The JM Smucker Co – US Coffee & Consumer Retail
Divisions – Strategic Update & Outlook – 5 February 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Jennifer Freeman (JF)
Former VP, Consumer Foods at The JM Smucker Co
Agenda:
1. The JM Smucker Co (NYSE: SJM) – category highlights, trends and competitive landscape
2. Peanut butter business update, including pricing trends, innovation and health and wellness dynamics
3. Uncrustables growth momentum and investment potential
4. Retail coffee division update and possible post-pandemic stay-at-home sustainability tailwinds
Contents
Q: Could you highlight 2-3 trends that were impacting The JM Smucker Co’s core categories across retail
coffee and packaged foods, pre-coronavirus?
Q: How do you think coronavirus has impacted some of the trends you outlined? How permanent might
some of these changes be?
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Q: Smucker was able to take its first price increase for a number of years through its Jif peanut butter brand.
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What do you think was behind this more aggressive stance?
Q: Jif was able to grow volumes and take market share, despite the price increase. Would you attribute that
to the brand being replenished on the shelf following supply issues, or do you think something else drove
that performance?
Q: How would you describe the typical price elasticity for the peanut butter category?
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Q: Does it concern you that Smucker may have created a potentially unsustainable price gap between Jif and
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private label?
Q: Do you think Jif is well-placed to take market share, given you mentioned it has a strong e-commerce
presence?
Q: You touched on Skippy. Could you highlight some of Jif’s strengths or weaknesses vs Skippy?
Q: How would you say Jif fends off competition from private label?
Q: You mentioned the peanut butter category’s growth rate – how do you anticipate its longer-term growth
prospects?
Q: How do the category’s long-term growth prospects correspond with consumer health and wellness
trends?
Q: How could innovation enable Jif to tap into other consumer occasions and become more on-trend?
Q: How would you say Smucker’s US retail business is positioned within the trend towards purchasing
healthier, unprocessed fresh foods and away from processed categories?
Q: What percentage of Smucker’s revenue could you attribute to health and wellness products among its
smaller brands?
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Q: You mentioned the Uncrustables brand has been performing well. How much of its strong growth do you
think is structural vs coming from coronavirus tailwinds?
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Q: Do you think there’s a risk that demand won’t meet the Uncrustables brand’s new capacity levels,
considering the group is putting a lot of investment into it?
Q: Smucker’s management talks about strategic flexibility. What potential assets could it acquire or divest
from that would make strategic sense and deliver synergies with the current business?
Q: Could you highlight any areas within Smucker’s portfolio that are particularly weak and don’t fit within
the wider business?
Q: Management said 1.5 million households became new consumers of its coffee brands through the
pandemic. Would you agree with management’s claim that these new consumers will stick as we exit the
pandemic and the out-of-home channels pick up?
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Q: Smucker recently created a COO role and announced its first appointment. What do you think will be the
operational impacts on the business?
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Q: Can you expand on the competitive landscape and the challenges Smucker faces?
Q: Is there anything else around Smucker and its management team that you think the investment
community should monitor?
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The JM Smucker Co – US Coffee & Consumer Retail
Divisions – Strategic Update & Outlook
Transcription begins at 00:04:44 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview entitled The JM Smucker Co – US Coffee & Consumer Retail
Divisions – Strategic Update & Outlook. I am Nyree Hinton and I will be facilitating today’s Interview with
Jennifer Freeman, former VP of Consumer Foods at The JM Smucker Company.
Jennifer, before we start today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement: You
understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such information,
or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
JF: Yes, I agree.
NH: Thank you, Jennifer. Could you start with an overview of your background?
JF: I spent 20 years in CPG and then in the last two years, I’ve been on the Almond Board of California.
Essentially, what I do is I’m charge of all our North American markets, in terms of the marketing to drive
consumption of almonds for the industry. Then I also am in charge of integrated marketing for the globe,
because we have 11 different regions across the country. In the past, in CPG, I worked at Kraft and then
Conagra Foods, and then Smucker from the summer of 2016 to the fall of 2018. I left there as the VP of
Marketing for their consumer foods division.
[00:06:31]
Q: Could you highlight 2-3 trends that were impacting The JM Smucker Co’s core categories across retail
coffee and packaged foods, pre-coronavirus?
