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November 8, 2021
The award recognizes Crisp’s Head of Supply Chain Barry Bradley’s leadership and innovation in the food supply chain – and the achievements throughout his career in retail & CPG that have come to shape it.
Food Logistics has named Barry Bradley, Head of Supply Chain at Crisp, as one of their 2023 Rock Stars of the Supply Chain. The publication, dedicated to the movement of products throughout the cold food and beverage sector, reserves the annual award for individuals “whose achievements, hard work and vision have shaped the global food supply chain.”
In his time at Crisp, Bradley has been an integral force, working with leading CPG and retail organizations on adopting the data platform to streamline inventory management, greatly reduce out of stocks, and ultimately realize Crisp’s mission to reduce global food waste through the use of better data across the supply chain.
His ability to help these organizations identify opportunities and drive efficiencies with better data is preceded by his standout career leading supply chain transformation for top retail and consumer goods organizations – namely Target, Chewy.com and General Mills.
We spoke with Barry about this experience leading up to – and combined with – his current efforts at Crisp that make him a true Rock Star of the Supply Chain!
An instrumental impact
Early on in his career at Target, teams and leaders began to consult with Barry for guidance on how to make operations better and more efficient across departments.
Working for Target’s Merchandising and Vendor Compliance teams, and collaborating with the Transportation, Warehousing and Forecasting departments, meant realizing how truly siloed the supply chain functions were operating.
Recognized for his desire to connect dots and implement better systems, Barry was called to join Target’s Supply Chain Transformation team.
“It was really awesome and eye-opening to begin to see the entire supply chain more holistically,” Barry explains. “Once you have that bird’s eye view, problems become pretty easy to spot.”
This overhead view and eagerness to drive efficiency would come to help Barry and his team solve an issue of “massive out of stocks” – by identifying delays between vendor shipments, distribution and receiving.
Upon the realization that he could help streamline these processes, Barry began to build confidence and passion in his chosen career path.
“It was something I was really interested in, and I realized I could do it for quite a while,” Barry reflects.
From Target, Barry joined Chewy.com to help the rapidly growing then-start-up partner better with their suppliers, and uncover efficiencies for the “massive amount of goods going back and forth.”
“A day of transit saves millions of dollars over the course of a year, when you’re talking about all the inventory being shipped,” he explains. “[So] if one distribution center takes three days to ship, and one takes two – how could we make those the same?”
After devising and implementing systems that would continue to drive success for Chewy.com, Barry joined General Mills – part of a new supply chain transformation initiative, similar to his work at Target. Here, he worked with supply chain leaders around the world, and applied his expertise to create new processes on an international scale.
At this point, Barry had spent over ten years establishing himself as a bonafide thought leader in global supply chain affairs.
Taking the stage at Crisp
In 2021, Barry received a text from his former colleague Tony Miller, Crisp’s Director of Sales Engineering, about the opportunity to work on the company’s initiative to reduce waste in the supply chain. And after a demo of the Crisp platform, he was sold.
“Okay, this is useful,” he thought about the platform, “I could see a lot of brands using and enjoying this.”
Since joining, Barry has led cross-functional efforts to drive value of the Crisp product for CPG and retail companies.
“The easier you make it for suppliers to access their data, the better they can operate, and the better they can service the retailer or distributor,” he explains. “Procurement teams can spend up to 50% of their time looking for data. This is a huge commitment for emerging and enterprise companies alike.”
At Crisp, Barry is realizing his mission to enable better decision making across the supply chain using cleaner, more accessible data for companies of all sizes. We’re excited to see the partnerships he is leading on the horizon, which will continue driving these efforts on a massive scale.
Congratulations to Barry for his hard work and leadership that has been instrumental in shaping Crisp’s mission to reduce waste and increase profitability in the supply chain. We are rocking into 2023 with confidence that he will continue to make great strides and drive progress in the year ahead.
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