TOSCA LTD. celebrates 50 years of work in Green Bay

Company credits experienced employees for survival

BY RICHARD RYMAN • RRYMAN@GREENBAYPRESSGAZETTE.COM • AUGUST 8, 2010

If you drink beer, eat steak or nibble on cheddar, you've likely been touched by Tosca.

The company that resides on the north side of Green Bay doesn't make any of those things, but it keeps them moving between producers and sellers. Tosca Ltd., 1032 Bay Beach Road, which repairs and reconditions reusable containers, including metal beer kegs, wooden cheese boxes and plastic food cartons, is a critical behind-the-scenes player for the nation's bigger food and beverage suppliers.

In business 50 years this year, Tosca has carved niches in a number of industries and works to maintain them against mounting competition.

"Our strategy is to take care of our customer just as much as we possibly can. It's almost a sin to lose business you have by not paying attention to it," said Jere Dhein, chairman and CEO.

Take the beer keg business, for example. A German company is trying to.

Tosca services more than 98 prcent of the industry, rehabilitating about 150,000 kegs a year. But the other company, which has yet to install its first piece of equipment, already is promising lower prices, Dhein said.

"We don't mind. We're good. We have 300 years of experience (among Tosca workers)," he said.

The equipment they use to recondition beer kegs didn't exist until their people made it, he said, which gets to the chief reason for the Tosca's success: its work force.

Twenty-nine employees have more than 25 years of experience and several have more than 40, including Casey Maloney, a 42-½ year veteran who's been president of Tosca's unaffiliated employees' union for 30 years.

Dhein said the union "is the key to our success."

The company makes the most of flexibility in work schedules and jobs, since the seasons for their several tasks ebb and flow. Summer, for example, is off-season for beer kegs, since that's when most of them are being used.

"We do a lot of job rotation. We change shifts as needed," said John Frey, company president.

Several national unions have approached Tosca's union about affiliation, but discovered they couldn't cut a better deal.

 

Tosca offers an incentive plan that Maloney said benefits workers in fact as well as theory.

"I've looked at other plans, and we can't see how anybody makes any real money," he said. "I work four weeks, and my bonus check is practically like always getting a fifth check for those four weeks. Quarterly, we received a bonus check that's divided between profit sharing and paid directly to us."

Bonuses are linked to sales and productivity. Dhein said he and Frey promised union members they wouldn't lay people off because they were more productive.

"We made a promise, if we ever get so efficient we just need to push a button to run the plant, we won't let anyone go because of efficiency," he said.

Both the company and the union keep management layers to the minimum. Tosca has one salaried plant manager. Everyone else is hourly.

"We tell them, our job is to bring business in. Your job is to figure out how we can make it work," Frey said.

Maloney said the union keeps it simple as well.

"We keep union dues very, very inexpensive. The officers work for nothing. We don't rent an office. When we meet, we are more likely to rent a couple of bar stools and take care of business quick," Maloney said. "Problems arise, but nine out of 10 times they are solved out on the floor. Nobody is as stubborn as a mule, but we do have to work things out sometimes."

The work is physically demanding, but the company has not suffered a lost-time accident in three years.

On Oct. 30, 1989, while Dhein and Frey were negotiating to buy Tosca from founder Paul Christopherson, the main building, across the street from their current headquarters, burned to the ground.

"At the time, it was Green Bay's largest industrial fire. Beer kegs were going through the roof," Dhein said.

About 50 employees were temporarily out of work, or, as Maloney puts it, "Our hinders were hanging in the wind."

Dhein and Frey completed the purchase anyway. Operations were moved across the street. By December cheese-box work was resumed, and by February they were fixing kegs.

"We had to work together to rebuild the company," Dhein said.

As high-profile as the beer keg work is, the cheese-container work provides the most revenue, followed by the meat-container business, Dhein said.

"We make sure the cheese manufacturer has a crate when they need it, in the condition they need it, whenever they need it," he said.

Frey said they inherited the beer keg and cheese container business. They added the returnable plastic food containers in the 1990s and always are on the lookout for new customers.

Dhein and Frey have accounting backgrounds. They worked together at Wipfli accounting firm in the 1980s, then each worked for luxury boat manufacturers, until the industry was nearly killed by a national 10 percent luxury tax in place between 1990 and 1993. Jobless, they started looking for a company where they could work together again and found Tosca.

In their 20 years, they opened six other plants and added 100 employees.