Simplifying Complexity With Dot Foods’ Head of Innovation Jeff Barry

Fred Schonenberg
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the VentureFuel Visionaries podcast. I am your host, Fred Schonenberg, and I'm so excited to welcome Jeff Barry. Jeff is the Head of Innovation at Dot Foods, which is the nation's largest food service redistributor. He leads the company's efforts to modernize operations through new technologies and smarter processes. His work helps Dot stay efficient and competitive in a rapidly evolving supply chain landscape.

With experience at Anheuser-Busch, Nestle and Wells Fargo, Jeff brings both strategic and consumer insights into this role where he oversees initiatives like AI driven forecasting, predictive maintenance and warehouse optimization. His philosophy centers on understanding problems deeply and experimenting quickly to find better solutions. He also teaches innovation, mentors startups and frequently speaks at industry events.

He advocates practical human centered approaches that bring agility to even traditional industries. So if you're a listener and you're curious about the future of supply chains, food service or innovation leadership overall, this is the episode for you. Jeff, it is so nice to see you. Thank you for joining us.

Jeff Barry
Good to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Fred Schonenberg
So I wanted to start a little bit with like context. Dot Foods plays such a critical role in the food supply chain. VentureFuel is just hosting our Real California Milk Accelerator last week. And there was a whole conversation about Dot Foods from one of the founders on stage. And I was like, oh, I can't wait. I'm talking to Jeff next week. But how would you describe Dot’s business for those that might not know that are listening? And maybe how is your role? What is your role within that?

Jeff Barry
It's a great place to start because most people have no idea. I'm glad somebody knew who knew who we were. We're actually a pretty hidden part of the supply chain. Dot Foods is actually not the pretzels. It's short for Dorothy. The founders were RT and Dorothy. So that's… he named the company after his wife, as any smart husband would do. 

But so Dot Foods, the easiest way to describe it is Dot Foods sits between basically every major food manufacturer in the world. And on the other side are all of our customers. So think U.S. Foods, Cisco, big retailers, folks like that. And so the role we play in the food supply chain is if you're a big food service distributor, a broad line food service distributor, you don't want an entire semi full of mayonnaise. You just want three cases, three times a week.

And you want that across hundreds of different products. So when a food service distributor will order from us, its hundreds of products from hundreds of different manufacturers, all consolidated onto a multi-temp load that'll come into their distribution center. And we perform that function across convenience stores, retail, grocery, food service, you name it. 

Any place where there's food served, we serve that role. So we'll move about four billion pounds of food annually through our network of 15 distribution centers. So a hidden but fairly big part of the food supply chain.

Fred Schonenberg
I was just going to say that you're operating in an industry where reliability, efficiency, trust, all those things are core. They're non-negotiable to what you're doing. I'm always fascinated when you think about that as the sort of necessity of your business. What happens when innovation comes in? Right. Because innovation tends to be less predictable.

And so I'm curious. There's so many different things that innovation can do. And supply chain is an area that we're seeing so much new technologies. How do you separate out what's strategically important from what's just maybe the shiny object or interesting?

Jeff Barry
Yeah, I think it's… I think it's a great question. And so heading up innovation for the company, right? You're going to run into that scenario that you talk about every day. I ran into that scenario. And I think I will try and look at it through some key points. One is how can we reduce operational friction if we can do that? Then, sure. Are we messing around with what's happening in the supply chain? Yes. But the less friction in the supply chain, the better we are, the better our customers are, the better everybody downstream and upstream from us happens. 

The other thing is, we’re in a world of rapid decision-making. So anything I can do — innovation that we can bring — that makes our speed and accuracy better is more and more critical in the supply chain today. So while, sure, that may be disruptive thinking sometimes around some of the ideas my team brings forward, there’s nobody upstream or downstream from us that doesn’t benefit from us being faster and more accurate.

And, finally, I think that our core purpose, it died. You know, we want to provide more choice for those that are enjoying a restaurant or at a retail store buying food. So how can we improve the customer and our partners' experience? And so if we can simplify the complexity with innovation and make things more seamless, what we learned a couple of years ago in the middle of COVID when the supply chain crashed is that the supply chain is an incredibly complex and fragile ecosystem. And the more we can bring simplicity to that and make sure that it has consistency, the better off we are. And so that's my team's task every day.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. I also think it's interesting to lead into this next question, which is this idea of simplifying complexity. A lot of large organizations, enterprise leaders struggle with where innovation should live and how it should function, right? Whether it's centralized, embedded, separate from the business altogether. How have you all structured innovation at Dot where you can stay close to the business and their and their challenges, while also still being able to push the organization forward and move agilely and nimbly towards some of these faster solutions?

