actually the guy who hired me out of college, Chris Mulder — who’s actually the CEO of Leidy’s in Philadelphia, just north of Philadelphia now — came to me and said,“Hey, I’m leaving. I’m going to run sales for a company called High Liner Foods.” High Liner is the largest importer and manufacturer of seafood in the country, based out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And he asked me to come along with him for that ride and join as head of food service sales. So I made that shift. But that shift also gave me a very important connection. Chris was brought over by a guy by the name of Peter Brown. Peter is our current CEO, and at the time he was COO of High Liner Foods. I got to know Peter there. Worked very closely with him. I did not know him at Cargill. It’s 120,000 employees, so you don’t know everybody, but got quite a bit of exposure to Peter during that time. Peter then leaves to go work for Butterball, and Seaboard owns 52% of the non-controlling interest of Butterball, and so that’s when he joined the Seaboard family. I went to work for a coffee company. So this was really my first step outside of food service and step outside of protein, I went to work for a company called Trilliant Food and Nutrition out of Appleton, Wisconsin, and most people don’t know that name, but they’re the second largest K-cup manufacturer to Keurig, and so got quite a bit of exposure. It’s really not a whole lot different from protein. You know, you’re moving raw material all over the world into Appleton in order to create those coffee K-cups. And I knew it would be a short career in coffee because the owner was north of 70 years old, wanted to sell the business. And so I knew going into it, the focus was on getting the business sold. And after about a year, we were right there at the finish line with an acquisition in place, and my phone rang, and it was Peter Brown, and Peter had become CEO of Seaboard Foods, and at the time, was looking for a head of sales. And so that’s how I made the leap back into protein, here at Seaboard Foods. Well, it’s quite a journey. Chad, now when we look at the future, what’s your vision of the Seaboard Foods pork segment? When I look at Seaboard Foods, we’ve got a 27-year-old history, and that history is focused on our what we call the connected system.
AN INTERVIEW WITH CHAD GROVES
Congratulations on a new president and CEO appointment at Seaboard’s pork segment. Chad, can you share with the audience a bit about your background before this role? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a family that was dedicated to food. My dad was a sugar broker. Actually started his own company and bought and sold sugar from all over the world, and moved it into retail and other avenues here in the U.S. And so I went to school knowing that I wanted to be in food, and likely would go work for a couple years for someone, and then come back and work for my dad. And my brother at the time was running logistics for my dad, and I knew I would be the sales guy for them. So I went to Purdue University, studied selling and sales management there, and took my first job at Cargill, actually within their egg division at the time, known as Sunny Fresh Foods. That was really my first taste of the protein segment. The only other piece came, my dad also owned a butcher shop in our hometown, so I got experience working with the butchers. Had no idea that that experience would come back and be extremely beneficial in my life, but I grew up going to college, coming back, working holidays, things like that. When we got a few years toward the end of my graduation, and after I joined Cargill, my dad actually sold the business. There was quite a bit of consolidation down. And so that’s where my job at Cargill, thinking it would be a shorter stint, became a career for me. So I spent close to 10 years at Cargill. And a few years into my employment there, they actually consolidated down the sales teams. So I went from just representing eggs to representing beef, pork, turkey, dressing, sauces, oils, eggs and salt. I was moved throughout several different territories, but at the time, running the Midwest for Cargill and really going out to Seattle and Northern California, it became the largest protein segment for Cargill. So I got quite a bit of experience in the beef and pork segment, and really worked my way up through Cargill. And one day I was in my office, and the President of Cargill Food Service,
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