Sunday, May 17, 2020

Fig Newton History and Invention of the Cookies

The iconic Fig Newton was one of the earliest commercially baked products in America, and the serendipitous result of the blending of a cookie maker in Philadelphia, an inventor from Florida, and a massive merger of over 100 bakeries in New York and Chicago.   At the same time, and arguably because of the lowly Fig Newton, the legendary Nabisco baking company had its roots. Its bakery in Chicago today is the largest bakery in the world, with more than 1,200 workers and producing 320 pounds of snack foods annually.   The Cookie Maker The recipe for the fig filling was the brainchild of Charles M. Roser, a cookie maker born in Ohio. Roser worked for a bakery in Philadelphia who sold his recipe to the Kennedy Biscuit company. Although rumor has it the cookie was named after the pioneering physicist Isaac Newton, in fact, Kennedy Biscuit named the cookie Newton after the town in Massachusetts. The Boston-based company had a habit of naming their cookies after local towns, and they already had cookies named Beacon Hill, Harvard, and Shrewsbury when the Newton was created.   Roser probably based his recipe on fig rolls, up until then a locally and homemade cookie brought to the U.S. by British immigrants. The cookie is made up of a crumbly pastry with a jammy scoop of fig in the middle. Nabiscos recipes are (obviously) a secret, but modern copies suggest that you start with dried mission figs, and add applesauce and orange juice, and a little orange zest as you process the fruit. More exotic recipes add Medjool dates, currants and crystallized ginger and perhaps a few ground almonds.   The Machine The manufacture of Fig Newtons was made possible by the creation of Florida inventor James Henry Mitchell, who revolutionized the packaged cookie business by building an apparatus that could make a hollow cookie crust and fill it with fruit preserves. His machine worked like funnel within a funnel; the inside funnel supplied jam, while the outside funnel pumped out the dough. This produced an endless length of filled cookie, which could then be cut into smaller pieces.   Mitchell also developed a dough-sheeting machine, another that made sugar wafers, and others that helped speed cake production: all of these went into production by the precursors of Nabisco. The Merger At the end of the 19th century, bakeries began to merge, in order to mass produce cookies for a burgeoning middle-class market. In 1889, William Moore of New York bought out eight bakeries to start the New York Biscuit Company (including Kennedy Biscuit), and in 1890, Chicago-based Adolphus Green began the American Biscuit Company, by merging 40 midwestern bakeries.   It was a match made in heaven: Moore and Green merged in 1898, making the National Biscuit Company, or N.B.C. Among the purchases were the machines of Mitchell and Rosers cookie recipe. Mitchells machine for sugar wafers was also purchased; N.B.C. started mass producing sugar wafers in 1901. Both Mitchell and Roser walked away wealthy.   N.B.C. to Nabisco In 1898, N.B.C. had 114 bakeries and a capital of US $55 million. They built an enormous bakery in downtown New York, what is today the Chelsea Market, and continued to expand it. The chief architect of this project was Adolphus Green, and he insisted on standard recipes for N.B.C.s products. They continued to make two wildly successful products that the little bakery companies had made: Fig Newtons (they added the Fig to the name when the cookie received good reviews), and Premium Saltines.   A new cookie called Uneeda Biscuit was introduced in 1898—and despite the goofy name N.B.C. even had a copyright infringement case over competitors who called their biscuits Uwanta and Ulika. In 1903, N.B.C. introduced Barnums Animal Crackers in the famous decorative box resembling a circus cage filled with animals; and in 1912, they introduced both Lorna Doone shortbread cookies and the unstoppable Oreos.   Modern Changes to the Fig Newton   Nabisco began replacing the fig jam in its cookie with raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries, as well as an apple cinnamon flavor by the 1980s. In 2012, they once again dropped the Fig from the name because, as the Kraft specialist Gary Osifchin told The New York Times, they wanted to change the core of the brand to fruit. It was going to be hard for us to advance the Newtons brand with the baggage of the fig.   Sources   Adams, Cecil. Who or what are Fig Newton cookies named after? The Straight Dope May 8, 1998.   Klara, Robert. Kicking the Figs out of Fig Newtons. Adweek June 18, 2014 Nabisco Foods Group History. Funding Universe. International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 7. St. James Press, 1993. Newman, Andrew Adam. Reminders That a Cookie Goes Beyond the Fig. The New York Times, April 30, 2012. Martinelli, Katherine. The Factory that Oreos Built. Smithsonian, May 21, 2018

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Competitive Advantage Using Supply Chain Management

GAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE USING EFFECTIVE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 1.0 Introduction Christopher (2005, p.5) describes supply chain management as follows: â€Å"The management of upstream and downstream relationships with suppliers and customers to deliver superior customer value at less cost to the supply chain as a whole† Until recently, supply chain management has been largely viewed as a necessary evil and the focus has been strictly on cost reductions. Today however, many are coming to the realization that supply chain management can be much more strategic, affording a company the opportunity to out-perform competitors. With supply chains becoming more elongated as they become more global, the pace of demand changes increasing and†¦show more content†¦Dell’s own forecast is posted to its extranet for easy access by their suppliers and other partners. 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Analysis of Conspiracy free essay sample

Within two hours the senior officials seem to casually discuss the most practical way of eliminating the Jewish race and conclude with the final policy solution. The film is based on the Wannsee protocol or the minutes the document which is authored by Adolf Eichmann and the document was found 1947 by Robert Kemper. The film is dramatized for entertainment purposes, meaning that it is not fully accurate because the creators tended to take certain liberties in making the film. Although at the end it is stated that the film ‘is based on a true story, with some scenes, events, and characters created or changed for dramatic purposes’. The issue still remains that most people tend to take films at face value, and do not bother doing further research about the topic at hand also the ending credits to do make that much of a difference to those people. The film as a historical source faces some limitations because it runs for ninety minutes when focusing on issue as deep as the origins of the final solutions, ninety minutes is not enough time to go into depth. We will write a custom essay sample on Analysis of Conspiracy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The film would have been more valuable as a historical source if it had involved itself more in the debate of the origins of the final solution. However, film makers have a different duty from Historians their purpose is to entertain and not educate. The strongest limitation is the dialogue which is actually quiet misleading, because Pierson dramatizes it for entertainment purpose and it is mostly fictional. Eichmann stated in his testimony in 1962 that the last twenty minutes of the meeting were words like extermination and liquidation were used was removed from the official summary and summed in one sentence. Pierson and Mandel fail to analyse the document that the film is based on ‘minutes’ rather it summaries and add on fictional scenes for entertainment. For example in film Kritzinger protests against the idea of extermination because Hitler had promised him that this would not become a state policy. We also see another fictional scene where Heydrick pressures other senior officials Kritzinger and Stuckart to support him during the meeting there evidences suggests that he did not need to pressure them because he was powerful. During the first part of the meeting the senior officials discuss various solutions to the Jewish question, sterilisation of those with Jewish blood is discussed, and here the division between the politicians and the military can be seen. In the second part of the meeting the atmosphere becomes more serious when Heydrick suggests gas chambers and the rest of the men find out that S. S have already begun building extermination camps. The film should have clarified that Jews were already being murdered on an organised scale, Pierson slightly neglected that point. Film makers’ face the same problems Historians face when using the Wannsee protocol document, it is very open to interpretation when translated into English. Holocaust deniers have used the document to argue that Hitler had no involvement in the planning or implementing the final solution. Furthermore, Holocaust denier David Irving has argued the Wannsee conference was about immigration of the Jews, when testify during his trial he pointed that words such ‘killing’ or extermination of the Jews were not used in the conference. However in the film words like kill or exterminate were used, which is another inaccuracy because in the actual document killing euphemism are used instead. However Eichmann did confirm in his 1962 trail that after the meeting had ended the men became less restrained and freely discussed killing methods however this was deleted the official summary and replaced with one sentence. The film overplays the role of the Wannsee conference; Gerlach argues that the meeting occurred not to discuss the fate of Jews in Europe but for Heydrick to seek support from other senior officials. The conference was originally schedule for the 9th of December but happened on the 20th of January giving Heydrick time to prepare the new task based Hitler’s ‘basic decision’. Unlike other Historical source the film industry seem to have shallow research which it tends to exaggerate, this is one of the issues with this film. For this film to be an adequate historical source it should have not put so much emphasis on the conference and also focused to the prior events. Also the film does not address Hitler’s role in the final solution, most historical sources on this topic have done so, and Hitler’s role is one most controversial aspects of this topic. The relevance of the conference is widely debated amongst scholars, with conventional Historian arguing that the murdering of Jews had begun at the latest in December 1941 long before the conference. When focusing on the origins of the final solution the film gives an inaccurate perspective because although it mentions that the extermination camps were being built it fails to mention a mobile version of the gas chamber was already in use. In June 1941 the Soviet Union territory that was under Germany saw Jewish men of military age being executed by special mobile forces. On the 8th December an SS command unit used gas vans to kill Jews from neighbouring districts of Wartherland, clearly the preparations of the final solution began before the Wannsee conference. Clearly the final solution was already in place before the conference so there is no need place too much emphasis on it like Pierson. In conclusion, overall this a good film however if it is used as a historical source it should not be taken at face value. It is very good in delving into the bizarre Nazi psychology and behaviour and sophisticatedly highlights how their belief of the Nazi ideology had led them to dehumanise the Jews.