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GrowthWheel Assessment Provides Company Focus
With the help of: Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Louisiana (MEP of LA)
About
In 1953, Richard Fluker founded Fluker’s Cricket Farm, Inc. while he was on a mission to supply crickets to local bait shops in order to help fishermen. Today, Fluker Farms has expanded to become the nation’s leader in live cricket production, accomplishing the original mission and so much more with a hatching area, production room, mealworm facility, and shipping facility. Since the 1950s, Fluker Farms has expanded the original plan of selling live insects for fishing bait to selling feeder insects and supplies for pets. With demand and growth, Fluker Farms went from a 500-square foot building to a farm where they raise live feeder insects as fish bait and prey for birds and reptiles. The selection has grown from the basic cricket and mealworms to also include superworms, fruit flies, hissing cockroaches, and black soldier flies.
The Challenge
In February 2018, MEP of Louisiana’s (MEPOL), part of the MEP National Network™, Business Development Manager Scott Uffman was seeking out food manufacturers and reached out to family-owned businessman and President David Fluker after a long standing relationship. As a family-owned business who has been extremely innovative, they were interested in learning ways to expand from an outsider’s perspective on ways in which they could improve. To get a more in depth look into their business processes, Uffman performed a 360° GrowthWheel Assessment with David and Business Developer Vance Noland at Fluker’s Cricket Farm. The 360° GrowthWheel Assessment performed by Uffman is a visual way to look at areas of a business like Fluker’s Cricket Farm who are already experienced entrepreneurs. In return, the assessment helps entrepreneurs build their businesses through simple action-focused processes that stay true to the way most entrepreneurs think and work.
MEPOL’s 360° GrowthWheel Assessment allowed our decision makers to take a step back and objectively look at each strength and weakness of our business. Once we completed the assessment, it allowed us to easily create a road map and work toward improving our weakest segments. Scott and the entire MEPOL team were great to work with and we could not have made this progress without them.
MEP's Role
For a business whose leadership was trying to do everything all at once, the GrowthWheel Assessment provided Fluker’s Cricket Farm an opportunity to truly assess their strengths and areas of concern one at a time. As a result of the 360° GrowthWheel Assessment, Fluker’s Cricket Farm was able to get focused on their goals, set an agenda, make decisions as a team and take action to achieve their goals. Once completed, the assessment allowed the company's president to jump-start other opportunities and experience company growth