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Longtime friends are ready to
satisfy America's sweet tooth.

T H E DE TRO I T J E WIS H N E WS

STEVE STEIN STAFF WRITER

46

ix months after they had tak-
en over ownership of the
Michigan Dessert Corpora-
tion, longtime friends and
business associates Richard
Elias and Gary Freeman
faced their first crisis. It was
a major one.
"We lost our biggest cus-
tomer," Mr. Elias said. "We had
to find out why that happened,
so we took a good, long look at
ourselves.
'e discovered we were a
small, undercapitalized corn-
pany which was not being run
professionally; and we were
demonstrating that to our cus-
tomers. Even our business
cards, stationery and logo were
terrible.
'We decided we had to start
doing things with professional-
ism and class, regardless of the
cost, including increasing our
travel budget. It was the only
way to succeed."
Two years later, in 1991,

Michigan Dessert started mak-
ing inroads in the food-service
industry, and it had its major
customer back. T iast December,
the company left its 5,000-
square-foot facility in Pontiac,
where it had been located for
seven years, for one double that
size in Royal Oak.
Michigan Dessert is a suc-
cessor to a Southfield diet bak-
ery called "Sneaky Treats,"
which was founded in 1980 by
Mr. Elias' uncle, Hanley Elias,
and Edward Ersher. In 1981,
the owners switched gears, fo-
cusing nearly all their efforts
on the development of dessert
mixes. That's also when they
changed the company name.
Today, Michigan Dessert de-
velops, manufactures and mar-
kets custom dessert mixes for
major food-service organiza-
tions. It also provides support
programs like in-house adver-
tising and printed instruction-
al materials.

Richard Elias (left) and Gary Freeman
want to be known as the dessert guys.

The company's Royal
Oak headquarters is ful-
ly automated and the
production equipment is
state-of-the-art. Yes,
there's also a new logo.
Michigan Dessert
makes mousses, pud-
dings, pie fillings, sauces,
glazes and cakes. The
goodies are found mostly
in cafeterias, steakhous-
es, smorgasbords and
family restaurants.
More than 2,000 establish-
ments nationwide, with corn-
bined sales in excess of $10
billion, carry Michigan Dessert
treats.
Mr. Elias, 32, is president of
the company, which has nine
employees. He's responsible for
all internal operations including
finance, production and research
and development. Mr. Freeman,
also 32, is vice president. He's in
charge of sales and marketing.
The two met when they were
members of the debate team at
Southfield-Lathrup High
School. Mr. Elias, a junior at the
time, graduated from Lathrup,
while Mr. Freeman, then a
sophomore, earned his diploma
from Bloomfield Hills Andover.
Both men received a bach-
elor's degree in 1983 from the
University of Michigan —
where they roomed together for
one year — and they each
earned a master's in business
administration from Michigan

State University in 1993.
At the time Mr. Elias and
Mr. Freeman began working at
Michigan Dessert in both the
Southfield office and doing
nighttime production in the
back of a Livonia bagel factory
in 1984, they also were partners
in Data Research. This compa-
ny was a Southfield investment
advisory service which did stock
market research for a New
York brokerage firm.
In 1985, Mr. Elias and Mr.
Freeman closed Data Research
to devote all their efforts to
Michigan Dessert.
While they never expected to
someday own and operate the
company, they're enjoying the
experience. They feel they've
survived the hard times and the
future is, well, sweet.
"What's so exciting is we
think we've figured it out," Mr.
Elias said. "It's been a revela-
tion. None of our national com-
petitors focuses solely on
desserts like we do, so we feel
we're carved out a niche as the
dessert guys."
One lesson Mr. Elias and Mr.
Freeman have learned is to al-
ways be ready when a client or
prospective client comes call-
ing.
"People in the restaurant
business don't think about their
desserts very often, and when
they do, you'd better be on that
short list of companies they're
going to call," Mr. Elias said. El