When roller blades hit the cultural scene in the late ‘90s, Benjamin Brewer knew they could be used for more than entertainment and exercise. The then-teenage nephew of David Stelzer worked as a floor worker in the warehouse, grabbing products off the shelves to be boxed and sent to customers. He decided to put his pair of blades to the test and used them to pick up orders faster. His fun method caught on with the rest of the warehouse team, and customers began visiting the warehouse just to see the efficient rollerblading packaging team in action.
This passion for community-oriented innovation eventually led to Benjamin becoming the Chief Innovation Officer at Azure Standard, where he focuses on improving aspects of Azure through the innovation team, while managing IT, software, maintenance, and construction. I sat down with him to discuss his multifaceted role, his recent projects, how Azure has impacted his life, and how he hopes to help others through his work.
Benjamin witnessed Azure Standard evolve from a small family farm business into a national organic food distribution company and manufacturer. He began helping on the farm around age 10. He was put in charge of grinding flour, helping repackage products, and pulling orders. He credits his strong work ethic to helping on the farm at such an early age — sometimes until midnight, if that was what was needed to get orders out. When the Y2K food supply panic hit, 18-year-old Benjamin moved from floor worker to floor manager and learned that he enjoyed improving processes more than managing people. He then established a new department at Azure, which focused on improving those processes – the Innovation Team. He focused on streamlining the business side of the farm and built the mill that continues to grind Azure’s flour today. He brings a lifetime of Azure experience and a diverse skill set into his work daily as the Chief Innovation Officer.
If there is an area that is a pinch point,” he says, “my role is to find it and research what we could do to relieve it. I work with many different teams to define what is needed and find a solution to resolve the issue.
In addition to Benjamin developing solutions, he also improves existing platforms. Two of the most recent projects that he is excited about are the new Shop Lists feature and the Drop-to-Home program. Shop Lists, located on the Azure Standard website, are a way for customers to share and organize Azure products into customizable groups.
Example lists might include:
- Wish List
- Holiday Gift Ideas
- Recommended Immune Builders for Flu Season
- Frequently Ordered Items
- Favorite Items
Benjamin describes shareable Shop Lists as a simple new feature that allows customers to connect with the wisdom of the Azure community. “We have thousands of the best minds in the healthy living world within our customer base. It would be awesome if our customers could be inspired by each other, share their experiences, and connect with others who share the same interest, if they wish.”
Thousands of customers have started using Shop Lists to organize their favorite products — and that’s only the beginning. “Eventually, you’ll have people you trust and look up to, and you’ll want to see what products or recipes they recommend. This gives you a way to do exactly that.” Benjamin says. “We'll make it incentivized as well. If you share your list with somebody, and they end up buying a product from that list, you’ll get an Azure credit.”
When I mention that this focused approach helps Azure’s social feature stand out from other platforms, Benjamin agrees. “We want to create this platform in a way that brings people together in a community with a lot of commonalities. Unlike other social platforms that are engineered to keep you clicking for more, I want it to make your life more productive. Our hope is for you to easily find the product or information, or connection you are looking for, and then quickly get off the screen to go spend your time in the real world, interacting with real people who share your passion.”
Benjamin admits he is not a social media user, but says if he were, he would want it to be more like this.
Another one of Benjamin’s massive projects is the Drop-to-Home program, which he says will open Azure to a whole new group of healthy living people who are unable to commit to meeting a truck at a drop at a certain time of day. Drop-to-Home pays customers to deliver orders to their neighbors on the way home from the Azure drop. This makes Azure Standard’s organic products available to thousands more who want to live in health and abundance. Benjamin works hard alongside the software team and driver route management to make this dream a reality.
I ask Benjamin how Azure has impacted his life and that of his family. With his wife, Anne Marie, and eight children ranging in age from five months to 20 years, Benjamin pauses before responding. He says his children benefit from many of the same experiences he had growing up on the farm—developing a strong work ethic, while also enjoying greater opportunities to learn as the farm has expanded. In addition to learning how to run a farm, they are picking up skills that span managing a business, repairing machinery, and programming a website. Their hands-on learning extends to building relationships and learning responsibility.
For instance, their development of Missy J’s Carob business created lasting family memories: “It started in 2017, and for the first three or four years - before we hired anybody - my family and I built the machines and did all the production work. Often after school, our whole family, down to our 3-year-old, would work together into the evening hand-wrapping carob bars. It was assembly line work, so each person had a job that had to be kept up with, or the whole line would slow down. The children learned how to work as a team and get along under pressure.
This was just a side project alongside my responsibilities with Azure, so I trained and often left my oldest two children, who were 10 & 13 at the time, to run the production machineryon their own. This taught them responsibility; they had to watch and listen to the machines to catch issues before any damage happened to the carob or the machinery. If something did break, they learned to diagnose and fix it. They became competent enough that Anne Marie and I left them in charge of all production for over a month, while we were overseas documenting our suppliers' farms. Our children look back on those times with fond memories and confidence to take on bigger challenges.”
Ultimately, Benjamin believes that Azure must play a role in improving the health of America. With the world changing so fast all around us, with politics and technology causing many people to worry, and not knowing who to trust. With our health professionals sponsored to recommend health fads that come and go. With birth rates well below replacement level, and over 50% of children living with chronic illness. He wants Azure to be that rock of integrity that people can rely on as a trustworthy source of healthy living products, inspiration, and knowledge that will inspire our nation back into healthy and abundant living:
That's my dream with Azure - every tool that we create, every new manufacturing business, or whatever it is, we build, we make it where it inspires healthy living in lots of people. And really, national change is possible because we are a national company now, delivering to four thousand drops across the country. So whenever we do make a change, we actually can make it nationally. And that's a crazy opportunity. I’m really excited and passionate about that part of it.
Passing on this passion is one of his driving motivations, he notes: “What makes me get out of bed every day is really the inspiration, the excitement of being able to actually make a difference in changing the life of our nation.”
In reflecting on our conversation, I am left with a sense of inspiration. Though Benjamin began his Azure career humbly as a young wheat grinder and label maker, through hard work and creativity, he became Chief Innovation Officer and brought many blessings to the farm, and through it, to the wider community. He certainly pursues a life of abundance every day, and his story shows that this pursuit is more than worth it.
SOURCES
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