This week on the Titans of Food Service podcast, Nick Portillo speaks with Joe Prewett, CEO of Oregon Fruit Products. Nick and Joe explore the innovative strategies driving success in the food service industry today. With a robust background in marketing, Joe discusses his journey from the Bay Area to leading a renowned fruit brand, highlighting lessons learned from his time at Tillamook. Listen as Nick and Joe discuss the significance of being bold in brand evolution and the necessity of understanding market dynamics to carve out a niche in a competitive landscape. 

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Intro

(02:43) Oregon Spotlight: The Food Scene

(03:42) Interview with Joe: Career Journey

(08:29) Marketing Strategies and Brand Growth

(13:50) The Power of Premium Branding

(27:42) Oregon Fruit's Vision and Goals

(28:58) Advice for Future Leaders in Food Service

RESOURCES

Portillo Sales

CONTACT 

Nick: nick.portillo@portillosales.co

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry.

You just have to find one.

On the Titans of Food Service podcast, I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top.

My name is Nick Portillo, and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast.

Let's jump right into it.

Welcome back to season three of Titans of food service.

So I'm your host, Nick Portillo, and here we are.

Welcome you back.

We're continuing the Across America in 50 weeks tour where I'm sitting down with one titan of food service from every single state in the country.

And on this episode, I'm going to be shining the spotlight on Oregon.

Now, I've done about ten episodes thus far with this across America on 50 weeks tour.

This is my, I think just about maybe nine, 10th, something like that.

And just incredible conversations that I've had along the way.

I've been talking to presidents and CEO's and vice presidents, some really interesting, cool people.

And with that, if you're enjoying the channel, if you're enjoying the show, if you can leave me a five star review on whether you listen along on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, that would really mean the world to me.

And here's why.

I want to get this show out to as many people in the food industry as possible.

And when you go and leave a five star review, it just helps kind of spread that word.

I want to help people who are within the industry thrive and become the best version of themselves.

Or maybe there's people that are out there that are looking for a new industry.

I just, I think the food industry is a great place to be, and I want to help get that message out.

Now, let's get back to Joe.

Now, his career in food spans over 15 years, and he's got deep knowledge in things like marketing, p and l management, brand growth.

And we're going to talk about that in the episode.

And before coming to Oregon fruit, he worked at Tillamook, and his time there, he was the head of marketing.

You know, they did a complete rebrand in his time there.

And we're going to get, you have to listen along to get the complete details of how he did that and the success that he had there.

Also in our conversation, Joe and I, we dive into his career progression.

He's going to talk about some of the strategies for leading successful brands and the challenges and opportunities of innovating within the food industry.

So we're going to talk.

There's a lot of marketing, there's a lot of brand growth.

We talk a little finance, a little bit about what the daily life of the CEO of a food brand is like.

So it's a buckle up.

It's going to be fun.

But before I jump into that conversation with Joe, I wanted to take a quick, unique look at the food service scene in Oregon.

So, Oregon, it's a very beautiful state, known for its agriculture.

No doubt it's earned a reputation as a leader in sustainable and organic food.

Portland in particular is famous for its eclectic.

I love that word, eclectic food scene.

From renowned fine dining spots like, I think I'm going to mess this up, but Lepidgeon and ox to its thriving food cart culture, which offers everything from artisanal ice cream to globally inspired street food, the state is also a hub for wine, with the Willamette Valley producing some of the country's finest pinot noir.

Oregon's commitment to local sourcing, innovative flavors and sustainability has made it a standout in the food service industry, contributing to a culture that values both quality and community.

Now, without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Joe.

All right.

Hey, Joe, welcome to the Titans and Food Service podcast.

I appreciate you taking time to join me.

Great to be here.

Yeah.

So tell me, I was, so you're, you're an Oregon duck.

So you're, you're, uh, what's the colors?

Green and yellow.

That's right.

Yeah.

Emerald, I think.

Emerald.

Officially emerald.

Yeah.

Did you, were you born and raised in Oregon?

No, I'm from the Bay Area.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I went to Chapman, which is a small little private school here in Orange county, and we had a lot of Bay Area kids and we had a lot of, like, Seattle, Portland, so a lot of Oregon, a lot of Washington kids that came down as well.

Yeah, it's popular.

I know that's when my sister went there and.

But I know a lot of kids from Portland go down there just to escape the rain.

I.

Yeah, right.

I know you come down here, it's sunny all the time.

