Kellogg names pay homage to past and future

Northern United properties operating in Traverse City include Jolly Pumpkin, Mission Table and Blue Tractor restaurants. A North Peak Brewing taproom opened in 2016 at 400 W. Front St.

e new owners have grand plans for the 8,400-square-foot space, where beer was brewed in the basement.

e 4,200-square-foot main oor will remain a restaurant and brewpub, Lane said. But law o ces on the 4,200-square-foot second oor will be transformed into Airbnb units, according to Lane.

Lane, with more than 30 years experience as a Realtor, said it wasn’t easy nding a buyer for the business and building because the Langbows wanted to sell to someone who would continue to use the space as a restaurant.

“It’s a challenging market to have sold the business in,” Lane said. “It’s hard with restaurants coming o COVID-19 with the labor market. It’s been rough selling restaurants the last two or three years.”

Contact: jason.davis@crain.com (313) 446-1612; @JayDavis_1981

DEALS & DETAILS

 EXPANSIONS

 Metro Vein Centers, West Bloomfield Township, opened vein care centers at 9392 N Lilley Road, Plymouth; 25631 Little Mack Ave., Suite 204, St. Clair Shores; and 4870 Clark Road, Suite 102, Ypsilanti. The company now has eight vein clinics operating in Michigan. Phone: (866) 941-2903. Website: metroveincenters.com/locations e WK Kellogg Co name is an overt nod to company founder William Keith Kellogg.

Kellogg Co. has selected the name Kellanova for its Chicago-based snack business while going with the more orthodox WK Kellogg Co moniker for its smaller North American cereal business, which will remain based in Battle Creek following a planned spino .

Kellogg announced new names for the companies Wednesday, nearly a year after announcing it would split into separate entities to focus on snack growth. e split is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Kellanova, which combines Kellogg with the Latin word for “new,” was inspired by more than 4,000 name suggestions from employees, the company said in a news release.

“ e name Kellanova signals the company’s ambition for the future, building on the strong brand equity and legacy built over the past 117

 MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

 SyBridge Technologies, Southfield, a design and manufacturing company, acquired Cavaform Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla., a plastic fabrication company.

Website: sybridgetech.com

 TriMas, Bloomfield Hills, manufacturer of engineered products, is acquiring the operating net assets of Weldmac Manufacturing Co., El Cajon, Calif., designer and manufacturer of components and assemblies for the aerospace, defense and space launch end markets. Websites: trimascorp.com years as Kellogg Company,” Steve Cahillane, chairman and CEO of Kellogg Co., said in the release. e company announced last June a three-way split between its legacy North America cereal business, its high growth snack business and its plant-based foods business, which it had been trying to sell until halting those plans last month. Instead, the plantbased segment, anchored by MorningStar Farms, will be folded into Kellanova, the company announced last month.

Kellanova will include Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, Rice Krispies

Treats, Nutri-Grain, Eggo, RXBAR, Incogmeato and Gardenburger, as well as international cereal and noodles. ose brands make up nearly $12 billion of annual revenue, or 82 percent of the combined companies’ overall sales.

Cahillane will serve as chairman and CEO of Kellanova.

WK Kellogg Co will include cereal staples Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Mini-Wheats, Special K, Raisin Bran, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, Kashi and Bear Naked. ose products account for $2.4 billion in revenue.

Gary Pilnick, vice chairman, corporate development and chief legal o cer at Kellogg Co., will be CEO of WK Kellogg Co.

“ e name WK Kellogg Co honors the legacy of founder W.K. Kellogg, celebrating his spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship,” Pilnick said in the release. “At the same time, we are looking forward, focused on propelling the company into the future.” e “Kellogg’s” brand will remain on product packaging of each company around the world, according to the release.

Kellanova will trade on the NYSE under ticker symbol “K.” Stock exchange information for WK Kellogg Co will be announced in the coming months, the company said.

Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl

 NEW SERVICES

 Fullstack Academy, New York, N.Y., a technical education provider, has a partnership with Nexus at University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor, to provide tech training bootcamps specializing in data analytics, DevOps, artificial intelligence, fintech with blockchain, and business analytics in Michigan. The live online part- and fulltime tech bootcamps are to help fill the more than 8,700 available tech jobs across Michigan.

Website: nexus.engin.umich. edu

From Page 3

Being family owned and operated also has its challenges. For instance, Amigo doesn’t have the same level of resources or operational e ciency tools wielded by larger corporations or private equity owners, which limited its ability to pivot quickly. Another thing lacking: a fresh set of eyes.

Streamlining and scaling is the bread and butter of Plymouth-based Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, a government-funded consultant and training organization for smaller manufacturers. With the help of a $10,000 grant through the Great Lakes Bay Manufacturers Association, the company hired the MMTC in 2021 to gure out why it couldn’t churn out more than 80 units per day.

It didn’t take long for Chuck Werner, manager of operational excellence for the MMTC, to nd the problems and prescribe solutions.

“ ey are very business savvy, a very knowledgeable group,” said Werner, who spent three days with his team working on-site with the company. “But what they didn’t have was information.” placency or a chronic dependency on tooling workarounds that add up and drag down the business.

Step one was a 40-question assessment completed by the company, followed by a walk-through of Amigo’s value stream and Lean Six Sigma training. e MMTC also installed Tulip operations software on the shop oor to measure output and detect snags.

Implementing a dashboard on production lines at Amigo allowed workers to pinpoint problems and de ne them.

“If someone tells me to go out and x scrap or x throughput, I can’t do that because I don’t know what that is,” Werner said. “But if someone comes out and tells me to x a software integration problem with a printer that’s causing it to delay, OK, now I’ve got something actionable.” e software also made problems impossible to ignore. e dashboard would track whenever workers delayed or missed a cycle, and operators would enter a reason code for the issue. ieme, the company’s operations manager, said the company now produces 120-150 units per day and is expecting its third production line to be installed by June, with ambitions for 180 units per day. At the start of pandemic boom times, it had just one line rolling out 50-60 scooters daily.

“As those data points start to build up, you start to see patterns, and those patterns are the things you want to work on,” Werner said.

“Every time they just walk through our building, they give us some idea and we think, ‘Shoot we should have thought of that,’” ieme said of the MMTC. “ e biggest thing is being able to grow as fast as possible without having to waste a lot of money.” e growth has tightened Amigo’s grip on the shopping scooter market and allowed it to branch out into other areas. our stores the ways they want to every day,” a Kroger spokesperson said in an email. “In addition to these carts in stores, we have also been testing some new technology features with Amigo International and we look forward to our continued collaboration with this Michigan-based business.” e company is also making industrial scooters for customers including pet e-commerce giant Chewy to move orders around warehouses. A couple of years ago, Amigo acquired Wisconsin-based AeroTow, which makes machines that haul small aircraft around runways. e company’s most recent purchase was Bridgeport Manufacturing, an on-site metal fabrication supplier that had been leasing space from Amigo until its owner retired.

Some of Amigo’s new technologies include lithium battery-powered carts, as opposed to sealed lead-acid, as well as a smart tracking systems with GPS boundaries to keep carts on store property and help them avoid obstacles.

While increasing production, ieme aims to increase the amount of manufacturing work done locally. All the assembly and roughly 30 percent of manufacturing takes place at the company’s plant, but that’s set to increase with the implementation of laser tube cutting and metal tube bending machines, along with three robotic welders.

About 65 percent of its parts come from Michigan or Midwest suppliers, while batteries, motors, seats and baskets are imported from China. Every other business function, from R&D to marketing and sales, is done at the Bridgeport site.

Pronghorn, also a Black-owned business, reached out to the Fergusons late last year.

“We had interest from some celebrities to back us, but they wanted to take over the brand and the story,” the 49-year-old Ferguson told Crain’s. “We received a lot of o ers from VC companies and after some conversations decided this was something to move forward with.” e investment into Anteel is part of an exciting time for Pronghorn, CEO and Managing Director Jomaree Pinkard said in a statement.

