Adam Grogan:
Oh, thank you for having me. Nice to be here.

Simon Mainwaring:
And Adam, I’m always intrigued when someone ends up disrupting or leading an industry where that journey began. And I hear that you’re a little bit handy in the kitchen, so are you a bit of a foodie that way and where did that begin?

Adam Grogan:
Well, I grew up in the food business, one of the rarities in this world where I spent the entirety of my career at Maple Leaf Foods. For your audience who may not be aware, Maple Leaf Foods is the largest food company in Canada. We are predominantly an animal-based protein company, and I started right out of college actually.

Adam Grogan:
I’ve lived over half my life in the food business and so I guess if that requires credentials to be in the kitchen, that certainly I’ve earned my stripes there. I’ve had a very lengthy career rounded by chefs. In fact, when I first started at Maple Leaf Foods my very first assignment was in food service, and so I called on my fair share of chefs who’ve taught me through the years everything that I need to know. At home I have two boys, 13 and 15, they got ferocious appetites, and so I’ve certainly done my very best to hone my skills in the kitchen and feed these two young guys every day. I guess I’m probably from the school of hard knocks more so than some culinary school but I do pride myself in that.

Simon Mainwaring:
Why was food the lever of change that you chose for your career? Because there’s no shortage of challenges we face and there’s no shortage of sort of solutions you could provide, but food seems such a powerful way to course correct our future. Why food for you?

Adam Grogan:
Well, early days it wasn’t about some of those more altruistic views, it was largely the fact that everyone had to eat. I mean, you’re surrounded by food from the day that you’re born. For me, going through grocery stores was always a big thing. I loved it. I loved walking up and down the aisles. I love to eat like everybody else.

Adam Grogan:
I just was very curious as to the food industry, and so when I had the opportunity to join the organization, for me it was a natural fit. It wasn’t something that I had dreamed about per se. I’m sure it would be more convenient for me to go on about some of these large stories about how I had dreamed and I’d always lived my dream. It wasn’t true actually. When I was going through school I assumed that I’d be in consulting or investment banking like every one of my other business colleagues, but the truth is is that there’s something so textural, so real about the food business. I love it. I love everything about, and it’s always a center point of conversation. So I think early days that was what motivated me. That’s certainly changed over the course of time but it’s a great business to be in.

Simon Mainwaring:
And I love what you’re saying because not everyone wakes up one morning and says they want to change the world and not every company starts with that original intent and a clearly defined purpose and so on. So talk to us about at the Maple Leaf level, or even at the brand level, that moment of transition where you saw the opportunity with plant-based proteins and the impact it could have.

Adam Grogan:
Well, actually it started in 2016. And I think a lot of people within our industry that are aware of us, this might have been me kind of an odd story, but I will tell you. Maple Leaf Foods is a 100 year old company. It’s very iconic up in Canada. If you were to walk a grocery store up in Canada, I mean, almost every brand that you would encounter in the meat case or in the frozen aisle in the large part would largely come from Maple Leaf Foods, but we were an animal protein company.

Adam Grogan:
And then 2016, and I recall this vividly, we had a strategic offsite at the time. I was leading the marketing and R&D function for the organization and we talked about, what would the company have to do over the next 100 years to be relevant, to have the same, if not stronger market position? How could it change the world? How could it be sustainable to survive that long? And we all know, being around for… Businesses that last and have longevity for a 100 years is remarkable. The fact that you can maybe be 200 years would require such incredible effort. And so at that time we spent a great deal of time brainstorming what the world needed, and here’s what we know. By 2050 there’s going to be 9 billion people on this planet. It’s going to require a 70% increase in food to be produced to feed those individuals.

Adam Grogan:
In our business it was quite clear from the very beginning that in order to grow and to continue to be a force over the next 100 years, we needed to pivot to be much more of a protein company. So now I would say that the word protein seems to be a little bit more in people’s vernaculars. But in 2016 we talked a lot about cultured meats and plant-based proteins. In fact, we have an investment in insect proteins as well. And so we talked about that idea and just what it would take to be around for another a 100 years, and so we set this vision in this course to be the most sustainable protein company on earth.

