New CEOs mean New Directions

For just over a year now, General Mills’ Worldwide Innovation Network (G-Win) has sought outside partnerships with entrepreneurs, inventors, universities and other food companies to generate new product ideas. Yoplait’s Fizzix carbonated yogurt started out on the Brigham Young University campus. Progresso Light, the first consumer packaged product in any grocery category to carry the Weight Watchers endorsement with 0 Points value per serving, also resulted from the G-Win program.

On the international front, Powell has targeted opportunities in central and Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia and the lower Gulf States, Latin America and expansion in China.

Gary Rodkin, ConAgra Foods Inc.

Perhaps no new CEO in any category had to face as much adversity in his first two year as ConAgra Foods’ Gary Rodkin. First on his to-do list was the halving of the company. Early last year, a leaky roof at a plant caused salmonella in Peter Pan peanut butter and a huge and painful recall. Later in 2007, the bug was in Banquet pot pies.

Despite all the bad press, the Omaha, Neb., company still stands. ConAgra Foods is, in fact, a shadow of its former self … and most analysts and investors are pleased. The company was $25.4 billion in sales as recently as 2002, but last year recorded just $12 billion. More importantly, net income last year was $765 million, just $18 million shy of the $25 billion days. 

Rodkin was considered a marketing whiz at PepsiCo and General Mills. Before joining ConAgra, Rodkin served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Beverages and Foods North America (consumer products and manufacturing), and before that he led Pepsico’s Tropicana unit.

Earning a BA from Rutgers University in Economics and an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, he held marketing and general management positions of increasing responsibility at General Mills, participating in the successes of many of its leading brands from Cheerios to Betty Crocker, with his last three years at General Mills as president of Yoplait-Colombo.

When he took the ConAgra helm in late 2005, the company was besieged with underperforming brands and decentralized management. For two years, Rodkin commuted, flying in every week from his Connecticut home, because he didn’t want to uproot his daughter, a junior in high school.

Digging in his heels, Rodkin found $100 million in cost savings by closing nine manufacturing plants, decentralizing operations, replacing senior management and cutting bureaucracy. He restructuring the company’s business focus on its bestselling brands and supporting them with marketing dollars. Rolling out products every six months was also at the top of Rodkin’s list.

A year after he settled into the job, ConAgra sold its iconic Butterball brand and its turkey business to privately held Carolina Turkeys for $325 million. It also sold its Singleton seafood unit, Swissrose cheese unit, Armour, Eckrich, Cook's hams brands to Smithfield Foods, and Louis Kemp seafood brand to Trident Seafood and in the past month the Knott’s Berry Farm brand was sold to J.M. Smucker. ConAgra Trade Group, which sells and trades fertilizer, corn, wheat and energy, was also sold, for a whopping $2.1 billion.

Now ConAgra Foods is organized into three businesses: Consumer Foods (branded products to retail and foodservice), International Foods (40 global brands offered in 110 countries) and Commercial Products (which includes Food & Ingredients for foodservice and manufacturing from its Lamb Weston, Gilroy Foods & Flavors, ConAgra Mills and Spicetec divisions.

Rodkin said the company's future is in developing its stable of consumer brands, which include Act II, Banquet, Blue Bonnet, Chef Boyardee, Crunch 'n Munch, David, Egg Beaters, Fleischmann's, Healthy Choice, Hebrew National, Hunt's, Hunt's Manwich, Hunt's Snack Pack, Jiffy Pop, Kid Cuisine, La Choy, Lightlife, Marie Callender's, Orville Redenbacher's, Parkay, Pemmican, Pam, Peter Pan, Reddi-wip, Rosarita, Slim Jim, Swiss Miss, Van Camp's, Wesson and Wolf Brand.

Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola Co.

It was a surprise to many when Neville Isdell, retired and a relative outsider, took over as chairman/CEO of Coca-Cola Co. in 2004. Observers are far less cautious about his own successor. When Muhtar Kent succeeds Isdell as CEO on July 1, analysts look for more of the same: a steady hand over a difficult business, the greatest potential for which may lie overseas.

As president/COO since 2007, Kent has been Isdell’s right-hand man. He has a strikingly similar international background. After joining Coke in 1978, he served as head of Coca-Cola’s Turkey and Central Asia business, East Central Europe Division, Coca-Cola International (with responsibility for 23 countries) and was managing director of Coca-Cola Amatil-Europe, covering bottling operations in 12 countries.

From 1999 until May 2005, he was president/CEO of the Efes Beverage Group, the majority shareholder of Turkish bottler Coca-Cola Icecek. Headquartered in Istanbul and listed on the London and Istanbul Stock Exchanges, Efes is a publicly traded beverage enterprise, and its Coca-Cola and beer operations extend from the Adriatic to the Pacific Ocean. Under Kent's leadership, Efes experienced extraordinary growth, with triple-digit revenue growth and a 250 percent increase in market capitalization.