It's much different when I, when it's, when it's raining out for me, I'm always like, oh, it just kind of makes me a little depressed.

So I love the sun.

I hear you.

It is.

I'm so, I'm five generations California, and I always, I've been up here 15 years and, you know, I still struggle.

And the struggle is, is March and April, but, you know, the summers are the, I think the best in the country.

So that's why people live here, is just, because it's just amazing up here in the summertime.

Yeah, I believe it.

I believe it.

So tell me, how'd you get into the food business?

I was reading that you were at Xerox.

You worked in maybe the medical field, maybe medical sales, and then you got into coffee bean.

Yeah, I was sort of, I didn't, hadn't found my calling.

I think I was, you know, maybe in my early thirties, and I was working in, I had found my calling, like, in marketing, working for a dietary supplement startup in the Bay area.

And it was wild success and a lot of fun, but I really didn't enjoy the industry and, or the product.

You know, it wasn't a lot of passion there.

So we were looking to move out of the Bay area, my wife and I, and found an opportunity to lead marketing at a coffee company called Coffee Bean International in Portland.

And I just fell in love.

I mean, I just loved the product.

I loved.

Coffee is a really cool category.

The origin stories, the geography and climate, the impact those things have on the flavor, the farming element, you know, it's an agricultural product, and then there's a lot that happens after it leaves origin.

And, you know, you got to be, it has to be roasted correctly.

It has to be served correctly by the barista.

And so there's, it was just such a really interesting, we'll call it value chain.

And so that I fell in love with, I think, the food business and food service when I was running marketing and doing a lot of product work in coffee.

When you got into working with coffee bean, you know, you jumped into marketing.

Is that what you went to school for, was marketing?

Yeah, not initially.

I think I went to business school to kind of get on track.

Like, I think, I mean, a lot of kids do that because they know what they want to do and they want to advance their career.

And then there's, there's the rest of us who didn't really have a sharp vision for what we wanted to do.

And so for me, it was an opportunity to kind of take the time out and really get educated on what my options were.

And then in that process, I kind of, it was my second year of business school where I kind of think, well, maybe I'm not a finance guy.

Maybe.

Maybe I'm more creative and love brands and I communications and product innovation.

And so that.

So it didn't hit me until really late in my second year business school, where I figured, okay, this is fun.

This is what I want to do.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I also, when I went to Chapman, I got a degree in business.

I went in, I was like, I don't really know what I wanted to do.

Maybe I was like, I'll be a financial advisor or something.

But my dad got me into the food business and been here now for nine years, and it's been a good run.

But I.

I figured, yeah, kind of take maybe a similar approach, be more general, and then kind of become more focused as time goes on.

And it's served me well so far as someone with marketing in the food business, working for coffee bean, and you've had other positions as well, working within marketing.

When you look at a brand, what are some of the first things that you try to tackle and try to help on the marketing side?

Well, I look first at, like, is, are we connect?

Like, who's our consumer?

And are we connecting with that consumer?

Are we relevant, or are we kind of yesterday's news?

I think that's important.

So, that's been something I've done at pretty much every stop on my career.

And I spent ten years at Tillamook, the dairy company here in Oregon.

And that was an awesome opportunity to work on what was already an amazing brand, but not really well known outside of the northwest.

And so we used that time before we did the national expansion program for Tillamook.

We went in and updated the brand, the identity, real sharp definition on the consumer.

And we were kind of reckless with it.

And it felt like we were doing open heart surgery on this company that had been around for over 100 years and made some bold choices there.

And that was really super gratifying work.

That's been a wild success.

And I've done that type of work at Oregon fruit here, too.

I've been at the Oregon fruit Company, and we also did a similar process of just sort of making sure that we're putting our best foot forward in how we present ourselves.

So you mentioned, you know, going into Tillamook, and even now here at Oregon fruit, being kind of.

I think the word used was reckless.

Uh, what does that mean?

Yeah.

So anytime you're messing with brand, you know, there you can kind of think of it as like.

Like in terms of a house.

So you can.

You can put a new coat of paint and shuffle the furniture around.

You can move some walls and.

And remodel, or you can just tear it down and rebuild.

So, and then, you know, and when working with the agency, you kind of got to get everyone on the team aligned on.

Where are you on that spectrum?

I would encourage folks to, you know, of course, do some design work that you're comfortable with on that spectrum, but then also ask for something that.

Where you're taking bolder choices, and then, you know, because you can always pull back from there, but you want to explore the edge of what.