Simon Mainwaring:
I really want everyone to hear loud and clear what you’re saying, because at the heart of your shift and your sustainability commitments is this core need to be relevant to the future. And if there’s one observation I’ve made in our work with brands out there is that those that are leading the future typically are backing out of the future, just as you described, rather than building on the past. It’s not about incrementally innovating based on what you’ve always done, but looking very clear- eyed at what the next five, 10, a 100 years is going to look like and to position yourself for relevance and success. And tell me, the food industry as it currently stands, why does it need to be disrupted?

Adam Grogan:
There’s a lengthy list and we have not been shy about sharing our perspectives on that, but for the most part, we’re on the record, I’ve been on the record, and I think ultimately the food system is broken. Unfortunately I think a lot of food manufacturers have lost the plot. The notion of transparency and sustainability have not necessarily been high on the order of priority for a long time. I’m glad to see some of that is changing for sure, but the truth is is that when you think about the fact that certain parts of the population are probably eating way too much and other parts of the population have food insecurity, there’s just something fundamentally quite wrong with that. And the best food seemed to be kept for the urban elite as opposed to for the general masses.

Adam Grogan:
And so for us a big part of our mission and our vision for our business is to try in some small way to help fix that, whether it’d be our sustainability record, whether it’d be the categories that we participate in, the notion of accessibility. We make very significant investments in our center for food insecurity. It’s a big part of the mission that we’re on. It’s unfortunate that we are here. Unfortunately I think a lot of people don’t believe this, but I certainly do, which is, I still think we have lots of opportunity to repair that and fix that. I’m optimistic about that and it’s a big reason why I’ve continued to be in the food business.

Simon Mainwaring:
The timelines we are working against are contracting towards us. It’s not like they are static and we’ve got this window of time. According to the updates to the Sixth Assessment from the IPCC Report and so on, we’ve got like three years to course correct what’s going on. So when you want to disrupt the industry, how do you approach it? Because it needs to be done in partnership with consumers. It’s not something the company can do on its own simply by making new products or more responsible practices available. So how do you partner with consumers to drive this shift?

Adam Grogan:
Well, partnering with consumers is a little bit of a challenge because I would say that most consumers although they have great intention and they certainly want to help be a source of the solution around environment and sustainability and that type of thing, they are also trying to feed their families. And I think it’s important that as food manufacturers that we don’t always make the choices sometimes. And this may be unpopular amongst some, but sometimes we have to make choices before the consumer is ultimately ready. We got to look around the bend. We have a responsibility.

Adam Grogan:
I love what some of the large food manufacturers are doing and retailers when they come out with these very aggressive targets. They have the opportunity to change the industry and that tide rises all boats. And so for us, consumers are at the center of everything we do, and they want to be helped along, they want to be met where they are, but they don’t want to be preached to, and they don’t want to pay massive premiums to necessarily solve the world’s issue. They want to solve their own personal challenges, both within their family and their community. I’d like to think that we partner with them in the sense that we provide them lots of solutions and opportunities to make the right choices, but fundamentally I think we have the responsibility to lead first even maybe they are not quite ready.

Simon Mainwaring:
The responsibility you talk about sharing is so powerful to me because I think there’s a lot of talk about sharing in the benefits of stakeholder capitalism but not sharing in the responsibilities. And every company has to show up differently, even as you say, if consumers aren’t ready. And I know that you’re a social purpose corporation, so what does that mean and what did you have to change to execute against that?

Adam Grogan:
Well, that was a decision that we made very early on. In 2017 we bought a company called Lightlife Foods, which maybe members of your vegan and vegetarian communities would be very familiar with. It was one of the pioneers in 1979. It was started by two hippies in Western Massachusetts. They did something that was really unique in that they gave a percentage of their revenue into charity. And when we purchased in 2018 the Field Roast company out of Seattle, Washington, they had established themselves as social purpose company. And we were really trying to figure out, how do we bring these two organizations together under a common purpose, and we decided that we would register the organization as a social purpose company under Greenleaf Foods, under the umbrella. And what that requires us to do is to disclose a number of things that we do specifically around sourcing from suppliers.

