Customer Success
Stories

You know, when people think of New Orleans, they think about the sound, the music, the energy, the life in the streets. But just as much as the sound, people remember the taste. And for generations, that taste has meant Cafe du Monde. Cafe du Monde has been around since eighteen sixty two. The city was founded at Saint Louis Cathedral right around the corner from us. It has endured because of its location. We are in the oldest continuing market in the country, and as such, we've been in the heart of the downtown area in the French Quarter, and we've become inter twined with the city of New Orleans. We've been serving the same product to generations of New Orleanians, and now we get a chance to serve it to visitors alike. Nothing more exciting than coming in and see a family sitting at a table having their first beignet and seeing smiles on their faces when they take that bite, or the laughter when the sugar kind of falls on their clothing. You know, it just just makes your heart feel good. New Orleans had a big renovation back in nineteen seventy five and we started welcoming more tourists. And that's when people first started having the desire to bring pieces of New Orleans back home with them. So in the mid to late seventies, my father and my uncle decided that they would try to make a beignet mix. We had a very small mixer, a little shovel, and then we had a balanced scale. And on one side was a little can full of nuts and bolts. It went over. People enjoyed it. So over the years, we ramped up production a little bit. We finally hit a wall. We we couldn't do anymore. So that's when we turned to to Viking because we needed to definitely automate our system and come into the modern world. The simplicity of the machine behind me allows us to make the product easier and get it out faster for the people that wanna experience it at home that don't have the opportunity to come here. We fill the big mixer, we let it run, and then it goes from the big mixer into an auger that goes into a filler machine. It's dropped into a bag that's sealed. It goes onto a conveyor belt through a metal detector that then goes into the Viking Masek parting machine that makes its way down a conveyor to a pusher that pushes that bag into a open box. The open box is then glued and sealed. A long way from my little balance scale in the seventies. I'm a third generation. We we have the fourth generation working with us now, and Viking Masek is a very similar partner. This is a long term commitment for us. When we picked this machine, we planned to use it long after I'm gone. Yes. And that's that's why we were looking for something where you wanted a partner that was gonna still be in business and still be able to support the next generation when we passed it on to them. Yeah. Wanna pass it on to my son, and I now have a five year old granddaughter who I'd like, you know, to have an ability when she grows up to have a chance to do it. And I think Viking Masek does the same thing. I think they have the same pride in their production. If you're not thinking of the generation after you and you're only thinking of what we have now, it's not gonna keep going like you want it to. I mean, in order for it to extend generations and generations, have to instill into the people you're working with and the people who are coming in after you. You really have to appreciate what we have. Viking Masek has put us in a position where we can grow this part of our business. When you have a grocery wholesaler that places an order with you, if you miss that order date, they drop you and they move on to somebody else. And we didn't feel confident what we had to go after that business. We do now. We can grow this end of the business like we weren't able to just a couple of years ago. We have people that come in and say we were married here back in the fifties. It's the same product we had back then. And that's what we strive for every day. We want somebody to be able to come back after a decade and enjoy it every bit as much as they did the first time they visited. And it's the same thing with our beignet mix. You know, if somebody buys it while they're here in New Orleans and then years later they walk through the grocery aisles and they see it and say, I wonder if it's the same. We wanna be able for them to pick that package up and say, it is the same. You know, let's let's have everybody over for a Sunday dinner or Sunday breakfast, and and we're gonna serve beignets, and we'll bring a little taste of New Orleans home. Viking Masek has been a great partner for ours, and I would recommend them to anybody. They've delivered everything they promised. They've they've over delivered in in some ways, and we couldn't have been more pleased that we made the choice we did.