Visit our Content Hub!
Access free downloadable content curated by our editors.

Bumble Bee CEO on Leadership, Market Changes, and the New Role of OEMs

Bumble Bee's Jan Tharp joins OEM Magazine Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Neil on the PMMI UnPACKed podcast.

Screen Shot 2021 02 24 At 4 58 57 Pm

In November, during the PACK EXPO Connects Jumpstart program, Jan Tharp, President and CEO of The Bumble Bee Seafood Co., discussed how she has been able to lead the company through a corporate crisis and COVID-19. Recently, Tharp joined OEM Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Neil on the PMMI UnPACKed podcast to continue the conversation.

Stephanie Neil: The Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article stating that women are better leaders than men during a crisis. Jan, thinking about your own journey leading the company through a corporate scandal and now COVID-19, what leadership skills have you leaned on to engage your team?

Jan Tharp: I think when you look back over our 28 months and you consider everything this business has been through, to your point, we’ve gone through a corporate scandal, we’ve gone through a bankruptcy, we’ve sold the company. And then, when we sold the company, we entered into COVID-19. So when I look at it, I would say in some ways, COVID-19 has been maybe less traumatizing to the business than some of those other earlier issues, because at least with COVID-19, everyone on the planet was dealing with the ramifications of that. Our earlier issues were really specific to our business and our team, but there still were similarities. With the issues of the past, we certainly had financial and emotional concerns that we had to deal with caused by the scandal and the bankruptcy. COVID-19 brought those same concerns, the financial concerns and the emotional concerns, but this time it layered on health concerns. I think that the tools and the skills that we developed and all of the things that helped us through those earlier issues, they are the same tools that we use to manage through COVID-19 and it really came down to heightened communication and transparency. I think being very open with our team members as to what’s going on, and then finally balancing the realism with optimism. So not trying to hide the fact that a situation was difficult, being pretty open about it, but being optimistic about where we’re headed.

Stephanie Neil: The HBR study said that women express more awareness of fears and concern for wellbeing and confidence in their plans. Do you feel the communication strategy that you put into place helped transition the company through a crisis and COVID-19?

Jan Tharp: I think leadership is a skill. It’s something that you develop over time. I don’t know that it’s necessarily gender specific. I think it’s a skill that anyone can have if they want it and they want to spend time developing it. I will also say though, that women tend to be a little more empathetic and perhaps, and this isn’t a broad brush statement, but perhaps their listening skills may be better. So to your point, when we were in any one of the situations that we were in, one of the leadership skills that I will say I continue to develop, because it’s something that we’re learning every day, is that listening skill. Listening to our team members, what’s on their mind, where are their concerns, how do we address those concerns? Because everybody’s are going to be different depending on where they sit in the organization. I think one of the ways we’ve been able to do that was just starting at the foundational level of reinforcing our values. We developed our values a couple of years ago and continuing to live those values and talk about those values, ground us in something that is common to everyone. If you can continue to show the team how what they’re doing every single day is getting us one step closer to living our purpose, then that makes all the difference in the world. It sounds simple, but at the end of the day, communicating and having that feedback is what gets you through any kind of crisis or a business challenge.

Stephanie Neil: Let’s move on to the seafood industry. How has the pandemic impacted the general industry?

Jan Tharp: In general, I would say it’s been positive for the industry as a whole. What I would also say is there’s a lot of fertile ground for sustained growth. The reason I say that is if you look at some of the trends that we’re seeing, the macro consumer trends and how they relate back to our industry, I think you’ll see why I’m optimistic. The first one being eating at home. I don’t think that’s going away. I think that’s certainly good for retail grocery. It’s not so good for food service, but I think that we are going to be eating more at home for the foreseeable future. Again, great for retail grocery and ultimately great for seafood. If you look at the economy, I think the economic conditions in the U.S., in my opinion, are going to push families into two extremes. One being wealth generation, and there’s people that are going to be pushed into further economic insecurity A challenged economy generally is good for people who are operating in center store grocery. E-commerce is another one. It’s going to continue to grow. Whether you’re buying your products through your local retailer on their website or Amazon or any of the abilities to do curbside pickup, home delivery, it doesn’t matter. If you look at it from our perspective, digital is actually good. It gives us an opportunity to connect with our consumer at a much deeper level than we can if a consumer is walking down center store grocery, and they’re spending two seconds looking at shelf stable seafood and deciding what they’re going to buy. So the engagement, actually, with e-commerce utilized correctly could be significantly better.

I mentioned people spending less time in the grocery stores. People are not going to the store as often, [but] they’re buying more. So that’s good for maybe larger formats. That’s good for multi-packs, ready-to-eat items, maybe some value-added items, but figuring out what products fit now in this changing retail landscape becomes important. Then finally for our industry, protein. Protein was on trend before the pandemic. It’s still growing. So as I look at those macro trends and how they relate back to the seafood sector, I’m extremely optimistic about our industry growth. We’re seeing it in the numbers. In general, the industry’s up in shelf stable about 17% and frozen seafood’s up about 30% to 35%. So all positive signs for the industry.

Stephanie Neil: The industry in general is up, but you still have to capture your market share. How do you make Bumble Bee Seafood the tuna of choice when somebody is walking down the grocery aisle or shopping online?