JF: Before COVID, I think you guys know this, but from a coffee perspective, I don’t know a ton about the
coffee business, I know some just from being there and being in meetings, but coffee obviously is super
competitive. There are a lot of people getting into the coffee space that potentially weren’t even in it before, but
there’s a lot of growth in coffee as well. The biggest thing is the challenge for their business, like many others,
is how do they compete with away-from-home coffee, your Starbucks and Dunkins of the world, and how do
you get that share of stomach? From what I see and from what I remember, they have done a decent job. A lot
of their performance in coffee too is also, from a bottom-line perspective, and you’ll hear this on earnings calls
and stuff, is related to the price of the commodity and the procurement issues they have. Depending on the
coffee crop and the price, really drives a lot of their profitability. They’ve got a very good equity in product in
their partnership with Dunkin’ Donuts, and their K-cups and beyond, but it continues to grow for them and
has been very nice, it’s heralded by them and in the industry, if you will. It used to be, it’s not so new anymore,
but it really works well for them, their K-cup in general, but really it started with Dunkin’ Donuts. Then from a
consumer foods perspective, pre-COVID, that’s the portfolio that I managed, essentially, they’ve been doing a
decent job of, in my mind, cleaning up that portfolio.
Frankly, it was started a lot by me, because when I was there we sold the Pillsbury business. That’s the baking
and breakfast business that they had. It just didn’t fit into their portfolio and where they were headed. The
Pillsbury baking business that they had, so cake mix, frosting, brownies, was the third player, the number
three share in the category and it was super hard to compete and just wasn’t something that fit their portfolio,
going forward, so we sold that when I was there. Then pre, sort of during COVID, they also sold the Crisco
Private and confidential 3
baking or the Crisco oil business, which I think was smart, because that consumer foods portfolio, the oil
business, it just didn’t fit and didn’t make sense within that portfolio. Pre-COVID, I will also tell you that this
isn’t anything that if someone doesn’t spend 20 minutes reading about Smucker’s, but Uncrustables is an
amazing business for them. It has grown double digits for years and continues to grow for them, and that’s
really where I think the consumer food is focused. It’s obvious. It’s how do they win more than their fair share
of peanut better and jelly, whether it’s through Jif and Smucker’s, or through Uncrustables. Pre-COVID, those
brands, Uncrustables, again, has been on fire for a long time. Pre-COVID, the jelly category has been relatively
flat and many retailers are shrinking the shelf space in jelly. In peanut butter, the category has been okay, not
great, not lighting the world on fire. Maybe 3% top-line growth, but private label in pricing was the challenge
for them before COVID, in terms of Jif. That’s just a high level, what I can tell you, before COVID.
[00:11:26]
Q: How do you think coronavirus has impacted some of the trends you outlined? How permanent might some
of these changes be?
JF: I don’t have a crystal ball, we’re all trying to guess what’s going to stick after COVID. Obviously, the
grocery store, most consumer products have exploded. There are some exceptions that haven’t because of
COVID, but in general both their coffee, as we’re talking about today, their coffee and their consumer foods
business, has benefited very nicely because of COVID, because people aren’t going out for coffee. I know
they’ve gained a ton of new households with Folgers alone, because of COVID, which makes sense. They’re
bringing new people into the franchise. People aren’t willing to go out anymore, so they’ve benefited quite a bit
on the Folgers’ side, as well as in the K-cup side, for the same reason. They’ve been, I would say, maybe a little
bit lucky. Like many, they’re just getting the benefit of a significant change in consumer behaviour. Then the
same with the consumer foods division. I think it’s interesting, a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are
eaten in school, but some kids aren’t going to school, but still their peanut butter business and that peanut
butter category, and I know this because I work on almonds and so I look at almond butter performance all the
time, and those categories are just way up because people are eating at home. They definitely have the right
portfolio, at least in those two. I’m not quite sure about pet, and we’ve talked about that. There are some
strengths and some weaknesses within pet, but they’ve got huge tailwinds with pet, but, yes, I think they’ve
been in a great position with COVID. It’s just, like many CPG companies, what’s going to stick? Where are
consumers going to shift? I do know that they, like many other companies, have increased their e-commerce
sales during this time, which most people have.
[00:14:17]
Q: Smucker was able to take its first price increase for a number of years through its Jif peanut butter brand.
What do you think was behind this more aggressive stance?
