Deb Conklin
[On succeeding retired KeHe CEO Brandon Barnholt, who led the Naperville-based company to exponential growth over his 17 years at the helm] I'm coming in behind a phenomenal human being and leader in Brandon Barnholt. Brandon not only is a guy where you'd want to run through a brick wall for him — because you believe in the vision and the strategy of what he's setting for the organization — but he's just genuinely one of the nicest, kindest human beings you'll ever meet…
I think the thing that I was really drawn to is the ability to do good work with good people and have a great impact on the world that we're in. You know, if you think about being in the natural-organic-specialty-fresh space to begin with, not only is that growing, and it's differentiating itself from a lot of other products that are being consumed.
The ability to work for a company that is dedicated to the success of their employees, as owners of the business, they just come to work every day with a passion for excellence and how you define excellence…
What I really love is this concept of serving to make lives better. And so everything we do is to try to make the world around us better… What we call the four P's, the purpose, the people, the planet, the profits… We give over 10 percent of our net income to KeHE Cares, our foundation, which is there to help neglected, abused, underprivileged, folks… That has also taken shape for a lot of the work that we do in programs to help diverse trade. So women-owned, minority-owned businesses have the opportunity to have additional help from our programming…
We talked a little bit about our company being employee owned, it makes me so proud. When I see our drivers show up at a customer's location with a shirt on that says “employee owner,” you just act differently… And we're one of the largest certified B Corporations out there, that means a third party comes in and validates that we're doing what we say we're going to do for our people, the environment, and the greater world we live in…
Who are we going to be in this next wave of our journey? I believe laying the strategic plan, not only internally so people know why we're doing what we're doing, but also our partners up and down the supply chain know what to expect from us… It's really about us being food people, not distributors, and I think that's one of the key big pivots that the strategy tries to help articulate…I talk about how it's easy to do business with and for KeHE…
We sell north of a billion and a half dollars worth of fresh, but we don't act like a fresh company. We've got a lot of work to do. And the investment in DPI will help us with that...
I think you're gonna see us do more M&A, so that we can compete in a way that gives our suppliers and our customers better scale…
We now have 19 DCs [distribution centers] across the United States. We are north of $8 billion in revenue, and growing through COVID, the business invested like no other that I have seen… The infrastructure, brick-and-mortar that KeHE invested in, coupled with the IT infrastructure that we invested through COVID, is literally second to none…
The visions are for the growth of KeHE. But more importantly for how we serve our larger community, those of you who are on the phone with us today, both up and down the supply chain, you have my personal commitment that on this multi-year journey, you're going to see a reinvigorated and differentiated KeHE for the next phase of our journey.
Because what got us here won't necessarily get us to the next bastion of hope. And that's a lot of what we're going to be spending our time on is how we can be a better service provider to the industry, to do not only good work for all of us, but also the communities that we live in.