Jeff Barry
I have the luxury, probably, of having done this for a couple of decades now and having done it at Nestle and having done it at Anheuser-Busch. So I've seen various versions of how this works. And I've been around the innovation ecosystem for a long time. When I was asked to join Dot, I had the opportunity to put my own stamp on what that's going to look like, right, and build this department from scratch. 

So to me, the answer to your question is simple and straightforward. There's no ambiguity for me about how best to structure this. Now, that's my point of view. And what works for me and what works at DOT may not work in other places. But I think that centralized innovation is the best way to go. And if I can build a little further on it real quickly. 

I think that one of the things that we tried to do, not tried to do, that we have done here at DOT is if your innovation function is buried down inside your organization somewhere, even if it's centralized, if it's buried multiple layers down, what ends up happening is your innovation team comes up with great things and they have to fight their way up for approvals to chase those things and to get air cover, if you will, and advocates for it.

And by the time they do that, now they have to fight their way all the way back down to go experiment, test and implement those things. And it can radically slow you down. And so what we've done here is innovation. I report straight to the CEO. And so that allows us to start at the top with alignment and with our executive team, start there and then drive innovation down from there because we start with alignment. 

It saves us an enormous amount of time and an enormous amount of resources and energy and bureaucracy, to be honest with you, to remove that entire layer and lets us operate fast. And so to me, centralized like that. The other thing about centralized that I think it becomes important is it makes us beholden to no one. So we have to have the freedom to push boundaries. We have to have the freedom to challenge the status quo. And sometimes if you're embedded in whole or parts and other other areas in the organization, you can be subject to those things a little bit at times. 

Fred Schonenberg
Jeff, let me ask you this, because I agree with you. I love the model of centralized innovation. I think it has to start with executive leadership, buy in and alignment on the areas to focus on. The one thing I've seen there that becomes a challenge sometimes is when you actually go down as you start to get down to the business unit or the group that is being asked to execute, like maybe even you run a pilot or a test from the centralized group and it works.

You get excited and you hand it to the business unit or the team to go run with something that you see the promise and C-Suite sees the promise. But then that group is like, hey, wait a second. I got KPIs that have nothing to do with embedding this new tool and dealing with it. And like I'll get to it when I get to it. But like next quarter results is what I get compensated for. So that's how I'm going to focus. How do you all structure that or maybe overcome that hurdle?

Jeff Barry
I think you hit on something that can be an inhibitor right away if you don't if you don't address what you just described throughout. So just because you're centralized and you're at the top, every experiment, I defer to him as experiments versus pilots or tests. But every experiment that we run, it's going to start with involvement from those other groups. 

I will tell anybody and everybody always throughout the organization that my team owns nothing. We don't want to own anything and we're never going to own anything because ultimately the things that we're working on reside in a part of the business somewhere. And so I view us as a four lap race. We're going to be in this four person relay race together. We're going to my team's going to run the first three laps of the race. But of course, you're part of the relay. So you're there. You're part of strategizing for those first three laps. 

And then ultimately, my team's going to hand it off to you for that fourth lap so that you get to cross the finish line and you get the glory, if you will, or the ROI, however you want to describe it. So I think the simple answer to your question is you have to involve those people early. But the goal is not to let them drive, because what they'll do is they'll find ways to slow you down. But you want them involved. You want their opinions. You want them to apply their knowledge to what you're doing. But you're going to run it for those first three laps.

Fred Schonenberg
I love the relay race analogy. First off, I think it is brilliant that, hey, you get to run the fourth lap, get the glory, cross the finish line, get the ROI like that piece, right? What's in it for them is a really interesting way to phrase that. And I agree. The other problem is if they feel they have to run laps one, two and three. That's a lot of time and a lot of effort. So I love the idea of them informing and being along for part of the journey. But then once the juice is worth the squeeze, once it's been proven, then they come back in and play a more meaningful role.