JF: I think it was easy to take a price increase, frankly, at that time. Easy might be overstating it, but just
because of my experience in the world of almonds, and I work a lot with the big almond manufacturers and
brands, they couldn’t keep the shelves stocked in the beginning. When you have high demand and you don’t
need to do as many price promotions, and consumers will pay more, I think it’s easier and I think retailers, in
the past taking a price increase on Jif was really difficult, because of the pressure from Walmart and Costco
and whoever else. They don’t want you to take pricing. They don’t like it. These days, it’s easier to take price,
because just the pressure is a little bit off. Retailers are doing well. These brands are doing well. I get that there
are a lot of consumers that are still struggling and don’t have money, but it’s a lot easier to take a price increase
with retailers and internally, when the demand is whatever, quadruple that it used to be, so it’s easy.
In the past, I don’t know enough, generally it’s related to the peanut crop and the supply and the quality of the
peanut crop, and so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but generally that’s how you negotiate or
position pricing changes with your retailers, because it’s a commodity, because that’s mostly what it is. It’s
peanuts. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it just I’ve been out of it. I have heard, again, because I
Private and confidential 4
work on almonds all the time, that the peanut crop in the last year to year-and-a-half, and, again, I’m not sure,
just qualitative, the crop wasn’t as good, and I don’t know, that’s probably from a quality perspective, but I
don’t know if that’s why, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that they took a price increase. I don’t know if they
took a list price increase, or just pulled back their promotions, but either way in a world where retail sales in
the grocery store are up, whatever, 15%, Nielsen or IRI, it’s pretty darn easy. It’s a lot easier to take a price
increase.
[00:17:39]
Q: Jif was able to grow volumes and take market share, despite the price increase. Would you attribute that to
the brand being replenished on the shelf following supply issues, or do you think something else drove that
performance?
JF: I don’t know. Here’s what I will say. Prior to COVID, they had a new marketing campaign that was
heralded in the advertising world as really good and new and different and innovative. I have no idea if it was
driving volume and consumers to switch to Jif, but I do know that that happened. What I don’t know is, during
COVID, if they stopped advertising, because many brands did, because you can’t keep it on shelf, so why would
you advertise to drive demand when they can’t keep the supply? What I imagine part of it being is that, I don’t
know, usually it’s Jif vs private label, and then, obviously, Skippy too, but private label, at least in the past, I’ve
seen and private label has been a struggle in this category. If you pulled IRI or Nielsen, it’s not anything
confidential. You can see how private label is definitely taking share, so I’m hypothesising, I don’t know if it’s
exactly what you said, it’s just they were able to get their distribution back. I think they had some hiccups right
away during COVID, like many brands did, but I’m guessing that they just, because the company does have a
very good procurement and operations team, most of them are from P&G, which helps a ton, but I’m guessing
it was more of that than any big consumer preference change because of advertising or something. I just think
they’re good at blocking and tackling and they were probably on shelf and the retailers were probably, I see
more merchandise, I see more display of peanut butter than I ever have in the last year, as I shop at different
retailers. It’s just because everybody is eating more peanut butter, because they’re at home and the brand to
turn to when you’re doing displays and merchandising is Jif, so it doesn’t surprise me at all, yes.
[00:20:56]
Q: How would you describe the typical price elasticity for the peanut butter category?
JF: I can’t give you the confidential stuff, but what I can tell you is that, again, if you pulled IRI or Nielsen, the
scan data, and you just looked at it over time, and I said it earlier, private label is definitely more of an
influence in this category than in others. I’ve worked in a lot of categories over the years and this is one of the
categories where I’ve seen that consumers are fine switching, and especially, not every consumer, but it’s the
lighter users who’ll shift from one brand to the next and a lot of it’s because of price. They just can’t afford it.
They don’t have the money. I’ve seen a lot of interactions and you would see it too if you had access to that
sales data.
[00:22:23]
Q: Does it concern you that Smucker may have created a potentially unsustainable price gap between Jif and
private label?
JF: Yes.
NH: Why do you think management is confident it can sustain this gap?
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JF: I don’t know if I would be confident, based on, again, what is easily seen in sales data in the past. To me,
again, and many brands are struggling with this, or they’re trying to, they have all these new people who are
trying their brands for the first time, for whatever reason. It was the only thing on shelf or whatever. How do
you keep them in the franchise over time? I wouldn’t be confident, because I just don’t think that, whether it’s
Jif or a frozen pizza or whatever, that all of these consumers, all these new households that have come in, I just
don’t see them staying. Look at the economy. People don’t have the money, and this is my opinion, everything
you hear about the economy, there’s just not the money out there to spend USD 0.50 more on a jar of peanut
butter, when you have, I don’t know, making this up, USD 100 a week to spend on food. I wouldn’t be
confident. I just don’t know. It does taste different, but in the past there have been a lot of interactions. I don’t
know why the heck, I can’t see why consumers would stay, going forward. Again, my guess is it’s availability. I
don’t know. I’m sure there’s a handful of people who’ve tried it and they’re, “It does taste better,” because it
does. I just don’t see that long term. People just don’t have money.