Adam Grogan:
For example, our number one selling product in Field Roast is an apple and sage sausage made with a weak gluten protein source. And our apples are sourced locally in the State of Washington. So this commitment to local sourcing transparency in our social and environmental efforts, we have to report them manually. That’s what we do. But more important than that, and I think sometimes we get caught up in monikers such as the social purpose corporation, which we feel very strongly about, but also B Corps. They are about progress and reporting on that progress. We’ve taken a very different approach, which I’m really proud of actually, and we’ve decided that we wanted to go carbon neutral now, not sometime in the future. Yes, we are going to report against our progress.

Adam Grogan:
We’re one of the very few food companies in the world that has signed up for science-based targets, and what that means is not only do we have very transparent and hard reductions in carbon, but also whatever we can’t offset now we offset it with high quality carbon credits. And the reason for that is because we believe fundamentally that although we’re a social purpose corporation and others may be B Corp, which are making progress towards a destination, we’ve chosen that the issues are so important now that we have to act now. And so we have gone a step further from even that into a carbon neutral company now, and that is a really important move for us.

Simon Mainwaring:
It is an important move because I do worry about these 2030, 2040, 2050 timelines. We’re just not going to get there in time. I mean, the IPCC Report, the latest update says we have three years to reach peak emissions after which there’s a cascading effect that’s going to compromise all of our lives. And let’s talk about carbon emissions because it’s an interesting thing. There’s a big concern around carbon offsets because some people argue it’s kicking the can down the road in as much as they are traded and you’re offsetting what you’re doing right now. And the larger concern is there’s a repository of carbon already up there in the atmosphere that we need to draw down in addition to stemming the tide of carbon that’s going up into the air. So how do you throttle on different cylinders to make sure that you’re not only offsetting what you’re creating but reducing the amount of carbon you’re creating in the first place?

Adam Grogan:
That’s an incredible question. It’s something that we’re all thinking about probably 24/7 on this end and I’m sure within the industry. First and foremost, I’ll just come back to the notion of carbon offsets. Not all are created equal. I think we have to be very careful. For us it’s all been about a high quality credits that are done locally. We actually share some of the projects that we’ve invested in. We invested in them both in Canada and the United States that we’ve remained very close to the particular projects.

Adam Grogan:
But in terms of your comment about what we can do now to get to this place faster, it’s about progress not perfection for us. For example, we’ve made investments in things such as… We’ve obviously invested very significantly in plant-based proteins, but plant-based proteins alone aren’t going to solve the issue. In fact, there are still a very nascent category and actually haven’t reached the scale requirements that it can to reduce the amount of carbon that exists in other parts of the food chain. So we have a lot to learn from some of the others and other industries, particularly even in the animal protein industry.

Adam Grogan:
And so some of the things that we’ve done is we’re working on a number of projects in the notion of regenerative agriculture. We also are looking at sequestering emissions from our animal manure profiles to turn that into methane gas. There’s a number of projects that are underway and things that we’re thinking about on how do we take a food… Because food is a significant source of carbon, and make sure that we act on things now, but these things do take time. And so it’s really important that we do both, and we’re not shy about the requirement to do both.

Simon Mainwaring:
And I want to ask about that because I think your ambition to disrupt the industry is so important because it shows it’s possible. At the same time, you’re taking the operational costs, the expenditures, the time to do it because we’re working against these very short timeframes. So give us a sense of some of those pain points. If you really commit to do it now, to get out in front of the industry, what are some of those pain points that show up and how did you navigate them?

Adam Grogan:
Well, there’s a couple. I would say one real important pain point right now is the fact that there’s this delicate balance between economics and food waste and the notion of recyclable materials. And I’ll give you a full example on that. We produce a lot of products today in what we term barrier films. So when you go to the grocery store today and you buy a package of deli meats or hot dogs, or what have you, and they are in a vacuum packed package, well, the film that’s used is a multi-layered film that actually resists the notion of oxygen transferring that ultimately leads to spoilage. Well, those films are made with resins that are oil or petroleum based and they are incredibly hard to recycle. In fact, many municipal programs do not accept them.

Adam Grogan:
So on one hand, we are struggling with this idea that we want to make food available and get the scale that we need to try to reduce emissions and make that available to everyone from coast to coast, and we want to do that in a very efficient way. On the other hand, we’re using films that we know are not recyclable. And so we are partnering with a number of suppliers and academics to figure out what are plant- based films that still support this idea of shelf life and spoilage that are recyclable in most municipal programs. And that’s just one example of the many challenges and natural conflicts that exist.

