members, men or women were very equally important to them. And
and they showed that internally and then also externally with the things that they do in the community, locally in their community, and then just further reaching, like the work that they do a splash and other things. So we we got to talking at NASA and and she agreed foolishly to tell us the
the purpose behind the chief purpose officer, and what what drives that and what they want to do with that. So I guess, big picture is we wanted to know,
what Jane wanted to accomplish and what Intune is thought to accomplish, and how that's been evolving as her title is chief purpose officer. So that's the first question. I guess that's a big question. But you know, learning about how that came about and what y'all are doing with it? Yes, thank you. So the chief purpose officer,
became my title. When Glen and I were in a seminar, I'm going to give a plug to Loyola University in Chicago. They had a wonderful
seminar about how profit and purpose can interact in society. And they we had a series of speakers and somebody mentioned that there is a person who is the chief purpose officer at their company. And I'm like, wow, that is a really fun and cool.
Title. So we did start with splash, which is a nonprofit organization in Seattle. If you look up splash International. They bring clean drinking water to children in schools. Now, they actually started with orphanages, and they are mostly in the Asia and then the Northern Africa is their locations right now. And so we started by doing fundraisers for splash we started
raising money spreading awareness that there's many people who do not have clean drinking water.
And then the more we got involved, I knew that our team members have other outside interest. And we started allowing people to volunteer during working hours. We also donate to organizations that is important to them when they make a donation. So we just kind of expanded what purpose meant. And then of course, the whole idea of sustainability became very important. So under my role, we also talk about sustainability. And we're composting now or recycling as much as we can. And one of the things that I am able to speak about in this position, and thank you for having me on the podcast, so I can share our story is that many times when you expand your purpose in your company, you actually can be more profitable. So it profits not a bad word, if we don't have enough profit in our company, we won't be able to donate, and we won't be able to take time off during work to do some service hours. So
what we found when we started recycling, and having less garbage pickup, we were really saving a lot of money. And then we would recycle it and actually get money back. So it took just a little bit of time for our team members to start sorting our recyclables. And it was a, it was really positive.
And then the the whole idea of the philanthropy, we do want to empower our team members in personal development, feeling good about their work feeling good about the company they work for. And that's how we just keep expanding what we're doing along the purpose line.
And Carrie, as you were saying that you really enjoyed the tour at our company and the people that you've met, culture is very, very important with us. As Carrie mentioned, my husband, Glen and I are the owners, Glenn is the chief executive officer, he is our CEO, and gives us our true north direction of kind of that compass of what we should be doing as a company, and very, very much people first is what's so important. So how we hire, how we engage in our team members is extremely important as a people person and just, you know, enjoying the humanity of most humans, not all,
you know, walking through there.
How you can make a giant manufacturing facility seem like a home? I don't know, I've not experienced that before. And I'm very proud of of our manufacturers and what I've seen in there. And so I'm not saying you know, I haven't been to all of them. So I'm not saying you know, I'm not doing a comparison, when I say that my experience, and maybe it was because of the purpose that I was there, I'm not sure. But it felt like a home even in the very clean, sterile manufacturing floor and in areas. And it's because of the welcome mat just do it. It's because of the welcome mats, isn't it? It's a welcome mats. They're everywhere. Yeah. It was really it was the energy. So I hope you I hope you go soon.
I do to
give us a great tour.
I'm going to have raspberries, just a little ziploc bag of raspberries that I can walk around and
munch on as I'm Jane, I did have a question for you a minute ago when you mentioned when you were at Loyola, and you kind of first discovered the chief purpose officer. And then you kind of said that profit is not a bad word. And I wonder if you bump up against some resistance with that philosophy. When you're kind of on the side of the charitable efforts, giving back? Where would you just said I thought was a great thing as they sort of feed each other. Right. If you're profitable, you're able to take time away to do that giving back. But
a lot of places that I just was curious if you ran into that were people that were focused on the charitable side, and the giving back side and the service side, if they sort of had a negative view of companies that were focused on process, because maybe they were misinterpreting what the what their goal was.
No, I have not had any problem when I've said that. And the nonprofits are definitely trying to figure out how they can do more fundraising, how they can bring in additional funds and they you know, when there was the
pandemic, the funds went down for nonprofits. So they know that we need to continue our business.