I don’t know how all these people, but have their rent, there are all these workers who don’t have to pay their
rent right now and they don’t have to pay their utilities, how the hell are they going to pay them back? I just
feel like when the money dries up and they have to pay back their bills, they’re not going to spend that extra
money on things like this. That’s my opinion. The only thing I will say to you is, what I don’t know, is through
this, if they’ve built a stronger presence on e-commerce that might be helping them. I just don’t think it’s that
big enough piece of their business to help with that. What I can tell you too is if it is e-commerce that’s helping
them maintain this price gap, which I don’t know that it is, so I’m stumbling here because I’m not sure, but my
point is is that many CPG companies, and I know that they even said this in their investor day stuff about a
year ago, or sometime in 2020 when they did it, the challenge with e-commerce is profitability. There’s so
much potential on the top line for e-commerce. The challenge with many of these companies and brands is
how do you maintain the margin on e-comm? It’s just more expensive and I know they’ve struggled with this
in the past.
[00:26:39]
Q: Do you think Jif is well-placed to take market share, given you mentioned it has a strong e-commerce
presence?
JF: Here’s what I would say to you. I’m worried about this price gap that you talk about, because I don’t buy it
anymore. I don’t know, I don’t look, I just buy whatever I buy at Sam’s, a different brand at Sam’s, but my
point in saying this to you is, in the past this business hasn’t been a huge growth driver, so, going forward, I
don’t see how, again, some of those consumers, because they tried it and they know it tastes better, but I just
don’t see them having this huge share growth, because I think their innovation is lacklustre and most of the
innovation they’ve just launched, they’ve tried before. I don’t see there’s any big change in their messaging or
their product reason to believe that would suggest it. The big thing, and you talked about it, is price. I’ve seen
this brand do well, or not so well, and it’s all because of price. I guess my point is I just don’t see anything
today that would suggest that they are going to separate themselves from the pack. The one thing that I think
is interesting, and this is a little random, but it could help them, is Hormel who owns Skippy, and I’m sure you
know that, just bought Planters peanuts from Kraft. I don’t know how much marketing and just money in
general Hormel has, I could potentially see them taking money from some of their brands and shifting it to
peanuts, so that could help Jif. If Hormel takes their eye off the peanut butter ball and they’re all focused on
this bright new, sexy object of Planters, I can see that helping Jif a little bit, because Skippy is less of a priority
because Planters is the bright, new, shiny object and they have to deliver against their acquisition goal.
[00:29:34]
Q: You touched on Skippy. Could you highlight some of Jif’s strengths or weaknesses vs Skippy?
JF: I talked about it. There’s definitely a taste difference and I can say this because I know people, having
worked there, who anecdotally have said to me in the past that they can tell the difference and they prefer one
Private and confidential 6
or the other, so there’s definitely taste. I do also feel like, Jif spends more money in marketing, a decent
amount more, from what I can remember. A significant amount more, so I think that helps. The other thing I
will say to you is I feel like Smucker has, and I can say this too because I work with some of these Hormel
procurement people on almonds, because they have Justin’s, I feel like Smucker’s has a better procurement
group and commodity group too. I think, again, because they came from P&G and they’ve been working on
this business for years, they have the institutional knowledge. This isn’t necessarily what you asked me from a
brand consumer perspective, but from an internal perspective, I think that group manages the peanut crop
and the pricing at Smucker better than Hormel. Again, it’s just that institutional knowledge of working on Jif
for years, and how good P&G was at that kind of stuff, or is.
[00:31:38]
Q: How would you say Jif fends off competition from private label?
JF: Marketing. It’s two-fold. Any brand tries to drive loyalty and preference through marketing and a
significant amount of marketing. Then, you talked about it, again this is any brand, not just Jif, but managing
those price gaps is usually the key. I don’t know if you’re working on peanut butter or, I don’t know what, oil or
anything else, outside of their portfolio, it’s all about those two things. I would say to you if I had to tell you
that’s 90% of the equation.