Adam Grogan:
Another one would be, for us, every time we invest in capital, or equipment, or automation, there’s an emissions component to that. And so when I look at business cases, yes, there’s a financial component, and it’s a very significant financial component, but we’re also measuring utilization of energy and waste as part of the calculus as to whether or not we make an investment. So on one hand you’re trying to get to scale and you’re trying to make reductions and get efficient, on the other hand, a lot of these automated pieces of equipment take a significant amount of resource.

Adam Grogan:
And so we are just constantly trying to find that appropriate balance. Probably the magic word is balance. At the end of the day a sustainable business isn’t just about the environment and sustainability as it relates to that, it also means that it’s sustainable, that it’s a going financial concern. And we’re trying to find that, I think, the notion of shared value of bringing those two things together so that we can do better in this world.

Simon Mainwaring:
No, I think this tension that you’ve exposed is so critical for everyone to understand, because on one hand, you’ve got the responsive ability of doing things differently, and on the other hand, the carrot side of it, if that’s the stick of it, the carrot side of it is the relevance to the future. So pointing back to the economics as you say, when you sat down and you looked at how to be relevant and how to set yourself up for another hundred years, what was that business case in terms of the economics? Because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast may fail to realize that all of these challenges are actually marketplace opportunities in disguise. So you must have seen a growth opportunity there and I think that mindset is critical to moving forward. So what did you see when you sat down and looked at the next hundred years?

Adam Grogan:
I think it’s important for our audience to know, so Greenleaf Foods is a wholly owned subsidiary of Maple Leaf Foods. It’s our plant-based arm of Maple Leaf Foods. We run completely independently out of Chicago. And the reason I point that out is because I think when we make investments in Greenleaf foods, it’s part of laddering up to that whole idea that I spoke about earlier about Maple Leaf Foods lasting another a hundred years and being relevant in that hundred years. So I wanted just to provide that context to your audience.

Adam Grogan:
I think the facts are these, is that the world population continues to grow. There’s certain parts of the world that are obviously increasing in their standard of living. There’s an insatiable appetite for protein in North America and there’s parts of the world that aren’t getting enough protein in their diets. So the business case is quite simple, which is, there’s going to be a continuing demand to feed and nourish a population. And those that are thinking around the bend and trying to find solutions that ultimately can serve that market are going to be around for another hundred years.

Adam Grogan:
The difference being though is that as the… I have a 13-year-old son, he’s eating chicken one day and the next day I could be making him a tempe, because I love tempe, I’ll talk about that later. He could be eating tempe, but to him it’s agnostic. To him it’s just another meal. And this next generation isn’t thinking about it as certain types of diets, they are thinking about it in the context of nourishment and food and protein. And so I think the business case is quite simple, which is, the world is going to want more, we got to figure out how we’re going to serve that world, and we need to do it in a sustainable way so that for many generations to come we have a healthy planet. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that. Simon Mainwaring: So give us a sense, in the context of the urgency we’ve already spoken about, what does that growth curve look like in the context of adoption? Is it absorbing CapEx and OpEx costs for a while and that sort of impacts your bottom line? And then you’ve got that new positioning that we’ll dry growth over the long-term or can it be dovetailed in? Because you’re one of the leaders in North America in the category of food so you must have sort of seen the shape of that to some degree.

Adam Grogan:
Well, of course there’s always going to be some investments that you have to get out ahead of the consumer, and we have done that. We’ve been on the record. We’ve made some investments. We talk about this idea of going carbon neutral now, which was no small feat. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in that area because, to the point that you made earlier, it would have been very easy to just put a date out there, or to only address certain parts of our operation.

Adam Grogan:
I’ve seen brands here recently… Another problem with this food system is that you have brands out there that says… I saw an alcoholic beverage manufacturer that said, “Our distilling is carbon neutral.” Well, what about everything else? What about the scope 1, scope 2 emissions. What are you doing about even helping in reduction in scope 3 emissions? Not to geek out on the audience but the truth is is that, one part of the item isn’t the solution, it needs to be all of it. So I think when we get into this conversation you’d say, well, there is times where we had to invest ahead of that, and that’s an example of one. There’s others where consumers are demanding it. As an example of that, it’s just investing in plant-based proteins right now. It’s been a market that’s grown exponentially. People are, I call it, plant curious. They are concerned about their own health and wellbeing. They are concerned about the planet. Actually animal welfare and other ethical concerns are actually further down the list.

