Ritter Foods
Three Divisions, One Behavior-Driven Culture
Client Overview
Ritter Foods is both a manufacturer and distributor of meat products. On the manufacturing side, they produce thinly sliced beef and chicken sandwich steak, also known as Philly steak, and they distribute cheesesteaks nationwide. The company has been in business since 1922, and they recently celebrated their 100-year anniversary.
As the company grew, Ritter Foods recognized they had people from different backgrounds and divisions, and they lacked a unified culture across the business. With CultureWise, they built a shared set of Fundamentals that created clearer expectations, improved teamwork, and helped employees across manufacturing, distribution, and the office work together with the same language and standards.
Why It Matters
Ritter Foods had three distinct divisions, manufacturing, distribution, and the office, and there was a real gap between them. CultureWise helped them create a common culture built on behaviors, not just values, so expectations became clear, teamwork improved, and people across the company could work together with more consistency and cooperation.
The Challenge
Ritter Foods had a wide mix of people across the organization, and that meant different vocabulary, different expectations, and different ways of working. With three separate divisions inside the company, it was easy for gaps to form and for teams to feel disconnected from each other.
Leadership knew they needed a method to bring everyone together into one shared culture, but they also knew it would be difficult to build and roll out something consistent across a company of around 200 people without a system to make it simple and repeatable.
“You can’t measure values, you can measure behavior.”
Ritter Foods
Harry Cook
President
The Solution
CultureWise gave Ritter Foods a complete culture program that was packaged in a way that was easy to implement and roll out across the company. Instead of trying to build everything internally, Ritter Foods used the CultureWise system to define behavior-based Fundamentals, and then reinforce them through daily language, meetings, and consistent repetition, especially with their production team starting each morning meeting with CultureWise and discussing Fundamentals at least five times per week.
The Results
The Fundamentals moved off the card and into daily speech. Team members drop that week’s Fundamental, or one that sticks with them, into conversations and meetings, and the production team opens its morning meeting with CultureWise, talking through a Fundamental at least five times a week.
Production Manager Fred Washington says the team now knows what the company expects of them, and that positive peer pressure has replaced the negative kind. In his words, it’s a friendlier, happier place to work, and people want to be there.
President Harry Cook believes CultureWise has helped the bottom line. With the Fundamentals top of mind, people work more cooperatively and look for cost savings, and the three divisions share one set of expectations for how they work together.
Key Outcomes
- One shared language across manufacturing, distribution, and the office
- Fundamentals discussed at least five times a week in production meetings
- 26 Fundamentals rolled out to about 200 team members
- Positive peer pressure on the production floor
- Clearer expectations, and stronger teamwork across divisions
“If the people are working well and the people are working together, that’s going to be the strength of any company.”
— Harry Cook, PresidentThe Culture You Need
Won’t Build Itself
We’ll give you the system, structure, and support to make it happen.