[00:32:51]
Q: You mentioned the peanut butter category’s growth rate – how do you anticipate its longer-term growth
prospects?
JF: When we get back to normal, I don’t see the peanut butter category being this huge growth driver. It’s
consistent and it’s generally reliable. I don’t know, 3% growth rate if you’re lucky, YoY, but that category is
very much dependent, obviously, on kids eating peanut butter and jelly and having a school lunch. It’s the
number one sandwich eating. It’s America’s favourite sandwich, basically. It has more eatings than any other
sandwich. If anything, the biggest thing that impacts that category is the number of kids. I haven’t looked at
how many millennials have kids and what the projection is, going forward, but to me that’s one of the biggest
drivers of the category.
[00:34:02]
Q: How do the category’s long-term growth prospects correspond with consumer health and wellness
trends?
JF: What I would say to you is that mums in general feel like peanut butter is wholesome and it’s relatively
good for them. Some mums might say it’s healthy, but it’s a safe, wholesome food for their kids. The natural
piece of it is a nice business for them for those mums who care more about that kind of stuff. Then peanut
butter just in general, protein has been a big hot button for consumers, for energy and to fill them up, and
sustenance, for a long time, and so that’s what’s nice about peanut butter, is that it’s a nice protein source. A
lot of people just eat a spoonful of it out of the jar for a mid-morning snack and so the protein trends aren’t
going away, I can tell you that because of my current job. I think it’s a nice business and if you manage the
pricing and the peanut crop right, it’s good margin, but there’s no way it’s going to get the growth that
Uncrustables does, over time. I just don’t see a big increase in households or a change in consumer
behaviours.
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[00:36:20]
Q: How could innovation enable Jif to tap into other consumer occasions and become more on-trend?
JF: Good question. When I was there, and even before I got there, we tried to take this brand into snacking.
There were just bars and then some snacking products like peanut butter balls and stuff like that. It’s a natural
place to take this business, or it was, because mums love peanut butter so much and they feel good about it
and the bar space is growing. It didn’t do well. It was called Jif Power Ups and they discontinued it about a
year ago. I don’t know why exactly they discontinued it, but what I can tell you is that that bar space is really
hard to compete in. There are so many different products and when you’re trying to go up against the likes of
General Mills and Kellogg’s, and you don’t have a footprint or expertise in that category, it’s difficult. They’ve
tried that and that, to me, is the most obvious place to go. The only thing I can tell you is that I think if you
shift and look at Uncrustables, it’s peanut butter. It’s just not Jif branded and that’s where I think you’re not
going to brand it Jif, obviously now, but that whole, I don’t know, frozen appetisers and frozen hand-helds,
like Uncrustables, is a big category and a growing category. You can go look at Nestlé’s earnings call, Nestlé’s
reports and their quarterly earnings and stuff, and they are hot on that, as well as Jimmy Dean and Tyson, so
potentially there, but I just don’t see them using that brand.
You can see how they’ve expanded Uncrustables and we actually started that when I was there, taking it out of
the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it’s not under the Jif brand. I don’t know, good luck to them, where
do you take this brand? They’ve already tried it in snacking and so I’m sure they’re thinking about it, but I
don’t know. They’ve already tried that twice. When I was there, they had launched these Jif bars. They tasted
horrible. They weren’t doing well in the marketplace, so I said, “Let’s redo all of this,” and then we had some
really good help from the innovation team, who repositioned everything under this Power Ups line, and that
didn’t work either. I don’t know if they’re going to have the stomach to try that again any time soon, because
it’s just not their expertise. They’re not bar people. They don’t have bar manufacturing capabilities, so I don’t
know where they’re going to go. The one thing I will say is they just launched the Squeeze, the Jif Squeeze,
which was out I don’t know how many years ago, 10-15 years ago, they tried it. Skippy has tried it before. It
could be an area that could potentially work when we get back to normal, because of the portability of peanut
butter, because protein gives you energy and the portability of it, like Justin’s in those single-serve packs, what
I compare it to, but I don’t know. I think that’s a hard brand to extend, especially because we had such high
hopes for that snacking piece and it didn’t work.
[00:40:59]
Q: How would you say Smucker’s US retail business is positioned within the trend towards purchasing
healthier, unprocessed fresh foods and away from processed categories?
