Eating Our Own Dog Food

“Eat your own dog food” is a business term that means a company should always use the products or services it provides, so the people inside the company can see the “customer experience” for themselves. At JKS, we do just that, and here’s the latest example.

One of our specialties is building show cars for NASCAR teams and sponsors. But unlike a lot of show cars that are basically just built to be put on display, our show cars are race ready. In fact, they’re so race ready, we race them ourselves!

goodwood festival of speedFor the third straight year, my husband Will Spencer and his longtime racing partner Ed Berrier will be attending the world-renowned Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England. Will and Ed are taking two cars to race at the Festival – NASCAR racecars built from the ground up right here at JKS, the same way we build our showcars.

This year Will’s custom-designed racecar pays homage to the Winston brand that sponsored the top NASCAR series from 1971 to 2003. (In case you didn’t know, Will is the owner of the Winston Cup Museum, located in Winston-Salem, which celebrates that era of NASCAR racing.)

For Ed Berrier, meanwhile, we built a replica of the #88 Nationwide-sponsored car driven by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in the NASCAR Cup series. Click here to read more about what Will and Ed will be doing with the cars over at Goodwood.

nascar winston cup race car show carGetting the cars over to England was no easy task, but Will and Ed took advantage of our company’s logistical expertise to get it done. The cars were sent over in shipping containers, traveling two to three weeks across the Atlantic to reach the UK.

Building cars like this and making sure they get where they need to be are things we do every day for our clients. Doing it for ourselves – eating our own dog food – is a great way to make sure we’re doing it as well as we possibly can. In this case Will and Ed are our clients, and they’re going to be very tough on us. We know if we can make them happy, we can make all our clients happy.