You want to get to that uncomfortable place where you're really evolving the brand, because most of the time, the mistake that I see companies make is by not being bold enough in the evolution and being too conservative with how they're kind of moving the brand forward.

These projects where you're doing a rebrand, I mean, you shouldn't be doing this very often.

I mean, it's not something that, I mean, maybe a touch up every five, seven years, but it shouldn't be like a whole, okay, let's just re envision what this thing should look like.

So it has to last a while.

And so because it had been so long since Tillamook had.

Had touched their identity, we felt like we could be reckless.

Like, we could go and, hey, let's build this thing for the next 25, 30 years, but let's make up for lost time.

It's way outdated.

In working at till muck, really pushing the limits, being reckless.

What did.

Maybe any examples that you have at your time there, what that looked like?

Yeah.

So it wasn't just the, you know, we did the full rebrand.

We took over.

I'm gonna get the number wrong.

I mean, close to 300 skus and redesigned, all of them.

It was painful.

It took a long time.

It was expensive, but the impact on the shelf was amazing.

And I always think of the ice cream category where we were trying to go in and get one door of distribution across the country, and the impact of the new design with every flavor having its own color, which at the time was pretty crazy.

Not every other brand on the shelf was monochromatic.

So going in with this really checkered design, I think we had 24 different colors in play.

But the impact when you got a full door distribution was awesome.

It was like a billboard for the brand in every grocery store.

We got that distribution.

That's one example.

I also think, like, just in innovation and all the product work that I've done, it's good to take chances and you know, because, you know, it's one of the, you know, and it's been stated many times, like, you're gonna fail on the product a lot, but, you know, when you take big swings, you can and try to, like, break category conventions, as they say, you can really create a movement in a category and have a lot of success.

You know, it's interesting, like, when I think of Tillamook, right, if I go to the grocery store, you have your store brand.

Um, you know, maybe you got Sergeanto, maybe have some other brands in there.

But, like, when you get Tillamooke, the perceived value that I have, I can only speak from my own experience.

In my mind, I'm like, this is a premium product that I'm buying.

It's almost like this is like a treasured product to have in my kitchen or in my refrigerator, whether it's the ice cream or it's the cheeses.

And it's fascinating that marketing can do that.

What has the marketing efforts of Tillamook and yourself done to influence my brain where, I don't know if you had commercials, but in my brain, I'm thinking, this is something, you know, it's going to be creamier.

It's going to be maybe just a better bite.

It's whatever it may be.

I definitely have that perception of Tillamook being here in Southern California.

And I'm sure over time, you spread that across the whole country, too, at your time there.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, I'm glad to hear you say that, because there's a lot of tension on the idea of premium and the other idea that tugs at premium, which is scale or accessibility.

Right.

And so the classic positioning of a premium accessible product is kind of what we were aspiring to when we did that design.

And we felt, and I felt like we were making a lot of choices that kind of made the product less premium in order to have more of a mass appeal.

And it was painful for me, and I remember it because one example is, in a super premium product, you used to be able to put a ton of information on the front panel, and the designers convinced me that those days are over and less is more, and this allows for a more elegant design.

And they were right.

But I remember feeling like during the design process that it really looked mass.

It really looked like, gosh, you're not going to tell them all this good stuff about the product.

You picture a can of coke.

I mean, it's just the logo versus listing these attributes.

But I think that's probably, I'm guessing what you're reacting to when you see that brand is that it's very simple, yet kind of, you know, kind of works together on the shelf.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

There's some sort of perceived value to it.

So at your time at Tillamook, you do a rebrand.

You look at the 300 skus you have.

It's a painful process you go through.

You change all of them.

Once you kind of, as you're going through this process.

And once you kind of complete that, are there metrics that you put in place or controls that you put in place on the marketing side to be able to track?

Well, did this work?

Yeah.

Measuring lyft on packaging design, it was tricky.

Like, it did not, I would say, like, when we looked at just, you know, same store sales equivalent metrics, it did not work.

It took at least a year to say, like, hey, that was a good decision for, from looking at our base business, where it really made an impact immediately was on our own presentation.

As we were trying to get distribution going in and meeting with Kroger and walking them through, like, kind of who we were and what we would look like on their shelf, that presentation was so much better than the one we had before the design.

And I do think that the design helped us get new distribution.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So when you go from Tillamook to Oregon fruit, what are some of the things that you took from Tillamook into Oregon fruit?

Yeah, well, I think lots.

I think of the culture of winning that we created at Tillamook that I'm trying to create at Oregon Fruit.