Jeff Barry
That's right. So their KPI will be mad at that point because they do want to do it.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it's really cool. So you mentioned before that you don't chase the latest technology, it's more about the deep understanding of the executive organization, right, alignment on strategy. Can you share an example maybe where you've changed how a team approached a problem or a solution they got excited about because you were focused on that later outcome?

Jeff Barry
So, yeah, and I think the simplest way and I think lots of people say this and I'll say it, too, which is start by really, truly understanding what the problem is you're trying to solve. This is… people say this all the time and I think it gets lost. And I think the more we say it, the better. Those of us doing innovation and holding ourselves accountable to what it is we're really trying to solve for here. So I'll give you an example. 

Because of the complexity of our of our deliveries, as you heard earlier, it can take four, six, seven, eight hours to offload and break down one of our trucks to be put away in the racking at a customer because of how many products and all these hundreds of pallets that are going to come, that are going to be created once you break this down. And so we've got to find ways to simplify that process. 

And so you can state that the problem is easy: how do we reduce the time we're on a customer's dock or the complexity of that? But when you step back and you say, that's not really the problem, let's dig in here. And so the first part is insight. How do you understand? And I'm going to say something that might get people a little bit antsy. But for me, if you have to be willing to put your hands on the problem. So I spent six months on docks with our customers at 4 a.m. in freezers breaking down loads.

I don't care if you're the top level executives. How often are you getting out and seeing and feeling and touching and absorbing what's really happening on the ground? Because there's one thing to describe a problem and another thing to feel it, see it, touch it, and experience it yourself. And I think that the way we start and the way we stay grounded and not chasing crazy stuff and staying focused is by truly going out and understanding the problem through insight.

And so once we did that with this idea around how do we reduce dock time and complexity? What we found were a whole bunch of insights that led us to almost 20 different initiatives that we've now driving throughout the organization. Some of those are very technologically, you know, involved. And some of them were very simple, rudimentary behavioral things that we could do differently. But because we understood those nuances of what was happening, that lets us come with that body of solutions that some are easy, some are bigger lifts, but it lets us deploy them in this at the same time. 

Fred Schonenberg
One of the things we talked about already is the value of speed, right? This needs to kind of move faster, more accuracy. And speed is a common challenge for a lot of large organizations for good reasons. I'm curious how you're thinking about doing the experiments that you talked about in a way that enables you to test and learn faster and get to some of those lap fours more rapidly as you apply different solutions to the organization. 

Jeff Barry
Well, I mean, I think it's really, so I love experiments. My team will run 20 or 30 of them a year. And so we do a lot. We're a very small team intentionally like that. We want to stay lean and nimble, but we'll run a lot. And so how do you do that when you're that fast, and the way we're able to do that is not is just don't overcomplicate it. So I'll give you an example. 

So we're gonna work on how we automate our gate stations at our distribution centers using computer visioning and AI. When our drivers pull into the gate, it scans their truck, it does all the paperwork, it tells them where to go, it automatically opens the gate, all these great things. Well, to do that, think about all the systems you would have to integrate into run an experiment, right, you've got to tie in all these different in the supply chain world, you've got your yard manager system, your warehouse management system, you're on and on and on that you have to tie into to do that. Or do you? 

Because start with the idea that you don't even know if this is possible, or if it works. And so why deploy all those resources to do it? So step back and say, how can we do this in a way that allows us to learn and figure this out without deploying all those resources. So here's what we did. We went to our gate station, and we spent four hours with them. And we looked at every data field that they're getting data from and entering data into manually. Then we looked at the systems that they came from. So in four hours, we had this list. So now what we're doing is we're creating a fake file, a fake data file, where we're just going to fake all the data. So we know what fields the system needs to pull from. So now we're going to give it made up values, they'll be values that make sense, but they're fake values in here.