One of the things that we talked about at Loyola, so they have a bomb Heart Center, which is their logo or theirs, their mantra is the intersection of purpose and profit. And what we found during the course was, the government lays a very low bar for what we should be doing in terms of let's say, sustainability or environmental friendly,
even what we should do be doing with how to improve team members lives. But businesses have to raise that bar, the government's bar is very low, we as business owners, need to raise the bar and say this is what's important for our print our planet, for our team members, our people, and, and the societies we touch. So
no, I haven't had any any pushback on it. And I do try and spread that word as much as possible. But what was interesting in the course, I had taken quite a few courses from Viola, and the main facilitator, like loves me, and knows, knows our company. And in this program, we had small groups and Glen small group,
they talk so negatively about CEOs and the coursework we were learning about are how some of these huge organizations, they say they're going to do so much for their people on the planet. And they're taking these millions and millions of dollars in salary. And it's like, Glenn is not that CEO, he doesn't have a huge salary, we pay a lot of taxes. And he was just looked as this evil CEO. And here I'm looked at, you know, as the star child, so it was really funny. Our experiences in our small groups were, were very different. But unfortunately, some people paint that corporate corporations with a single stroke, and they're all evil. Yes, same. So we try and get the message out, like these type of podcast. So I appreciate that we can tell our story.
Well, you know, I think I've experienced, okay, first of all, we're a small company, but people make assumptions will carry your business owner. So right. You don't have to worry about that. You know, my dad said once to me, that once you become a business owner, it, you know, and he never was, once you become a business owner, you know, then you just don't have as many problems. And of course,
I don't I don't know, every CEO or every business owner, but I can tell you, you have different problems. But you know, it is problems. It different problems, but it is funny.
The assumptions that are made, and you know, there's good and bad of every single person, every single silo of people,
you know, but yeah, that let me let me tell you something, my dad said, and I feel bad. I wish I remembered a lot more of my dad's comments. But many years ago, I was probably in high school. And I said, Well, you don't have a, you're your own boss, you don't have a boss that you know, is telling you what to do. And he said, I don't have one boss. I have hundreds of bosses, all my customers are my boss. And I always think it's funny when people say, oh, I want to have my own business. It's like, Yeah, go for it. Yeah, you didn't want to sleep at night. You wanted to be working every weekend. Yeah.
Yeah. It is a unique heartbreak and joy all at the same time. Exactly. And, and we're really privileged, Glenn and I are at the place in our lives,
that we can bring in some of these fantastic initiatives that people are running with, and we'll bring in an idea and then what's fun is our team members come up with additional ideas or run with it and in different directions. Definitely the whole idea of food waste and recycling, people have definitely jumped on that which is really fun to see.
Well, if you don't mind when you kind of walk through some of the initiatives, I know, you know, you have to dollars for doers where you guys are matching for volunteer hours. You're allowing your team members to go out during work hours and volunteer. Can you just kind of run
Um, through a list of what you're willing to share that y'all do that you find fulfilling. Sure. So in terms of the philanthropy side,
we do have a big golf outing and September for splash.
We do fundraisers. So we've done a hot dog day we sell
chips and chips and nachos.
We have Mother's Day, Father's Day raffles, we raffle off a parking place that is close to whatever door the team member who wins they get to choose where it is. Because we have extremes here in the Chicago area. Like we had snow yesterday and we had 76 degrees on Saturday. Yesterday was a Monday. So we can have really, really cold weather and then in the summer, very, very humid. So the parking raffle is a big one. And then some, like one team members, children has MS. And so we do, she does the MS. Multiple Sclerosis walk. And she raises money. A couple team members have brought up breast cancer awareness. So in October, we do a big fundraiser for that and we donate to that organization. And we asked her team members if they would support splash as our corporate charity, and that was in 2011. But we always state we know you might have organizations that you are passionate about. So then we Yes, as you said, with dollars for dollars, you donate two hours, we will pay $25 for both hours and donate to that the organization of your choice. If we do matching donations up to $200 to any organization, we don't do it to specific religious organizations or political organizations.
And then we've also partnered with the food bank, which is nearby, it's only a 20 minute drive from work. And actually, last week, we drove 20 People from work. We rented a van and actually then I even drove. And we brought team members from work out to the food bank. And we did an assembly line which we were very, very good at we finished even earlier than they expected because we're so good. And that allows us to be into the food side of it. Since we're in the food service industry, our organization called Nafa.
They will donate to Feeding America, they will match any donations we make to our local food bank. So that's just a win win for everybody. The the money comes back into our neighborhood food banks, which is just fantastic. The other thing we did that was really fun. Last year, the Foodbank brought 500 kits to our facility, we set up a very small assembly line. And we had I think about 56 team members were able to work at the plant and do service hours in our facility. So we really liked that idea. So two ideas that we've gotten
that we've put into place, drive people to the
the organ, you know, to the service place, and also bring it in in house. So we're trying to do that. So that's on the philanthropy side. CARRIE What Jane didn't tell you is that all Midwestern companies that deal with snow also do a reverse parking lot raffle. But if you get in trouble as an employee, you pull out the spot and it's one of the last five spots in the
middle of winter. And that's that's it. And you don't even get to use a scraper to clean off your windshield. You just gotta you just gotta wait for just gotta wait. That's funny. Now she's writing that down. Justin. No, just kidding.
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