You know, and, you know, an environment where change is not pushed away, but maybe encouraged and, you know, giving folks Runway and permission to make mistakes as long as we're going for it.

And I think just a little like adopting kind of.

I've had a kind of a similar offense that we've been running where we're gonna lead with insights, and we're gonna invest disproportionately on that.

We're gonna come up with, like, killer creative that connects with our audience, and then we're just gonna focus on growth and distribution, expansion.

So those kind of three things that I know work is what we're running at Oregon fruit.

So it's kind of similar growth story.

It is a b two b proposition, which is what's different.

But we're kind of treating it like we're treating this foodservice brand that we're growing like it's a consumer brand.

Interesting.

And why are you taking that strategy to treat it like a consumer brand?

Well, I think it's such a big audience and it's a competitive marketplace.

And we're talking about 18 million food service workers that are interacting with this brand.

And it's a more than large enough ecosystem for us to be thinking critically about how we show up in that back of house environment, how we show up behind the counter and are we premium and are we additive to the operator's brand proposition?

And so, yeah, that's kind of how we think about it.

And, you know, we're not the only ones doing that.

I think.

I think that's evolving.

I think b two b is becoming more like b two c in terms of brand development.

Yeah, I've seen that for sure.

There's, I mean, being in California, I think just being on the west coast in general, Washington, Oregon, California, there's a lot of brands.

I think New York probably has some, some similar brands that kind of have a similar type mentality leave with that consumer product kind of thought, because in food service, it's becoming more prevalent.

Hey, if I'm a large plant based burger company, maybe I can get on the menu, be on a commercial somewhere and help build my brand in food service, but then retail as well.

It's kind of backwards.

Exactly.

Yeah, and it could be.

Yeah, it could spill into retail, but we start in food service and, yeah, I think, and, you know, when I was at Tillamook, they had so, and it wasn't, I mean, just from being around for like 110 years, that brand is menu mentioned, like, all over the west coast.

I don't think it was like a strategy.

I think it just sort of happened over time because it was the best cheese that, and everyone kind of knew that.

There are certain brands, Tillamik being one of them.

You know, if I put that on a menu, I can list that I have cheese on a burger.

Anybody can do that.

But if I put this as Tillamook cheese on this burger, if I could charge $0.50 more or maybe I can charge a dollar more, you know, make an additional profit because that brand is strong now.

I'm going to pay a little bit more.

But for the markup that I can gain from having that brand on there, sometimes, you know, it's a better proposition for the operator.

Exactly.

And that, you know, that's the same.

I think it's the same proposition for Oregon fruit, potentially even more so because there's so much fruited beverage innovation happening in food service right now.

You think about coffee, the coffee channel, QSR and how operators do that, well, is important to Gen Z, and I would say younger millennials specifically.

And so that's the, that's the approach that we're taking with Oregon fruit is, you know, put Oregon fruit on the menu.

If you look at the total addressable market and food service for Oregon fruit, you know, I know you mentioned leading with insights of what's available out there today.

Do you think you can, are you looking to carve into what's available or are you looking to.

Because Oregon fruit, the products you have are very unique.

They're innovative.

Right.

Are you looking to carve out share?

That is, it's educating a consumer, maybe introducing a whole new category to them.

We.

Yeah, I think so.

I think it's kind of like, I mean, when I was in coffee, Americans were already drinking tons of coffee.

And then Stumptown, intelligentsia and counterculture were these third wave coffee brands that kind of introduced Americans to coffee on a whole nother level, where.

And it was crafted, I think the same.

We can do the same thing with lemonade, Agua, Fresca, milkshakes, all these beverages that rely almost exclusively on the quality of the fruit to drive flavor, mouthfeel, texture, otherwise.

So I think it's crafted beverage is what we're trying to create in, and it's a groundswell.

I mean, this is happening.

And we can kind of be a part of the movement and maybe steer it in certain directions as operators are trying to figure out how to attract this audience.

What about changing gears for a second?

You know, running this company, Oregon Fruits, as you know, as a CEO with a marketing background, you know, sometimes with CEO's, you might see like a finance background, you see a lot of that.

Sometimes you'll see some salespeople out there.

But having a marketing background is a unique perspective on within a business.

How do you feel that gives you an advantage within your company to help drive that growth?

Yeah, I've always thought that, you know, the brand management practice at a company like Procter and gamble or General Mills, these kind of big food companies, I've always felt that that kind of, that role is like the most important role for a brand.

