Q&A with Ken Wegner with Jel Sert

What encouraged you to join the grocery industry?

From day one, the company has always been family owned. Our company is nearly 100 years old after my grandparents started the company in the early 1920s, which was later incorporated in 1926. While I’m the third generation, we actually have a couple of members of the fourth generation that are in the business. Getting into this industry was kind of a family thing and I have been in the business basically since I was 14 years old.

How does the industry compare today to when you first started?

That’s a really good question, and it is something that I do think about a lot, specifically, how the industry has changed so much. Certainly, the complexity of doing business in the grocery industry has become so great and it has just multiplied by so much over the years where these business opportunities or these business relationships were—and I am looking back 30, 40 plus years when it was just a much simpler time to do business in the grocery channel. You had chains and independents. You didn’t have all the heavy slotting costs that had to be paid or all of the deductions back then that we currently do (authorized and unauthorized)—the data is so much more in-depth today. Data analysis, whether it’s through Nielsen or IRI or through retailers’ specific data– things today are so different and so analytical.

I also think that retailers are more difficult to work with today if you are outside a top provider, top vendor to them. It seems the retailers have relied upon some of the larger suppliers to basically operate as category captains for them. That has made the world a little more complicated as well—where you have potentially a large competitor managing the space that you are trying to get into and be part of. It’s difficult at times when these large companies are helping to make those decisions on products that are going on the shelf or not.

Grocery has become very complicated and that’s where outside of grocery, other retailers have begun to thrive selling grocery products, whether it’s Dollar Stores or of course, mass merchants, clubs and such. They have all done very well selling grocery products because they are simpler to work with. Working with an Aldi is a lot simpler than working with somebody that is more of your traditional grocery chain.

What grocery industry trends have caught your attention and how is the company addressing them?

For quite a while, center store was under attack. Center store was being pushed out, and it was much less relevant to the consumer and with looking at shelf stable and looking at dry grocery and shelf stable beverage—the perimeter began to take over the store. With what has just transpired with the health crisis globally, specifically with this nation, center store has catapulted back again into the spotlight, and it’s really being looked at with relevance again. People are eating more at home and putting more food into their pantries. Food that has a longer shelf life to it, dry grocery items, whether it’s puddings and gelatins or powdered drink mixes, these products have seen incredibly, huge growth during this pandemic.

The other category we are a major player in is the shelf stable freezer pop category, and we are seeing how all items that are consumed at home — all items that can be kept in the pantry — we are seeing these items really expand. I don’t see that going away, certainly not in the near future, and there has been a change in consumer behavior. The consumer is looking at the possibility that this going to be out there for a while, and we almost went too far the other way—so many people were out running around and hardly ever cooking at home, hardly ever having a family meal. Everyone was either bringing food in from a carry out place, fast food place or going out to dinner somewhere, and I think that was the trend, but that has changed dramatically. There will be changes while other trends will remain permanent. People are going to realize that having meals at home, maybe not seven days a week, but certainly maybe a lot more than previously, this will cause people to look for meal solutions at home.

Even more importantly in today’s world with the economy that we are facing with what appears to be a recession that were in or heading into, the consumer is looking at places where they can buy food for less money. They are looking for economics and products that are high-value. High-value means high-quality as well—certainly a consumer doesn’t want to buy a product that is cheap, but doesn’t taste good—that just is not going to play out.

So, it has to be high-value, high-quality and this is part of our mission statement of our company going back into the 1920s. Our company when it started in 1926, our company really took off during the Depression because we were selling high-quality, high-value food and beverage items that the consumer could put in front of their family. We still run to that same mission, that same vision today. That is very important to us—making sure that we have products that can feed people in a very high-quality way that tastes excellent, the quality is there from a manufacturing perspective and that offer a distinct value to the family.

How is Jel Sert setting itself apart from competitors in the industry?

That’s a great question, and there are several ways: we continue to innovate, we have never stopped innovating, and we have continued to work on that throughout this crisis. Our most important element throughout this crisis is to keep our employees safe. We also recognize we are part of the essential food chain out there, and we have been keeping our employees safe. However, we have also recognized that we have to continue to manufacture products for not only normal demand but for this COVID-19 demand (the pandemic pantry loading), we have continued to innovate there as well. We have launched products such as Skittles Freezer Pops this year, which is just an incredible product and it’s an item that is done extremely well in the marketplace in its short time being out there, so that has a huge growth opportunity. It’s an amazing candy brand and now we have brought it in a form that can be frozen at home. We have Starbursts in a drink mix form that is new to the marketplace—very innovative, taking candy flavors like Starbursts and Skittles as well and putting them into a powder form to modify water.

Not only are we are doing a lot of things that other companies aren’t doing at this moment, we are also looking at the functional, better-for-you angle. We have launched High C powder, which is a license we have from the Coca Cola company—High C is 100 percent Vitamin C. It’s a powder as well that goes to modify bottled water and that item has taken off tremendously right out of the gate. We continue to look for innovation, we are working on a lot of functional items, particularly in the immunity and in the hydration space, but immunity in particular, we have a brand that we have owned for some years now called Super C which is 1000 mg Vitamin C per serving item that goes into bottled water. We are going to be significantly increasing distribution on that item going from the summer into the fall, and we are also going to be creating several new product categories with that brand that we are very excited to launch. We have a brand that we have just recently acquired called All Sport, which is primarily sold in the industrial channel or factories and outside workers that are needing hydration within their facilities or where they work and we are going to be bringing that whole product line in a variety of forms into retail. We are very focused on flavor innovation, functionality innovation. We are addressing the needs of the consumer out there for the value proposition, and products that taste really good and that function—products that help with immunity and in this world today that has become a big, a key element and a key function that people are looking for—immunity. What you can see out there today that some of the functional products that were becoming exciting and kind of hot late last year and early this year, those trends will change really quickly.

Who has been your biggest advocate and supporter in the grocery industry?

Personally, I lost my father when I was 25, and my father was my mentor and my role model in many aspects of my life and certainly by far my biggest role model for my career. Even in those 25 years, I learned a lot about the values, and what we do today is because of what my father put forward. My dad was always a big advocate of helping employees and taking really good care of our employees. They really are our No. 1 asset and that is something that has really stayed with me—seeing how my father treated people and how generous he was and caring he was. That is something that has really been important to me moving forward.