Rich is the Senior Director of Manufacturing for Treehouse Foods in St. Louis and a member of the BCMA education committee. He has over 24 years of experience in the baking industry. He started with Bremner Biscuit Company, part of Ralston Purina, in Princeton, KY in 1993 as a 3rd shift quality technician. Rich is responsible for 17 plants and approximately 5,500 employees across the US and Canada. These plants produce cookies, crackers, candy, cakes, pie crusts, biscuits, cinnamon rolls and a variety of other products across 3 temperature classes. Throughout his career, Rich has held positions in quality, transportation and warehousing, customer service, production, continuous improvement, commercialization and operations management. Rich has been involved in numerous acquisitions, plant startups and plant closures during this time. Through these experiences he has gained first-hand knowledge of different employee programs and has agreed to share that knowledge with us today.