Anteel is one of nine Blackowned liquor companies in which Pronghorn has invested since its establishment in 2021. Pronghorn is backed by British alcoholic beverage company Diageo whose brands include Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal and Ketel One and Guinness. Diageo earned more than $20.5 billion in revenue in 2022, a 20 percent increase from 2021. Pronghorn has o ces in New York and California, and is setting up shop in Atlanta, where the Fergusons have relocated. ey believe a move to an entertainment hot-spot will help accelerate the business’s growth.

“We are starting o the year strong ahead of schedule of our 10year goal,” Pinkard said, “and are now welcoming Anteel Tequila, a successful woman- and minority-owned business, into our network.”

Anteel o ers three types of tequila: blanco, coconut lime blanco and reposado. Plans call for the release of an anejo version later this year. Each of the Anteel varieties is produced in Jalisco, Mexico, and shipped to distributors in the United States. In order for a spirit to be called tequila, it must be produced in one of ve states in Mexico. Anteel has earned more than 50 awards since 2019.

Anteel is available statewide in Michigan, California, Georgia and Oklahoma. e tequilas are also available at select stores in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Texas and Maryland.

Establishing the business started as a leap of faith — something the Fergusons are familiar with. Nayana Ferguson is a 17-year pancreatic cancer survivor and a 10-year breast cancer survivor. Battling through those illnesses showed the team that anything is possible.

“I proposed to (Nayana) in 2016 in the Dominican Republic. We drank a lot of tequila,” Don Ferguson said. “We talked about our life goals and I always wanted to own a tequila company. We went back to our careers, discussed it some more, and at one point when (Nayana) was being laid o we just decided to go for it.”

Six months ago, the Fergusons relocated from Canton to Atlanta to scale their business, though they maintain a home and o ce in Canton. ey work with Livonia-based distribution partner Imperial Beverage, which has a sales team that facilitates in-store sampling events. e move to Atlanta is strategic, as several of the celebrities who have reached out about working with Anteel live in Atlanta. e move and the Pronghorn partnership, according to Nayana Ferguson, could help Anteel become a national brand.

“ is has been challenging, but it’s exciting,” she said. “I think we’re going to continue to grow this brand for a while.”

Although Pronghorn initially reached out to them, Don Ferguson said he and his wife had to pitch Anteel “Shark Tank”-style to Pronghorn. It was well worth going through the process, he said.

“ ey went through every nook and cranny of our business but we did it,” Ferguson said. “Now the sky’s the limit.”

Contact: jason.davis@crain.com (313) 446-1612; @JayDavis_1981

Canton Township-based Anteel Tequila o ers three varieties of the spirit. | ANTEEL TEQUILA e rst problem it identi ed appeared harmless enough. e machine printing stickers for the scooters was delayed by a couple of minutes. But that’s a world of time on an assembly line, Werner said. e instinct for companies and employees on the line is to power through obstacles on the oor to ensure the assembly keeps moving forward, Werner said. at can often lead to com- e company’s products are found in every Kroger and H-E-B store in the country and more than half of all Walmarts, ieme said. Its main competitor, Mart Cart, located near Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters, still has signi cantly less market share.

“When you’re trying to get something o the line every 5 minutes, it’s huge,” he said.

Kroger, whose pro t topped $2.2 billion last year on revenue of $148 billion, said it has expanded its eet of Amigo motorized carts over the past three years.

“ e Amigo carts provide all our customers the opportunity to shop ieme said he would seek services from the consultant in the future with or without a subsidy. Growing stronger has helped the small manufacturer buck the trend of industry consolidation and private equity takeover — and it has remained family owned, according to plan.

Amigo enlisted help from the MMTC again at the start of the year to help with vertical integration. e company is planning to use a Michigan Economic Development Corp. technology matching grant worth up to $25,000.

“We will always be family owned,” he said.

Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl