Tyler Florence’s career as a celebrity chef is heating up, with regular appearances on NBC’s Today show and his own shows on The Food Network. The telegenic personality with the soft South Carolina lilt is a natural teaching the TV masses how to cook. Not only is he busy with his culinary career, but he’s busy at home as a new father. Just the same, he’s not so busy that he’s going to buy processed baby food for his son, Miles. The foodie in him won’t allow that. Inside his New York City kitchen, Florence whips up organic carrots and butternut squash he caramelizes to perfection, bringing out a natural sweetness that appeals to babies.
The chef in him wishes all babies could eat this simple, healthy, delicious organic fare. But he understands that not all exhausted new parents have the time or inclination to cook their own food, what with 2 am feedings and dashes to work in the morning with deep circles under their eyes. It dawns on him: Why not mass-produce the healthy fare he feeds his own son?
The idea sticks with him even after Miles outgrows diapers and goes on to elementary school. But with all his other food projects, he just can’t find the time to follow through. Whomever he shares the idea with agrees: this seems like a can’t-miss opportunity. Finally, in 2004, eight years after Miles was born, it’s beginning to feel like now or never. He decides to go for it with one of his friends, Max McKenzie, the owner of a building supply and limestone distributor, who isn’t one to shy away from a promising investment. They cofound Sprout Foods Inc., billing it as the nation’s first super-premium, organic baby-food company.
Between filming episodes of Tyler’s Ultimate and Food 911, Florence develops new baby-food recipes in his 1,000-square-foot kitchen in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He concocts recipes for apple-carrot-mango and baked sweet potatoes. He tests his creations on the babies and toddlers of friends: the smiling kids and their gushing parents (who appreciate the low-salt, low-fat recipes) give him all the validation he needs.
Not only does Florence want the food to be tasty and healthy, he wants the packaging to enhance those flavors and be consumer-friendly. So he puts the baby food in pouches. He believes the standup pouch is superior to traditional jars for two reasons: It’s safer, with no risk of broken glass, and because most baby food is cooked inside the packaging by the manufacturers, it will taste fresher because it takes less time to stabilize the food within the thin pouch wall compared to a thicker glass wall.
To get Sprout off the ground, Florence invites groups of investors to his apartment to garner support. “Thanks, but no thanks,” they keep telling him. They say that baby food is risky business, and that he’s foolhardy to go up against giants such as Gerber, especially when parents can buy those trusted brands for half the price. Naturally, Florence is disappointed, but he refuses to be swayed by the naysayers. Why would you want to feed your baby the cheapest thing? People are paying more for their dog food. Having failed to land a single investor, Florence forges ahead, funding the company with his own savings.
In 2009, during the Healthy Baby and Child Expo in San Antonio, Texas, he debuts his product to a crowd of new mothers, strollers in tow, who are charmed by the famous chef’s friendly manner and passion for food. He hands out samples of organic carrots and butternut squash and watches the moms feed it to their babies without tasting it themselves—something that strikes him as odd. It confirms to him that baby food has an unsavory reputation when it comes to taste and that adults just assume they won’t like it. The babies have no preconceived ideas, and they light up when they taste the food, causing the moms to try a bite themselves. “Wow, this is really good!” they unanimously tell Florence.
He has not only won over the babies but their mothers, too, and knows he’s onto something big. In the coming months, Sprout pouches start appearing on grocery-store shelves.
Later that same year, Ron Davis (HNZ’87) is about to taste Sprout baby food for the first time. His two children are fully grown, and he hasn’t bought baby food in ages. But product sampling is part of his job as managing director at Truitt Brothers, the Kentucky plant that manufactures Sprout and other name-brand food products. He will take a spoonful of the product, have a taste, and use that as a benchmark the next day and every day thereafter to make sure it has a consistent look and taste. The peach-pumpkin pie and the black beans and sweet corn will be his first Sprout meal. When he tries a bite, he can’t believe his taste buds. This is baby food?! “A little salt, and this would be great for dinner,” he says to one of his coworkers.
Davis, a veteran of the food industry, considers Sprout the rarest of finds—a true innovation, a breakout product in its category. For once, the slick packaging doesn’t lie. The food is every bit as unique and delicious as its wrapper suggests. With a little digging, he learns that the New York startup is going through growing pains as it struggles to meet delivery dates, regulate cash flow, and correct a manufacturing defect that causes the pouch zippers to stick shut. If only the company can work through these early hiccups, he believes it will be a huge success. One thing he knows for sure: he won’t need to be reminded to have his daily Sprout samples.
A year later, he gets a call from an executive recruiter about a CEO and president position. “Ron, I think it’s the perfect opportunity for you,” the headhunter says. “It’s a small business in need of an entrepreneurial, ramp-up strategy.” The name of the company: Sprout Foods.
The headhunter called Davis because he has a reputation as a turnaround specialist, having successfully restructured three firms in the 1990s. Recruited to Diet Center in 1991 as executive vice president, Davis revitalized it by developing 50 new products and a direct store delivery system in the first year and grew its sales by 10% to $25 million before it was sold to Physicians Weight Loss Center. He then became group vice president of Atlanta-based Edward Fine Foods Inc., a frozen-dessert supplier for the fast-food chains, restaurants, and grocery stores—growing its sales from $75 to $200 million in five years. Next, he became CEO at Wornick Prepared Foods Company, a Cincinnati maker of military rations. He helped build up its commercially prepared food business and grew sales to about $125 million. For all of those success stories, he gives credit to his master’s degree from the Heinz College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University: “It gave me the confidence in my ability to communicate at the corporate level. The beauty of the program is that most of the students were executives, and we fed off of each other.”
Each of his turnarounds involved some big sales numbers. At Sprout, annual sales are only around $4.4 million, and he wonders whether he wants to get involved with a smaller company. But he agrees to talk. Florence is so busy that their conversation takes place on the phone, but Davis is impressed enough by Florence and the product that he agrees to take the job, and he and his wife relocate temporarily to its headquarters in New York City.
As CEO, he knows he needs to put in place the kind of proven management team that will enable Sprout to reach its potential. One of his first calls is to Dale Caldwell, who worked under him at Edward: “Dale, I really need you.”
Caldwell knows what that means. He flies to New York and is predictably convinced to stay on as vice president of supply chain. “Ron has a sixth sense for people,” Caldwell says. “He is very patient in his search for team members. Once they are there, he finds ways to motivate them and support them to make major contributions.”
Another early hire is longtime colleague John McQuay Jr., who, as CFO, starts getting the books in order.
With the new leadership improving the supply chain and cash flow, Davis is off to a good start. But he knows from experience, the turnaround isn’t a sure thing, and that worries him. He has spent decades building his reputation with food retailers and suppliers, and he doesn’t want to jeopardize those strong ties if Sprout founders. Plus, he’s taken on additional risk by investing $150,000 of his own money in the company with the plan to add another $50,000 within four months. But he wanted a challenge, and he has one.
A few weeks into the job, he meets Sprout’s board and is greeted by a lawyer, investment bankers, and other hard-charging executives. In his corporate restructuring career, he has been through this scenario many times. These are the suits who talk profit margins and earnings and demand results in a hurry. They aren’t here to give him a hug.
At the meeting, he finally meets Florence, who greets him with a broad smile. “So glad you’re finally here,” the chef says to him. “We finally have a professional coming in to help us run this business and make it the success that we all know it’s capable of being.” Florence’s words reassure him that he has made the right career choice. So does the fact that Florence puts the photos of his youngest two children, Hayden, 4, and Dorothy, 3, on the labels. “Tyler has a passion for this business like no one else,” Davis says. “I mean, c’mon, his babies are on the package!” At public events, Davis gets a kick out of watching Florence work crowds of new moms who swoon over him as he trots out his newest flavors, including butternut squash, mac ’n cheese, and curried red lentils with ginger.
The admiration goes both ways. “Ron is such a class act,” Florence says. “He gets the marketplace on so many levels. He is a diplomat. He is a salesman. He is a controller. He is a hawk and a dove. He is a super-level guy. You never see him up or down.”
Davis makes some bold moves. Within six months, he moves the headquarters from New York to suburban Atlanta, decreasing the monthly rent from $22,000 to less than $4,000. He also finishes assembling his new management team, tapping many of the people who helped him restructure his previous companies. In 2011, his first year at the helm, he overcomes a sluggish economy to more than triple sales to $13 million and increase Sprout’s presence from 4,500 to 12,500 grocery stores. The brand also gets cache as models and actresses eat the baby foods as nutritious, low-calorie meals.
For this year, he has helped the company gear up for several big moves—expanding to Asia and Europe and introducing new toddler meals, “the first all-natural, organic foods for children 18 months to three years.” The idea is to keep parents coming back for more organic goodness after their kids outgrow baby food, and he is confident they will. “When you taste the quality of Sprout baby food, it’s far above anything else you see in the marketplace.”
It may sound like hype, but the other day, Davis forgot his lunch. So he ate a pouch of beef and vegetable lasagna, a new flavor developed for the toddler line. He gives the cuisine a “four-star” rating. “I put a touch of salt on it,” admits the CEO, who works out at the gym regularly. “Salt isn’t good for babies, which is why it’s not there. It’s probably not good for me either, but I sweat mine out.”
Cristina Rouvalis is an award-winning freelance writer. Her last story in this magazine, “British Accent,” appeared in the July 2011 issue.
Photograph by Brad Newton Photography
Video:
BabyCenter Live with Tyler Florence & Sprout
Related Links:
Sprout Baby Food (Facebook)
Sprout Baby Food (Twitter)