JF: In general, I don’t think they’re well-positioned. I don’t mean this to be a cop-out, but I don’t think they’re
horribly positioned. Here’s what I’d say to you. Fruit spread is very much viewed as just full of sugar and
processed, but for some reasons mums are fine with it when it’s on peanut butter and jelly. They don’t love it,
but they don’t hate it and Smucker’s hasn’t figured out a way to make mums feel better about eating jelly. I just
think it’s processed and not that good for you, but, again, once you put it on a sandwich it’s fine. Jif, I told you,
people are fine with peanut butter. I think it’s skews healthy, wholesome. Then Uncrustables is this weird,
weird outlier, where it’s processed. The ingredients aren’t bad and when I was there, we cleaned up the
ingredient line and the team did a nice job, but the ingredients aren’t bad. It appears processed and it’s weird
and some are like frozen PB and J that stacks out and un-thaws, but it tastes so good.
When I look at this portfolio, here’s what I would also say to you, suppose we have our three main brands now,
because they sold all the other stuff off. Then they have all these other brands that are super small that stand
for, and very much skew, healthy. They’ve got Santa Cruz. They’ve got RW Knudsen. They’ve got TruRoots, or
Adams Peanut Butter, very regional. They have Sahale Snacks, which nuts are viewed as healthy, but those are
all small and they haven’t made inroads in those brands in years. They’ve done a nice job with Sahale and
getting some distribution, but not a lot, and that product is just super expensive and it’s not high, heavy usage.
Anyway, my point is they have some of these really nice niche brands from a health and wellness perspective,
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but I don’t see them growing those and flipping this portfolio into a health and wellness organic, I just don’t
see them doing that. I don’t think they have the money and I don’t think these brands have the power to
become… Santa Cruz, it’s been a brand that’s around forever and they just haven’t really done anything with it.
[00:44:42]
Q: What percentage of Smucker’s revenue could you attribute to health and wellness products among its
smaller brands?
JF: You said revenue. It’s in their investor day report from 2020. It’s 9%. I’m staring at it right now, in case
you ask me numbers. In FY20, their net sales were USD 1.7bn and only 9% of it was for those products. It’s a
bigger piece of their portfolio now, because that number has the Crisco oils in its base and so, I don’t know, it’s
probably 2-3 or four points bigger, but they sold the oil business, so it’s not like that business is growing leaps
and bounds. It’s just the pie shrunk.
[00:45:52]
Q: You mentioned the Uncrustables brand has been performing well. How much of its strong growth do you
think is structural vs coming from coronavirus tailwinds?
JF: Uncrustables has been growing double digit forever. Not forever, but, I don’t know, when I was there it
was 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, and I left two years ago, a little over, and it continues to
grow. Here’s what I would say to you, Uncrustables has always grown. It’s been growing at least 10% top line,
every year, for a long time and it’s because consumers just love them and once you get consumers to try them,
and get them in their household, they’re just so good. Moms eat them, dads eat them, the kids eat them. I don’t
know this, because I’ve been away from it, but I know a lot of people who work in frozen and I think COVID
just accelerated that growth, because people were shopping in frozen more. There’s a lot more traffic. People
were stocking up, so I think that helped. The other thing that I don’t know, my guess is COVID probably
doubled their normal performance. That would be my guess. The other thing that I don’t know how much
contributed to, I talked about that, new products and getting Uncrustables out of peanut butter and jelly, and I
worked on this a lot when I was there and now they’re out, they have turkey and cheese, little wraps, and they
have these pizza-roll-like things, but that have barbecued beef in them and stuff. Anyway, they’re, basically,
portable sandwiches for kids’ lunch boxes, but they’re not PB and J. I don’t know how much those are
contributing to the growth, I’m sure they are, but I know, there’s no doubt in my mind, because their base
business, their base PB and J business, is a huge part of it.
[00:48:43]
Q: Do you think there’s a risk that demand won’t meet the Uncrustables brand’s new capacity levels,
considering the group is putting a lot of investment into it?
