Monthly Archives: December 2020

Happy Holidays from Nelson-Jameson, Inc.

Posted by Marketing Dept.  –  General
December 21, 2020

One of the real joys of the holiday season is the opportunity to say thank you! Our entire organization appreciates your partnership and thanks you for your loyalty and goodwill throughout the year. This year has been nothing but ordinary, but Nelson-Jameson would like to recap on the great accomplishments that came with the 2020 year:

New Location: In January, we successfully opened our second Marshfield, WI location, our new corporate office. Due to the significant growth we have experienced over the last several years, we opened this location to accommodate around 90 of our 210 employees to provide them with newly renovated work spaces.

New Website: We are continuing to work our way through transferring our current website to a new, more user-friendly platform. Our goal is to implement our new website to allow for our customers to be able to navigate through with easier searching capabilities.

New Employees: We have significantly grown in employees in 2020. This year has been nothing but ordinary for everyone, but even with working remotely, we have been able to add and fill new positions within various departments throughout the company.

New President: In October, we announced our organization’s new President, Mike Rindy. Mike has worked in the dairy and food industry for more than 34 years. What started as a job in his cousin’s cheese factory back in 1986, turned into a lifelong passion. Since then, Mike has served in various industry roles ranging from technical service to executive management, where he has experience leading diverse teams to achieve outstanding sales and operational results.

Holidays are the perfect time to be thankful for your friends and family. We would like to thank you for being such a good friend to Nelson-Jameson and for allowing us to experience the accomplishments we have in 2020. We appreciate your business and the opportunity to serve you. We look forward to providing you with food industry expertise, food safety programs, regulatory and chain of custody documentation, supplier consolidation, inventory management solutions, and more in the upcoming year! From our family to yours—may your holidays and entire year be filled with peace and happiness!

 

 

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The (In)Famous Fruitcake

Posted by Mathew J. Bartkowiak, Ph.D.  –  Bakery, General
December 4, 2020

A light snow falls on a cold December afternoon. Up pulls the delivery person with a parcel for you. As you eagerly await them to make their way up to the entryway, you can’t help but wonder what kind of treasure may rest inside. After feigning indifference to the whole excitement at the door, you quickly make your way to the kitchen table and open it up. Inside, your favorite aunt has dutifully and carefully wrapped…a fruitcake. You do which of the following:

A. Excitedly reach for a plate and a nearby knife.
B. Sob uncontrollably in disappointment and throw it.
C. Rewrap it and go visit your sister and her kids.
D. Hide it away only for your consumption (along with those boxes of chocolate covered cherries).

Perhaps the answer is obvious to you…perhaps not. No holiday dessert has drawn in such debate like the fruitcake. As The Society for the Protection and Preservation of Fruitcake (yes, indeed) stated, fruitcake has been “the butt of many jokes and practical jokes-and yet” fruitcake is “esteemed by many, and an important part of many folks’ holiday.” This is certainly true, perhaps even within families: with the pro-fruitcake consortium on one side and the fruitcake defamation league on the other side.

Johnny Carson once famously launched a thousand fruitcakes out of the front door when he quipped, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” The amount of energy that has been put into picking on the fruitcake has been met on the other side with a passion for promoting this cake, often filled with nuts and fruit, and sometimes soaked in liquor or wine. For instance, “Isabelle” is the author of the blog, “Mondo Fruitcake.” The blog is meant to be a means of sorting through her frustration with “the state of this nation’s attitude toward fruitcake.” It features a year-round look into the world of fruitcakes.

Made in monasteries, bakeries, home ovens, and in many other places, the fruitcake pulls in some heavy support from a diverse crowd of consumers, just as it draws its detractors. Wherever your passions may rest, we can all appreciate that the fruitcake is a standard for the holidays in the United States. Its long history (dating back to ancient Rome!) and its ability to draw in such passion and detachment is a pretty impressive mark on American culture during the holidays. So, grab a knife and a cup of coffee, or package it back up and send it off…no matter, the fruitcake will persevere.

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