Furlani Foods Names Arist Mastorides CEO
Furlani Foods, maker of frozen and ambient garlic bread products, last week hired Arist Mastorides as chief executive officer, replacing Jonathan Kawaja, who will continue as an advisor and on the board of directors.
For the past two years, Mastorides headed his own consulting firm. But in 2022-2024 he was an executive vice president and chief customer and transformation officer at Hostess Brands, where he was a member of the executive team that transformed and grew the business prior to its sale to J.M. Smucker Co.
Before that he spent 10 years at Kimberly-Clark. Still earlier, he was briefly a senior VP at Diamond Foods.
Jonathan Kawaja led Furlani as CEO for more than a decade and was with the company for nearly 20 years; his father Paul Kawaja founded Furlani in 1984. Since February, it’s been owned by Arbor Investments.
With facilities in Oak Creek, Wis.; Mississauga, Ontario; and North Liberty, Iowa, Furlani produces a broad range of specialty breads, including garlic Texas toast, cheese bread, breadsticks, and garlic knots, under the Furlani and Cole’s brands and through private-label programs.
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Dave Fusaro
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Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.