And that'll just feed that file to the software to the gate. And it'll be and it'll automate it in a fake way. But we'll let it allow us to put exceptions in there, those are the hardest things to test that your systems have to be able to handle for one of those edge cases. So let's build those in there in a way that we want to, so that we know we're going to see if it can handle them. And it lets us do it really fast and deploy as few resources as possible. Because now if it does work, and we can say, hey, there's an ROI here, then that's great. Now we can work on the integrations, which could take months, right? integrating into five different systems that could take months. But why try to do experiments? So that's how we do it fast.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it's like simplifying the complexity, right? Because there's a million reasons why this is hard to scale. integration to all these different systems and all these things that could go wrong. But it's like, well, wait a second, let's get it down to something we can understand to see if the juice is worth the squeeze. Then we can worry about the integrations and the farther, the more complex work that we would need to do.

Jeff Barry
That's right. I mean, why spend more than a heartbeat thinking about how hard or easy it is to scale if you don't even know it works? So start with the idea of can you build? Can you learn? And if you can learn and you say, wait, now I understand this. Yeah, in the real world, we'd have to tweak this. But how hard is it to tweak that one thing? 

Oh, it's really easy. Great, fine. We keep going. Then you've learned, or at the end, you say, boy, that the things we would have to do to make this work, we could not make it work, even when we faked it. Let's just stop. So now you haven't even had to have the conversation about scale or complexity like that. So now it's just time to move on. 

Fred Schonenberg
So, Jeff, the supply chain continues to face volatilities, disruptions, innovations, excitement like there's a lot going on, everything from labor to logistics to demand planning. And looking ahead, I'm curious if there are shifts you believe enterprise leaders can't afford to ignore and maybe where the most underappreciated opportunities are for innovation in the space.

Jeff Barry
Well, so I think there are things that we definitely shouldn't ignore. So labor scarcity is a thing and it's a structural reality and it's going to be here. Customers are going to continue to have expectations around visibility and your responsiveness to their requests or in a digital world. Those things are only going to be expected to be faster, more accurate and more complete. I think that we live in an ever interconnected world, so we cannot ignore those three realities.

Decisions are not going to be made, silos are going to be made by integrating data from everybody around. And everybody's going to expect a live model, if you will, of what's happening. I do think there's some things that are underappreciated about what's going on, too, which is the idea of how do we augment humans? Right. So this isn't about replacing humans with technology, but how do we give our frontline teams better tools, contacts and decisions? How do we supercharge that? Right. 

It's what previous technology evolutions have done. It's what will happen in the future for sure. I also think that we can think about how workflows get redesigned as a competitive advantage. So when I say that I don't just necessarily mean augmentation alone but how do we create end to end simplification around workflows? 

And finally, I think I'd say that in terms of underappreciated opportunities, this idea that I went back to before around cross data or cross functional data integration. So too many insights still to this day exist in silos, even within an organization, definitely outside an organization. But how do we bring those together to make holistic decisions, to have these really cool models that are going to inform us and allow us to react in real time?

Fred Schonenberg
It's so interesting, I think one of the things, you know. I'm thinking about the opportunity after decades of being within innovation to come and kind of create the team that you have at Dot for other leaders who are trying to do something similar. They're trying to innovate within large, complex organizations. Is there any lesson or learning you've had from either your experience pre Dot or as you stood this up at Dot that you would give as advice that translates across industries?

Jeff Barry
Well, so I talked about one of them before, which is I think if you can get it at the top and centralized. But beyond that, I think you have to live by a mantra. And that mantra is that if innovation feels like that it's something that's done to teams, right? Like if you're going to innovate for somebody or do it to them, then it's going to stall out and they're going to fight you. And you're going to have trouble succeeding past that idea of early stage testing. 

You can get that done because you control that sandbox. But executing at scale, you will fail more often than you'll succeed, I believe. So if innovation feels like it's done with them, right, then you'll accelerate that. And I think that in large part, that comes down to cultural alignment, you know, and cultural alignment will always be better than technical sophistication, technology or whatever. If you can align your culture and get your people on board, then that technology will come along with it.

Fred Schonenberg
So let me ask you this. I love this. One of the things we see a lot is not invented here syndrome, right? Like this, we innovate within our own four walls. We built this company from a very early stage to what it is today. Jeff, why are you coming in here with these external solutions? We're good. We're doing a great job as we are. How do you break down that cultural alignment? How do you get them to realize that the work you're doing is with them versus in spite of them?

Jeff Barry
Well, so a couple of things. First of all, Picasso said it better than me, which is that Picasso said that good artists create and great artists steal. So if we can steal, if you will, quote unquote technology and ideas from those that are doing it better than us or faster than us, then we're silly not to, right? And so I think that's where it starts.

