Denali Ingredients
2400 S. Calhoun Road, New Berlin
INDUSTRY: Food manufacturing
EMPLOYEES: 120-plus
denaliingredients.com
Denali Ingredients’ 110,000-square-foot office and manufacturing facility is a confections wonderland that could rival Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
The New Berlin-based company is a supplier of baked inclusions (think brownie and cheesecake pieces used in ice cream), edible cookie dough, chocolate flakes and barks as well as flavor bases, fruit packs and purees.
Denali Ingredients introduces about 70 new products a year to its existing line of more than 1,000 unique items. The company annually makes about 15 million pounds of product for dairy processors and other food brands and retailers.
“If you see an ice cream (brand) behind a freezer door, there is a high probability we work with them,” said Dawn Manthei, chief commercial officer at Denali Ingredients.
The company’s physical footprint is spread across its headquarters building and manufacturing plant on Calhoun Road – where most of the company’s liquid inclusions are made – and a second production facility on Ryerson Road, dedicated to making baked inclusions and extruded doughs and bits.
“I would say cookie dough is (our flagship product) right now,” said Manthei. “We sell so much cookie dough into many different areas of the food industry. It can have so many nuances that no two doughs taste the same.”
Denali doesn’t simply make classic chocolate chip cookie dough; the manufacturer also offers specialty flavors like red velvet cake and lemon shortbread.
The Ryerson Road plant houses several large, continuous baking lines. Super-sized batches of batter are mixed daily. That batter is eventually baked in a continuous oven that’s several feet long, and then cooled. Once frozen, the baked additions are diced into smaller pieces and packaged.
“The main difference between homemade cookie dough and Denali’s cookie dough is the use of heat-treated flour for safety, scale of production and use of specialized equipment to shape the dough,” said Manthei. “The large mixer combines all of the ingredients just like at home, and the extruder shapes the dough into large and delicious chunks.”
Some consumers might link the Denali Ingredients name to the Moose Tracks ice cream flavor. A sister company called Denali Flavors owns and licenses Moose Tracks-branded products, while Denali Ingredients makes the fudge used to create the popular flavor.
Denali’s headquarters also houses a research and development lab, which includes a conference area, several lab spaces where employees work to perfect recipes and a small test kitchen. The lab was renovated in 2016 to create a more welcoming environment for workers and guests alike.
“It’s fun and inviting, but it’s also very state of the art to make sure we’re keeping up with the latest technology,” said Manthei.
Creating new inclusion flavors has been key to Denali’s success. Twice a year, there are boxes of unique ice cream flavors and inclusions sent out to the company’s customers for consideration. The most recent box included containers of ice cream flavors like brown butter miso and frosted animal cracker, along with inclusions like baked corn bread and pretzel toffee bark.
“It’s important that customers can see the inclusions on their own,” said Megan Slaven, marketing administrator at Denali Ingredients. “It doesn’t have to be a fully formed concept. It allows for more creativity.”
Slaven leads a team of Denali employees that helps brainstorm ideas for the flavors that are included in each box. Recently, popular trends have included spicy inclusions like Tajin and flavors that harken back to a consumer’s childhood, like frosted animal cracker.
“Each concept kind of takes you down different paths of nostalgia,” said Slaven. “It’s something new that has a twist to it, but also something clients are used to.”
A nine-person research and development team works with Slaven to bring each flavor concept to life within a matter of months. However, how soon a product might hit grocery store shelves depends on each customer’s respective timeline. Some of Denali’s clients don’t start selling their products until years after working to create a concept with the company.
“We really pride ourselves on being able to customize ingredients to support exactly what a customer is looking for,” said Manthei. “Creating new recipes is key to our whole innovation process.”
