CEO to CEO

Spanning Value Chain Elements

September 2, 2010.

Excel is the antithesis of the show, Hell’s Kitchen. Not Excel the spreadsheet program, but Excel, a category-leading dehydrated potato mix that is sold to the food service industry by Basic American Foods. CEO Loren Kimura slipped me some samples of the powdered mix after we met and I made some myself at the house. “Yummy”, said my wife. All I did was add 1 cup of boiling water, stirred, covered, and let it sit for 12 minutes. It would certainly calm some of the panic and chaos that is the currency of Hell’s Kitchen.

Pondering the Cause of Death of an Innovation

September 20th, 2010.

We didn’t intend to talk about cat litter over breakfast. But Jack Robertson, recent CEO, now Chairman of Joint Juice was talking about his P&G days, then his Clorox days, where he presided over many, many product launches, including the cat litter product “Fresh Step Litter”. Today it clocks over a billion in annual revenues. The scenting idea was originally going to be used as a “new and improved” attribute for an existing cat litter product, but it seemed too good for that. As a new product, it almost got killed, having come out with too high a price point at first.

Innovation: Food Convergence

Food and Beverage CEO Research Project:

What does innovation mean to you, your company and your industry?

CEOs love to learn. Ride along with speaker, author and consulting CEO Robert Sher’s journey as he interviews over two dozen northern California Food and Beverage CEOs. This essay is #2 in a series which shares his thinking as he collects and analyzes the perspectives of these leaders. His quest to get inside the heads of industry innovators is leading up to his keynote at Grant Thornton’s 4th Annual Food and Beverage Industry Forum on December 8th, 2010. To see other stories in the series, click here.
By Robert Sher

September 1, 2010. It was one of those scorching hot days in downtown San Francisco that makes you think about global warming. I popped out of BART just in time to race to the Peet’s at 2nd and Howard to meet with Mike Dovbish, Managing Director of the Nutrition Capital Network. After some exploration, I learned that there is no Peet’s at 2nd and Howard. A few minutes late I found Mike and the Peet’s at 2nd and Mission. What a day to explore on foot! To cool down, I bought the green iced tea (with healthy catechins, if freshly brewed). I paid rapt attention in Peet’s since I knew I’d be meeting with the Jean-Michel Valette, the Chairman of Peet’s in a day or two.

Who Holds the Presumption of Integrity?

By Robert Sher
September 3, 2010 Greenbrae, CA

Where would you suggest that I have an interview with Jean-Michel Valette, the Chairman of Peet’s Coffee and Tea? At a Peet’s of course! We arranged the meeting by e-mail and squeezed it in just before he headed off to France. Given his name and destination, I anticipated a strong French accent. But he sounded as Californian as me, and only our outside seating under an umbrella reminded me of Paris.

From Jean-Michel’s days as a VC with Hambricht & Quist, he’s developed a true love for distribution channels. In fact he made it sound as important as the product! He asserted that many firms can have great offerings, but if there’s not a differentiated path to the consumer, the likelihood of success is much lower. Now this opinion came forth as we talked about startups and small companies that can’t buy their way into the market. The logic seems solid: If a new product needs consumer pull to get it on grocery shelf, then that product has to find some other way to connect to consumers to create that pull.

Innovation: David v. Goliath?

Food and Beverage CEO Research Project: What does innovation mean to you, your company and your industry?

By Robert Sher

CEOs love to learn. Ride along with speaker, author and consulting CEO Robert Sher’s journey as he interviews over two dozen northern California Food and Beverage CEOs. This essay is one in a series which shares his thinking as he collects and analyzes the perspectives of these leaders. His quest to get inside the heads of industry innovators is leading up to his keynote at Grant Thornton’s 4th Annual Food and Beverage Industry Forum on December 8th, 2010.

August 26, 2010. My interview with Lisa Noble, CEO of Farmhouse Foods really began two nights earlier, as I ran out to Lucky Supermarkets to bring home some of her rice and pasta selections to taste them. This brand predates us all (founded 1890), and was MJB Rice Company for many years. My son agreed to help me eat the White Cheddar Pasta, but my wife said, “I don’t need to taste the rice: I grew up eating it”.