And that's like, you know that.

Cause you're kind of, you're grappling.

You get really good at grappling with the value proposition of the product and the brand innovation as a growth driver, you get really comfortable with talking about distribution.

You understand margin, your competitive set.

And so, like, I've always felt, my bias has been that, well, that's the most important thing, what other training would prepare a CEO?

And so I do have a pretty strong background in financial finance to kind of pair with my experience in marketing.

So that has been, that has been part of my, I would say, kind of trajectory in my career as well, being able, being able to go into the boardroom and speak fluently about the financial side of the business.

So that's critical.

But I do think it's an advantage to be able to understand like the forward focused kind of commercial side of the business and lead the business through that lens.

I will say that since I've been CEO, I probably spend less time on that and more time on those other areas of the business, which surprised me, honestly.

But I spend more time in operations and finance than I do with marketing and sales.

Isn't that interesting?

I've definitely, in our industry, I've seen CEO's with operations and product backgrounds as well.

Drilling down on that a little bit more.

What does your day to day look like?

You've got your background, you have a lot of marketing, you have finance, but you're mentioning, hey, I'm in operations as well.

But what is your like on a typical week?

What does the job of a CEO look like?

Yeah, it changes week to week.

I'll tell you.

This week we're leading up to on a product launch here on October 1.

So I've been in sales mode this week.

I've had three sales appointments, kind of top to top type of conversations that I've been able to get through my network with distributors.

I've had a couple interviews with media.

I've probably spent the other hours getting like, we had a planning session today with the team kind of lining up our initiatives for Q four and putting some prep into that.

And then we had a wargaming session with the sales team on.

And so I attended the first half of that and tried to get the team fired up about what we're about to embark on.

So that kind of gives you a snapshot of what the week is like.

Are you familiar with a bhag, like a big, hairy, audacious goal?

Absolutely.

I know you've talked a little bit about where you're taking this brand.

You've got a new product launch upcoming.

What is that big pie in the sky that bhag that you want to achieve during your time at Oregon Fruit?

Yeah.

So we want to be sort of, well, our vision statement is to be the leading fruit for beverage brand in the United States.

And the way we kind of think about that is how many beverages are we, are we responsible for?

And, you know, so we kind of talk about internally about if we can get to 500 million beverages per year, that's our goal.

And so, and that crosses both of our key channels, which.

So we have a food service business, then we also have a business where we're supplying fruit to beverage manufacturers.

So it kind of neatly spans both of our growth channels.

So, for instance, like, if you've ever had a fruited beer, there's a good chance the fruit came from organ fruit.

And that's a point of pride for the organization, you know?

And so we, we talk a lot about our brewery partners, our cidery partners, in addition to all the restaurants that we're working with to do beverage programs.

And what about if you can look back on your career here in the food industry, if you can go back to that time you were graduating as a duck, Oregon duck, till now, what advice would you give your youngest self?

Yeah, I think becoming indispensable at the company, whatever company you work at, is critical.

And the way that I did that was to just know the category inside and out as if I were an entrepreneur that just spent my life savings on this venture.

So I think having that mentality, especially, I think that carries into food service, I've certainly carries into, like, folks that are running food manufacturing businesses, you got to know the neighborhood.

And that means, like, where the consumers at and what are they drinking or eating right now?

And is that a persistent trend, or is that something that's going to be fade next year and understanding the underpinnings of that and going deep on that, and then also, like, what's your source of volume?

Are you going to be like, and you asked me that, Nick, a few minutes ago, are you stealing share, or are you growing by introducing something new and introducing a new behavior and getting really crisp on that and including the basics like, what's the size of the market and what's your fair share?

I'm always surprised when I talk to entrepreneurs here locally or just, you know, other companies that are in these spaces and they're so focused on winning, but they haven't done the fairly simple work of just looking up and saying, like, is this a, how big is this pond that we're fishing in?

And do we have a shot at carving out a decent share?

I think those kind of, like, fundamentals of knowing your neighborhood are important.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, Joe, I want to say thank you so much for taking time to come on and share your story.

And I want to wish you nothing but incredible success with Oregon fruit.

As I mentioned, I've tried the products, and they're fantastic.

I mean, I love them.

It does, really.

I like what you said about it's a craft beverage, you know, when you apply your products into it and it fits perfectly, too.

I know the packaging, like within a bar or a food service operation, so.

But thank you for just coming on and sharing.

I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Nick.

Thanks for looking me up.