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And last year BCS experienced one of their best-performing years yet\u2014in large part attributable to the leadership of Doug Thomas, its president and CEO.<\/p>\noriginally published in Business Pulse magazine March 2017—<\/p>\n
By Sherri Huleatt<\/p>\n
Founded by Archibald Talbot in 1946, Bellingham Cold Storage (BCS) got its start as a single warehouse and icehouse. Today, BCS is the largest portside cold storage facility on the West Coast\u2014spanning more than 80 acres across two facilities and employing 175, all of whom live in Whatcom County.<\/p>\n
Over the last 70 years BCS has grown into a full-service facility that handles more than 2 billion pounds of frozen and chilled food every year. They\u2019ve expanded their original facility from 30,000 square feet to more than 1 million square feet, and their facilities include 12 on-site food processing customers and 16 cold storage warehouses, with a capacity of 120 million pounds.<\/p>\n
And last year BCS experienced one of their best-performing years yet\u2014in large part attributable to the leadership of Doug Thomas, its president and CEO.<\/p>\n
Thomas joined the BCS team in 1992 as vice president and chief operating officer, and just seven years later took over for his father\u2014Stew Thomas\u2014and became a second-generation president\/CEO.<\/p>\n
According to Gene Knutson, a Bellingham City Councilman and 42-year veteran at BCS, Thomas had \u201ctough shoes to fill\u2026.Doug picked up the torch and has led us to a bright future. Over my 42 years with the company I\u2019ve been blessed to work with great people, and Doug is one of the best. He\u2019s not only a great leader, but a great human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knutson referred to personal situations as illustrative of Thomas\u2019s personal-touch methods. \u201cI have had several back surgeries, and every time I\u2019ve been in the hospital one of the first people to visit me were Doug and (his wife) Sandy. He does that with all our employees, no matter what their title.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas has spearheaded some unique and effective corporate culture initiatives that helped BCS earn the title of \u201cPremier Employer\u201d by the Northwest Food Processors Association in 2014.<\/p>\n
For example, this year BCS will kick off a new \u201cCharity House\u201d home-buying incentive program that encourages employee home ownership. Later this year the company will complete construction of a state-of-the-art employee Training and Technology Center that seats 200. BCS is building a new employee lunch room, locker rooms, offices, food safety, and engineering offices.<\/p>\n
Thomas also helped increase company efficiencies about 55 percent by establishing \u201cBalanced Scorecard\u201d key performance indicators.<\/p>\n
According to Thomas, the most significant improvement over the last few years has been BCS\u2019s MiCare Clinic\u2014a free health clinic for employees and their families. \u201cThis was a major leap for us, and it\u2019s paid off in two significant ways,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cOur employees now have a primary care physician, if they didn\u2019t have one before, and it\u2019s free of charge to them if they decide to utilize the clinic for a number of general practitioner services and most non-narcotic prescription pharmacy needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis resulted in a significant cost savings for our valued employees and their families, while also producing savings to the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BCS MiCare Clinic has helped foster happier employees and families, lowered employee turnover, and created more efficient and cost-effective medical care for the entire BCS family, Thomas said.<\/p>\n
Community philanthropy has always been baked into the BCS culture. It donates to more than 70 charities a year, with a special focus on youth charities. \u201cOur primary focus has always been \u2018kids first,\u201d Thomas said. Whether it\u2019s the Boys & Girls Clubs of Whatcom County, YMCA, FFA, and several others, BCS under Thomas\u2019s guiding principles considers it best to invest in kids while they\u2019re young, instead of trying to catch up to them as young adults who might have suffered from not getting enough attention or engagement as kids.<\/p>\n
According to Knutson, Thomas is involved throughout the city, county, state, and nation. \u201cHe is a champion for all businesses,\u201d Knutson said. \u201cI have seen him grow into a true leader, not only here at BCS but throughout the community.\u201d A primary example of that is Thomas\u2019s involvement for five years on the board of directors since the inception of the Whatcom Business Alliance, and spearheading its business advocacy mission. He\u2019s active in Port of Bellingham and Port Commissioners business, issues in the state legislature, and he travels extensively on behalf of his industry\u2019s policy-making organizations.<\/p>\n
Thomas credits much of his success to surrounding himself with good people. \u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily the rocket scientists, but just really good people who have become very skilled, supportive, and outstanding leaders,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s the philosophy that my dad gave me that the harder and smarter you work, the luckier you tend to be. Be thoughtful and kind, and put things back in better shape than you found them. Say \u2018please\u2019 and \u2018thank you,\u2019 make friends, and smile a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas gives much credit to his wife, Sandy \u2013 considering her as his \u201cbiggest supporter\u201d \u2013 his parents, Washington State University (his alma mater), and the Talbot family for leading and growing BCS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
originally published in Business Pulse magazine March 2017— Innovation and caring The directions Doug Thomas has taken Bellingham Cold Storage By Sherri Huleatt Founded by Archibald Talbot in 1946, Bellingham Cold Storage (BCS) got its start as a single warehouse and icehouse. Today, BCS is the largest portside cold storage facility on the West Coast\u2014spanning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wba-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.neoninspire.com\/whatcombusinessalliance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}