We connected with Dawn Foods to learn all about their Digital Innovation Hub in Boston and the launch of their brand new eCommerce Platform.
Who is Dawn Foods, and what makes your Digital Innovation Hub in Boston unique?
Dawn Foods is a leading global bakery manufacturer and ingredients supplier based in Jackson, Michigan. This year, Dawn is celebrating its 100th anniversary, marking a century of innovation and providing the highest quality products to its customers and consumers across the globe. A premier bakery service provider, Dawn has been the secret ingredient to bakers’ success for 100 years − helping its customers grow their business and drive engagement with their consumers.
We established our Digital Innovation Hub in Boston. Building a digital team outside of our HQ location was by design and meant to give the digital team a blank canvas and lots of autonomy to chart a new way of working for the company. We chose Boston in part due to the wealth of eCommerce and B2B technology companies in the area and amazing digital talent pool. We’re building a team that will work on the latest digital technologies, help transform a market leading company, and disrupt an industry. What could be better?
You are launching an eCommerce Platform. Tell us a bit about that platform, and why the idea came about?
Dawn’s digital online ordering platform is an eCommerce solution that provides our more than 11,000 artisanal bakers across the U.S. with 24/7 access to all the baking supplies they need. It is the most convenient way for our customers to order their Dawn products in one place.
Dawn used a holistic approach to develop the platform, partnering with digital technology leaders, including Google, commercetools, Contentstack, and Salsify, to create a custom solution for artisanal bakers.
We launched a pilot platform last year, and we listened to our customers. With their feedback, we built a new platform from the ground up. This new platform we are launching now is just the tip of the iceberg on Dawn Foods’ digital journey. This is an exciting cornerstone in our company’s history – one with tremendous areas of opportunity, for both our customers as well as Dawn team members.
How would your customers benefit from this new platform?
The online platform streamlines the ordering process for Dawn customers, making it more convenient, efficient, simple and easy to navigate for all their baking supply needs. Customers can quickly place orders, see the entire product catalog, and view their order history. They also have the following features at their fingertips:
• Accessible search tools including filtering, sorting and pairing suggestions
• Ability to access the platform via desktop, tablet or mobile
• 24/7 ordering, allowing customers to place orders while doing inventory whenever and wherever they want with easy one-click reordering options
• Online Payment portal integration to view and manage invoices
We know these are unique times, how are you maintaining your culture remotely, including celebrating this product launch.
The safety and wellbeing of our team members remains our highest priority. For example, we closed our Boston office and began to WFH a week before Governor Baker and Mayor Walsh issued similar directives. Because we had flexible work policies in place for years, our digital team was well prepared to quickly transition to remote work. Our forward-thinking in this area allowed us to continue driving business forward for our customers and putting our people first. We have been creative in how we celebrate our launch milestones, get to know new teammates in our new virtual norm, and communicate with our colleagues across the globe. And this creativity continues to help us establish our Digital Innovation Hub culture.
What roles are you hiring for now, and why is now a good time to join?
We are hiring a Full-Stack Engineer at our Digital innovation hub in Boston’s Back Bay. This role will help continue building customer-facing features, manage and optimize our eCommerce platform. Joining Dawn Foods today will give whoever steps into this role a great start-up opportunity to build our digital capabilities from the ground up using a microservices-based, headless commerce architecture with the latest technologies across the digital ecosystem. At Dawn, we believe in an open environment, and that is what this role and the Dawn Digital Innovation Hub offers – an open space to create.
Want to learn more about Dawn Foods? Check out their Company Page
