The Twin Cities have a lot more to offer than just the Mall of America and the Minnesota Vikings. The area is also known for its outstanding culinary selection. Peppered throughout the cities is a large selection of ethnic food stores, including Sun Foods and Dragon Star Supermarket. Sun Foods and Dragon Star share more than location and food offerings—they also share a general manager. Bona is in charge of helping his stores boost efficiency and deliver high-quality products to their communities.
Sun Foods opened in 2006 with Dragon Star following in 2014. Both of these ethnic food stores provide a wide variety of items from meats and seafood to fruits and vegetables. They offer hard-to-find items their customers love and can’t find elsewhere.
Bona knew that one of the most time-consuming tasks at his stores was hand-wrapping the variety of meat they sell. Beef, chicken, pork and goat can all be easily found at Sun Foods and Dragon Star. In addition to the variety of meats, they also have a large selection of delicacies including tongue, liver, heart, feet and even tripe (stomach). Not only was the manual wrapping process time-consuming, but the repetitive motions were becoming a strain on employees. Bona knew he needed to find a better solution for their meat-wrapping departments.
When Bona began his search for a new meat-wrapping solution, he knew the stores would need to work with a local supplier who could provide support when they needed it. He began working with Domingo Contreras Jr. of DM&P Equipment & Supplies, Inc. to find their new wrappers. DM&P was founded in 2004 by Anne and Domingo Contreras who had worked for a retail supply company for over 30 years. In 2015, their son, Domingo Jr., joined them in selling and servicing retail equipment for butcher shops, delis and ethnic food stores.
According to Bona, Domingo Jr.’s knowledgeable support is what sold him on wrappers from Rice Lake Retail Solutions. Domingo Jr. took Bona to a store that was already using one of Rice Lake’s Ishida WM-Ai automatic wrapper so he could see it in action before deciding to make the purchase. Bona was impressed with both the speed and efficiency boost the WM-Ai provided, but he was most impressed with how much easier it made work for his team members. “That was the biggest reason, it just makes work easier for them,” Bona said when explaining why he chose the WM-Ai wrappers. Using automatic wrappers means his team members in the meat departments of Sun Foods and Dragon Star only need to place the loaded trays on the infeed—the WM-Ai does the rest.