The other thing I always remind people of is there's a lot of people in this world smarter than we are. And I spend lots of my time, probably 50% or more of my time trying to bring in external perspectives, whether those are startups or students or universities or other thinkers to help us because they're not clouded by years of orthodoxy or years of ways of working with insider organization. 

And I think if you do it with energy and you do it with passion and you do it in a non-threatening way, then people are actually inspired by those things and get excited by those things versus feeling threatened by those things. We don't bring those in to take over things. We bring those things in to inspire and to get people excited about what they can do for them. This comes back to, right? How do I help your KPI?

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, I love that. All right. So I'm going to get you out of here on a little bit of a rapid fire. So I'm going to throw you some fast questions and just look for your gut instinct, brief reaction. So you're ready to go?

Jeff Barry
All right, let's go.

Fred Schonenberg
All right. So one assumption about supply chain operations that leaders should be rethinking right now?

Jeff Barry
That stability is the norm. So I think that that's an assumption people make that they should rethink, right? Variability and disruption are now the default state. So design your organization, your innovation for flexibility.

Fred Schonenberg
Love that. A technology that's getting more attention than it deserves and one that is underestimated.

Jeff Barry
So I think on the overhyped one, I think that AI is the silver bullet for everything. That's the current shiny object and I believe fundamentally that relationships still matter and that human interaction still matters and that we have to continue those because they allow us to bring nuance to our decision making and those kinds of things.

The one that I think is probably underestimated is without high quality integrated data, without it, nothing will scale. So if you don't have those things, if you don't have great data and you haven't spent time getting the data, which is the unsexy part of all these great technologies, then nothing's going to be scalable or succeed longer term. So I think that the underestimated one is people say, oh, we can just deploy whatever it is and then we haven't spent the time working on the data or underestimate how much work there is to clean up our data and get it ready.

Fred Schonenberg
No doubt. All right. The hardest mindset shift required to move innovation from experiments to real impact.

Jeff Barry
Culture. Culture eats strategy right for lunch, as they say. And so I think that believing that just because you found something that works, that everyone will just immediately make it happen is a fallacy. So you have to keep pushing, right? You have to just because you think you got it, culture is going to fight you back a little bit. So you have to keep pushing. 

And I think that if you instill in your culture that innovation can make us better and make you better versus something that needs to be resisted, as we've talked about several times throughout this. But I think at its core, culture is what will allow you to drive real impact. If your culture buys in, you'll buy in. And it starts at the top.

Let me end by saying it starts at the top. If your top level leaders don't embrace innovation and embrace it as part of the culture and talk about it and demonstrate it to the organization, then the rest of your organization will feel like they have air cover to not be as engaged or as supportive. If your top level says, we're going to do this, and I want everybody to get on board, and I know we're going to fail, and I know we're going to whatever it is, then everybody below says, OK, I get it. And I feel it. And I feel like I can do what I need to do to do it. So culture.

Fred Schonenberg
Culture might be the answer to this one. What is the biggest constraint to innovation inside large organizations? Is it culture, incentives, process?

Jeff Barry
It's definitely culture. Every organization's culture is different. The core part, one of the things I've learned over all these years is innovation in and of itself is not this crazy thing that's so hard to do. It's really about how do you execute it within your organization's unique culture? So just because something works in Dot's culture or worked in Anheuser-Busch culture or Nestle's culture, it's about how do you take those core fundamentals of innovation and operate them within your company's unique culture? 

And so that, for sure, is the biggest constraint. I'd be never say that if you're a process-driven organization and you refuse to deviate from the process, that could certainly slow you down, too.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. All right. So help me finish this sentence. Five years from now, the supply chain leaders who win will be the ones that do what?

Jeff Barry
Will be the ones that design organizations that learn fast… that learn faster than their environment changes. So if you can learn faster than your environment's changing and continue and keep that learning, then you're going to win. And then those that use technology to amplify human capability, not replace it, I think are the ones that will win. 

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. That is a great place to end on. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time, for sharing your insights and your experience from building within this innovation space. I know the audience will love it and we really appreciate it.

Jeff Barry
It was great seeing you.

Fred Schonenberg
Great to see you, too.