Adam Grogan:
We’re all in businesses to make money, we are a publicly traded company, but the truth is is that I think if you find that right balance of listening to your consumers, finding out ways that you can incrementally do things over time, they are going to reward you with that. And we’re seeing more and more of that, whether it’d be our sustainable meats programs, whether it’d be our plant-based protein businesses. Over the course of time it’s about finding that appropriate balance. And I said that balance word would come up again, because it’s not just about investing ahead of the consumer or else you won’t exist as a company. It’s what choices do you need to make today and what choices do you mean to make tomorrow. That’s the holy grail of getting this right.

Simon Mainwaring:
You mentioned what consumers are demanding increasingly because they’re so aware of the challenges that are going to shape their daily lives. Where do you start this process? Does it start at consumer demand through the lens of your brand at the Greenleaf level or does it start at the enterprise level of Maple Leaf and then Maple Leaf sets a new platform on which the brands stand? Is it top-down, bottom-up?

Adam Grogan:
Great question. It’s a little bit of both. Like I mentioned earlier on, at Maple Leaf we decided at that point in time that we were going to set this vision to be the most sustainable protein company on earth, which had a lot of implications to it. We defined what sustainability meant. We defined the notion of protein and protein sources. We talked about even the word Earth, the idea of taking care of Mother Earth. And so for us it was really important that we define all those things at an organizational level, but we also made the decision to be a protein neutral company at a macro level, and we then brought that down into the Greenleaf Foods. So if you were to buy a Lightlife, a Chao product, a Field Roast product today, you’ll notice a little moniker on our packaging, “We are a carbon neutral company.” We obviously disclose all of our sustainability efforts in our reporting.

Adam Grogan:
And then at Greenleaf we’ve done it a little bit differently. We’ve taken an extra step. I told you I’d bring up tempe again. Recently we built the world’s largest tempe facility in, of all places, Indianapolis. We spent a $100M building a fully automated facility. Well, that facility uses absolutely zero… We have zero waste going to landfill. It’s a zero-landfill site. The water leaving the facility is better than the water when it comes in. We’re running on all renewable energy. And the source of our tempe is organic soybeans from North America. So that’s an example where we’ve taken the lead within the Greenleaf organization to fulfill the larger mission, and also for the larger mission to now be supplanted into the Greenleaf business. So it’s really symbiotic relationship.

Simon Mainwaring:
It’s a really powerful shift that is as tangible as you can touch it. You’ve got these new facilities and so on. I think one of the intangible challenges to a shift like the one you’ve done is actually working with your suppliers, especially when you’re a legacy business that’s a hundred years old, and helping them understand why the way things have always been done is no longer the way they need to be done moving forward. So how did you work with your suppliers, being one of the largest food providers in North America, to bring them along with you and overcome the inertia within the industry itself?

Adam Grogan:
Well, we do have a big influence. I think this is where companies have to do a better job. The Unilevers of the world, the Proctors of the world, the Walmarts, Costco, I think, is doing great work in this area, where you’re working with your suppliers. For us, Maple Leaf we’re very small. There’s three companies in North America that do over 60% of the plant-based proteins in the grocery stores today, three of them, we happen to be one of them, but we’re still relatively small in the grand scheme of things. We like to think of ourselves as big enough to have an impact but small enough to do something about it. But when you look at these organizations or even what we did with Maple Leaf Foods up in Canada, it’s all about using your size and scale to be a good corporate citizen and almost forcing the industry to take the tide and rise all boats.

Adam Grogan:
For example, we sat down with many, many suppliers and took them through our mission and what we intended to do, and then we did, I call it, a soft ask and a hard ask. The soft ask was, “Look, come on this journey with us. We think it’s simply the right thing to do for the planet.” And the hard ask was, “Ultimately we’re going to choose our suppliers on the basis of whether or not they view the world in the same way.” I think that’s kind of the path home. And honestly, I think we’ve seen a lot of progress in industry because large suppliers or large manufacturers and large retailers have gone out to their own supply base and said, “Listen, if you want to work with us, we’ve got to do things a certain way,” and I think it’s really, really helped to have that tide rise all boats. Simon Mainwaring: And it’s hard enough to make this transition as an organization and with consumer behavior when things are good and you’re going up and to the right, it’s even harder when things are going down. And as I understand it at the end of last year, meat alternative sales had slowed. So how do you withstand the pressure from investors or anyone inside or the stakeholder group to say, wait a second, we got to transition back to the way things were done?

Adam Grogan:
Well, transitioning back to the way things are done is really an important concept to unpack because… And you’re absolutely right. Leading into the COVID in March of 2020 and even the year up to that, there was wild exuberance in plant-based proteins. It was growing at 30% to 40%, and then through the pandemic obviously there’s lots of trial, lots of interest. And then here recently I think with the COVID unwind, it’s slowed the market a little bit, but the truth is is that… Our projection it’s still very bullish. We view the market being sort of between 10% and 15% growth, and by any measure in the food business that would be a highly attractive market.

Adam Grogan:
But it just comes down to making sure that you make the right investments and the appropriate investments and adjust your investment thesis to match that new growth vector. And there’s certain things that are not negotiable. And for us what’s not negotiable is our commitment to plant-based proteins, our commitment to being a carbon neutral company. In fact, we recently here published our latest sustainability report and we’ve made tremendous progress. There’s a couple of areas where I think we could even do better. I don’t think that part’s the optional part of the P and L.

Adam Grogan:
We talked about earlier about making investments ahead of the business requirement. You might be a little bit more careful in that area. Again, we talk about shared value. The company needs to be sustained in order to be sustainable. So I would say to you that we’ve just gone through and decided what are strategic costs and make the necessary investments in that area. And in this particular case we’re not walking back. We refuse to. That’s not part of our DNA. Simon Mainwaring: And you know the only way that you’re going to be a sustainable company is if consumers come on board more and more, the market forces reward what you’re doing, and adoption continues to grow. And I noticed that through your Field Roast brand there were plant-based hot dogs that are now available at Dodger Stadium and so on. That’s a great step forward. How important is those delivery formats in terms of changing behavior? Like, it needs to be delivered in the format of a hamburger or a hot dog to give people the experience of what a meat alternative might be like and to make that choice.

Adam Grogan:
Well, first of all, I got to go to the Dodger thing, I will tell you, I would never have… We talked earlier when we started, I grew up essentially my entire professional career in the meat industry and in the food industry, I like to think of it more so, and to imagine that the home of the World Series Champions has a Dodger dog that’s plant based. The good news is I think the beer and the pretzel are also vegan as well so I think you’re in good hands there. I never thought America’s pastime would even ever see the day where that was possible. I think I’ve even seen more and more articles. I think that same hot dog now is in about seven or eight Major League ballparks now.

Adam Grogan:
I think a big part of getting flexitarians to try plant-based options… I mean, 92% of all new consumers coming into this space are meat eaters. And when we talk to our vegan and vegetarian consumers, who are the backbone of our business, the backbone of our business, what they tell us unanimously is if we can provide innovative items that a meat eater once in a while even could because try a meat alternative or a plant-based option, that’s a step in the right direction. And so I think for many consumers having a plant-based hot dog makes it a little bit of an easier step over the proverbial threshold or a burger in a restaurant. But it’s only the beginning. I think that’s a great way to get people to try and to enter and to give it a shot, if you will.

Adam Grogan:
But what I’m really proud of is the fact for us… I mean, we also have the number one sliced plant-based cheese in America. We were talking about tempe earlier and now we have a novel protein where somebody maybe tried a Dodger dog, then maybe had a burger, then maybe had it with a slice of vegan cheese, and had a pizza. We recently signed a partnership here with Donatos in the Midwest. And then ultimately maybe you give tempe a try. I mean, who knew? And I think that’s part of the discussion we had earlier, which is, how do you have a company that’s relevant a hundred years from now, and it’s by making necessary investments in innovation.

