With funding from Maryland MEP’s Workforce Training Programs, McCutcheon’s Apple Products empowers its team with AI training from the experts at Orases
McCutcheon’s Apple Products is a unique factory store located in historic Downtown Frederick, Maryland. Employing 30 full-time team members, including 16 fourth and fifth-generation family members, McCutcheon’s has been producing and selling homestyle apple butters, preserves, relishes, juices, and more since 1938. While the company’s legacy is its old-fashioned products, fifth-generation President Meghan Custer values the importance of embracing modern processes to ensure the company’s continued growth.
Like many manufacturers, Custer was curious how artificial intelligence (AI) could help make her team’s day-to-day tasks more efficient. To explore the possibilities, she sought the advice of the local experts at Orases, a Frederick-based custom software and AI consulting firm. In their first conversation, Custer explained to CEO Nick Damoulakis and his team that she knew the hardest part of adopting AI wouldn’t be the technology. It would be the people.
“I have this vision for AI, but we’re a family business, we’re not high-tech or anything like that,” Custer recalls saying. “I have a group of family members and managers who are used to their old ways, so I need to get them up to speed first.”
Her instinct to start with education and buy-in rather than a technology launch became the foundation of a partnership that is quickly reshaping McCutcheon’s operations.
Education First, Technology Second
Plenty of business owners approach AI the way they’d approach buying a new piece of equipment: pay for it, install it, and expect results. Custer saw the flaw in that thinking right away.
“I could pay $40,000 and have an AI product delivered, but if my team doesn’t want to use it, or are afraid of it, I’ve just wasted my money,” she says.
So rather than focusing on a single project, McCutcheon’s and the Orases team collaborated to create a three-month phased engagement focused on AI education and training. The first month introduced the basics: what AI is, how to use it, and where it could make an impact at work. The second month put managers into a hands-on program to test their ideas. By the third month, the team had an AI agent doing real work.
Damoulakis sees this education-first approach as the key to McCutcheon’s success. Too many companies, he argues, treat AI like a one-time hire. But the goal wasn’t to make McCutcheon’s dependent on a consultant. It was to build the capability inside the company itself.
“People think we’ll just get an AI consultant, we’ll get an AI person, and boom, we’re done. That’s just not the reality,” he says. “The reality is almost everyone who sits behind a computer has a high need to be using AI in their job.”
From Skeptics to Builders
The transformation moved faster than anyone expected. Damoulakis remembers the McCutcheon’s team’s first reaction.
“The first day they showed up, they were like, ‘What even is this? I know nothing. I’m not a tech person,” he says. “Then, within the first three hours, they were building AI agents themselves. By the end of three months, they had an agent doing meaningful work for them. Now they’re not only able to get data, but they can turn that data into information that is helping them make better decisions.”
Once the early wins started landing, that meaningful work spread naturally across departments McCutcheon’s food safety lead is now using AI to read handwritten production records, convert them into an Excel file, and load that data into the company’s ERP system. Tasks that once meant hours of manual data entry now free her to focus on larger productions. Meanwhile, the wholesale team, which handles much of the order taking and customer correspondence, is using AI regularly to speed up routine communication. And the purchasing manager is applying AI to review past sales and spot trends, helping her decide when to buy raw materials — a meaningful edge for a business tied to seasonal fruit supplies.
Custer came into this initiative with a few ideas of how AI could help with time-intensive tasks, like automating order entries and transcribing phone calls. But the Orases team pushed those ideas further. They showed her how AI could do more than just transcribe customer phone calls; it could review those transcripts and send her a monthly synopsis of customer sentiment and what people were really saying. “They took my small ideas and multiplied them by 10,” she says.
Connecting AI to a Legacy ERP
The next phase tackles a challenge familiar to older manufacturers: legacy technology. McCutcheon’s runs its entire operation on an ERP system that isn’t one of the big, widely supported platforms. Because no off-the-shelf connector exists for it, Orases is custom-building one to link the company’s chosen AI platform, Claude, directly to that ERP. The connector is being phased in over a few weeks, with McCutcheon’s testing and approving capabilities as they go.
Once complete, the system will let the team ask practical questions in plain language. For example, the team can learn what to expect from a customer next year based on their purchase order history without pulling, filtering, and manipulating reports by hand.
“Something that can read between the lines is really what we’re going for,” Custer says. She also sees a path toward sharper production planning, comparing batch sizes against payroll to understand where the business is making money and where margins need adjusting.
The Role of Maryland MEP
McCutcheon’s AI adoption was made possible thanks to Custer’s leadership, Orases’ expertise, and funding secured through Maryland MEP’s workforce training programs. When Custer began exploring an AI engagement, she turned to Maryland MEP for help in making the training and implementation financially feasible. Maryland MEP’s workforce training programs support manufacturers to develop and retain talent while improving productivity, leadership capability, and the adoption of new technologies.
Without that funding support, she admits, “I wouldn’t have done it, or I would have kicked the can down the road further.”
That funding closed a gap that companies rarely budget for on their own: education and skills. As Damoulakis puts it, the investment let McCutcheon’s employees learn to do things themselves that would otherwise have required expensive outside development.
Why Change Management Was the Real Project
Both Custer and Damoulakis agree that the hardest part of any AI adoption is the human element. AI raises real anxieties, including fears about job security, how data is used, and even the environmental impact. Orases addressed those concerns with the McCutcheon’s team up front, and then worked collaboratively on a clear vision and an action plan for the company’s AI implementation.
They made decisions about who controls what, what people can and can’t share on free AI tools, how much time employees could dedicate to experimenting with AI, and how leadership responds when something fails. Getting those guardrails right is what allowed creativity to flourish without chaos.
McCutcheon’s is now moving into an ongoing arrangement with Orases, reserving a few hours each month to brainstorm and problem-solve as AI keeps evolving.
Learn More about How AI can Help You
McCutcheon’s story offers a clear lesson for other traditional manufacturers eyeing AI: success isn’t about buying the newest tool. It’s about aligning people, process, and funding, and establishing a mindset that empowers teams to build their own skills.
If you are a Maryland manufacturer wanting to advance your operations through new technologies like AI, contact Maryland MEP to learn more about the programs available to help.