Adam Grogan:
We recently opened North America’s largest vegetarian innovation center up in the Chicago land area. Chicago, which by the way, is the home of sausages, Polish sausages. It’s interesting just to think about being completely relevant and serving a new market in a different way and meeting consumers where they are as opposed to preaching to them and telling them what they ought to do. And if you can bring them along that journey, I think ultimately it helps make the world a better place.

Simon Mainwaring:
And there’s one other stakeholder group I want to ask you about, which is in the investor class, because we’ve seen companies like Danone in Europe lean heavily into sustainability and it’s come at some cost depending on what the issue might be. You’ve seen pushback in the UK against Unilever of late in and around how much they are leading with purpose and re-engineering their portfolio. What do you say to, “old school” shall we say, investors who’ve got that short-term as a mindset who wants you to just up and to the right at any cost irrespective of the cost of the planet or people?

Adam Grogan:
Well, I can’t talk specifically about those. I am familiar with those particular examples that you provide of course. I can only tell you how we view it. Our viewpoint is that, for us, and I’m sorry to come back to this, but I knew this would come up quite a bit, is this idea of balance. Any company who’s on a mission, on a larger, higher order mission to do greater good has to put it in the context to having a viable business, because if you have a viable business, you get to make more investments to make the world a better good too.

Adam Grogan:
Look, we view our investors… And our CEO happens to be our largest investor, by the way, even though we’re a publicly traded company. So he reminds me of this every day, which is about this notion of shared value, which is, yes, we have investors, and yes… Many of our investors are institutional investors. There’s lots of employees across North America who are expecting a great return for their retirements, and certainly we take that with a high degree of seriousness, obviously, but there’s the communities that we operate in.For us, Greenleaf Foods, we’re one of the few plant- based companies in America where we make over 80% of our own food in our own plants. We have 600 associates across America and they want to be taken care of as well. They want to be treated well. And so I think about it in the context of all of those things.

Adam Grogan:
We talked about the social purpose company, and that is all about this idea of taking care of our suppliers, making the right choices for the environment, very aggressively looking at things like packaging and emissions, but also making sure that our investors are getting a responsible return for their investment. I think anytime you sort out stories where there may be challenges or pressure from the investors, I think it’s easy to say, well, it’s long-term versus short-term, but the truth is is that maybe there’s something that’s not quite in balance. And for us the approach that we’ve taken is to try our best to thread that needle.

Simon Mainwaring:
I couldn’t agree more. I think we need to mirror the balance. That is a constant dynamic inside the natural world, where not everyone gets everything they want all the time. You’ve got to calibrate it so that the whole can thrive, so the parts within it can still do well. Given the challenges you face at a company level enterprise or brand level, given the challenges like COVID and supply chain disruption, and given the challenge of consumer adoption at scale, what’s the one thing that keeps you up at night? Because there are so many to choose from, what’s the one thing?

Adam Grogan:
There’s lots of things that keep me up at night, the good news is my two boys are a little older now so it’s not them. I would say we’re constantly thinking about innovating and being relevant for many years to come and making sure that we make those right choices. I talked earlier about being in this industry for a long time. I want to be proud for the work that I do. There’s a lot of people that are counting on our success, obviously our employees but also our investors, and we talked about our suppliers. adam_grogan_draft_1 (Completed 04/30/22) Page 13 of 16 Transcript by Rev.com

Adam Grogan:
The thing that I think we think about the most is, should we be doing more? Can we be doing more? Are we going too far in certain areas? Maybe are we being a little bit too irresponsible? There’s a constant pull… We call it pulling on the tarp. It’s the proverbial people standing around and yanking the tarp one way or the other. Making sure that we don’t allow hubers to come into those conversations. I think that’s probably the thing that occupies our brain the most. And when do you lean in? When do you lean in and make some of those investments even though… Sometimes consumers don’t know exactly what they want until it’s in front of them. I mean, Steve Jobs was notorious at talking about that idea. Consumers don’t even know what they want right now so how can you ask them? And I understand that. But that’s a big, big part of our jobs as leaders is to constantly be pulling on that tarp. I think we get it right more often than we get it wrong, but sometimes we get it wrong and you got to learn from that as well.

Simon Mainwaring:
You’ve had such a story career within the company at the parent company level and then across overseeing so many dimensions of the brands. Through this long journey, what would you offer as one mistake you would love us all to avoid? Because you’ve seen so much in terms of the company growth, the expansion of the stock portfolio, the transition to plant-based proteins. One mistake you might say, “Hey, I’ve learned something on the way, avoid this one”.

Adam Grogan:
I got a mountain of mistakes. Growing up in this business I’ve certainly had my fair share of product failures which I’m sure at some point someone’s going to reward me with the hall of fame of some of the things that we’ve done. I think listening to anyone’s stakeholder always leads you down the wrong path. I think you have to really listen to multiple points of view and perspectives. I think the only time we’ve ever made a mistake is generally when we haven’t taken enough risk and we haven’t really leaned in and done something really bold. I’ll provide a bit of texture to that.

Adam Grogan:
You were talking about this idea of short-term and long-termism and we have a saying in our organization that you got to eat short-term to live long-term. So you’re constantly trying to do the right things today so that you can do the things you really hope to aspire to over time, and that’s that constant pulling on the tarp that we talked about earlier. But I think not being bold and not taking some chances and making sure that you’re too… If you get too concerned with the short-term view, and you listen to every piece of research that someone puts in front of you, and you listen to… The accountants and the lawyer sometimes will steer you in the wrong direction. You have to be really careful about looking at taking different stakeholder points of view. And anytime that we’ve made a mistake, without giving you one specifically, I’d say it’s largely because either we weren’t bold enough or we listened to one particular stakeholder over another and ultimately led us down the wrong path.

Adam Grogan:
So for us that’d be something that I’d be very conscious of, especially for people… It’s really easy to get caught up and excited about solving the world’s problems, absolutely. It’s very motivating and it’s exciting, at the same time you have to do it in a responsible way and try to make sure that you’re delivering for all the stakeholders that are involved in that.

Simon Mainwaring:
And speaking of solving the world problems, with all the challenges we read about in the headlines every day, what makes you optimistic about the future?

Adam Grogan:
Oh, I’m incredibly optimistic about the future. It’s one of those things that… I’m a glass half full kind of person. When you think about the technology… I’ll give you an example here recently in plant-based proteins. The food business used to be kind of the old business. You talked about old school earlier. Recently here I think a lot of people have realized that the food industry is a significant source of carbon emissions, and the animal protein is actually one of the worst, even more so than some of the fossil fuels.

Adam Grogan:
And there’s been an incredible amount of interest in this area. The amount of bio scientists and intellectual horsepower that’s come into our industry to try to solve these things such as cultured meat and plant-based proteins and making them more functionally viable. That’s incredible. We’ve never had that. We had a lot of food scientists and animal scientists and now we have all these other types of scientists that are helping us come up with solutions that I think ultimately will make the world a better place. I think that’s a really great reason to be optimistic.

Adam Grogan:
I think food and the food system itself, I think…. I love what I’m hearing from some of the other manufacturers and brands. The notion of having sustainability reports and the transparency that comes with that. I hope more of them sign up for science- based targets and are a little bit more specific in their initiatives and a little bit more aggressive. North America has a really unique position in the world. It’s the bread basket of the world. Look at the amount of the source of wheat, and peas, and lentils, and legumes that are available in this part of the world, especially in North America. We control our own food sovereignty and that puts us in a really great place to help lead the rest of the world. So from my perspective, I think there’s nothing but upside, and leading the Greenleaf business for me is an absolute joy and a humbling experience because we get to steward two of the largest plant-based protein brands in America, and I think that’s our future.

Simon Mainwaring:
Adam, thank you so much for your time and your insights and for showing how a leading legacy brand self-disrupts to transform our future. Thanks so much.

Adam Grogan:
Thank you.

Simon Mainwaring:
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Lead With We, and you can find out more information about today’s guest, Adam Grogan, in the show notes of this episode. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts so you never miss an episode. Plus, you can now find us on all United Airlines in-flight entertainment consoles as well. And if you like this video, hit the like button below and be sure to subscribe.

Simon Mainwaring:
Finally, if you want to dive even deeper into the world of purposeful business, check out my new book, and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Lead With We, that’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google Books. Lead With We is produced by Goal 17 Media. I’ll see you again soon, and until then, let’s all Lead With We.