JF: They just built a new plant. I worked on this too and this is out in public domain. I’ve got to think. They
built the new plant, north of Denver, and maybe it opened up in 2017. Wait, let me think about this. Yes, 2017-
18. That was the second plant they had. What I don’t know, because we couldn’t keep up with the demand
before that and, again, they talk about it in their earnings calls and stuff, so I’m not saying anything. It
constantly was we couldn’t supply Uncrustables, so they built a new plant. I don’t know how that new plant is
coming up, but, again, it’s in their investor day stuff and in their earnings calls, they’re talking about adding a
new line this year. I don’t know, it’s crazy to me that that plant probably filled up already, but this is also
public information too, they are expanding that plant already and so I an tell you that the whole time when I
was there, the plan was, “We’ll most likely have to expand the plant anyway.” Again, they’re stating it, that
they’re doing it. I was always worried about, “Shit, how am I going to fill up this plant? It’s my job to drive
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demand,” and my guess is is that COVID just accelerated everything and they’re in a position where it just
happened a lot faster. It has huge upside potential, it still has a lot of health with penetration growth and kids
love them. There are still a lot of mums who don’t eat them. I can say that too, because I used to work on
Lunchables. I worked on Lunchables for four years and if I look at the size of the Lunchables business
compared to the size of Uncrustables business, there’s still a ton of room to grow.
[00:51:47]
Q: Smucker’s management talks about strategic flexibility. What potential assets could it acquire or divest
from that would make strategic sense and deliver synergies with the current business?
JF: This is just my opinion. They’re small, but I don’t know what the long-term growth opportunity is, I talked
to you about Santa Cruz and Sahale. Again, this is just my opinion. A lot of CPGs bought brands like these back
in the day and some of them have worked, some of them haven’t, but if it were me, I don’t know, I’d look at
those businesses, because how much are they worth? To me, they’re rounding and I just don’t know the
potential. If these were going to be bigger brands and large contributors, I feel like they would have done it,
they would have gotten there by now. I could say that about a lot of different businesses and a lot of different
portfolios. That’s my opinion in terms of cleaning up the house. It wouldn’t leave consumer foods with a lot. I
think they’ve done a nice job of cleaning it up, but I just don’t know like a TruRoots, it just doesn’t seem to fit
in their portfolio. I don’t know. This is just me, because I’ve worked in frozen for a long time, and because
Uncrustables is doing so well, I can’t think off the top of my head of what it would be, but they’re building the
capabilities in frozen through Uncrustables. I don’t know if there’s something out there that they could
potentially purchase. I’d be worried about acquisitions of anything frozen right now, because I think the
multiples would be too high, because frozen, my timing sucks because I used to work at Conagra and frozen
was so hard for so long, and now they can’t make enough frozen food, because of COVID, and COVID is not
funny, but anyway. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something in frozen that they could look at, but I think they’d
have to be careful about overpaying right now.
[00:54:37]
Q: Could you highlight any areas within Smucker’s portfolio that are particularly weak and don’t fit within the
wider business?
JF: I don’t think that TruRoots, it’s random, I don’t know what they’d do with it. Again, it’s so small, but why
spend any time, money on it? I don’t get it. It’s grains, it’s cooking, it just doesn’t fit. I don’t know where it fits.
I can see Sahale, because it’s nuts and Jif, and I can sort of see Santa Cruz, because it’s juice and fruit with
Smucker’s, but they’re just so small. I don’t know if it’s worth our time talking about, because if they did sell
them it wouldn’t have a material impact on their performance, but those are the ones that, if it were me, I’d be,
I would clean up house and get rid of them. It doesn’t make sense.
[00:56:00]
Q: Management said 1.5 million households became new consumers of its coffee brands through the
pandemic. Would you agree with management’s claim that these new consumers will stick as we exit the
pandemic and the out-of-home channels pick up?
JF: I think it has a better potential to stick than peanut butter or jelly, or PB and J. Here’s why, I talk about
this a lot in my current job, we’re trying to figure out people might continue to work from home, and this is all
over. You hear it commercial real estate. People like working from home and so that’s why I feel like a decent
amount of it could stick, because a lot of these white-collar workers and many of them, and I’m assuming even
younger, they love working from home, and so that’s where I think that coffee has the potential, because of
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that.
[00:57:35]
Q: Smucker recently created a COO role and announced its first appointment. What do you think will be the
operational impacts on the business?
JF: I can tell you I think that was brilliant and they needed it a long time ago. I think that Mark Smucker
needs to focus on the bigger-picture stuff and I think that will help. I also think that having someone, I think
his last, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name, is Brase, whatever, his background at P&G will help
them a ton, I think that they’re decent operators, but they’re not great marketers. I just think it’s awesome
that they’ve brought somebody in that can help drive the strategy. They didn’t have a strategy across these
three portfolios. When I was at Conagra, they always looked at, “We have so much money to invest in
marketing. Where do we invest it across all of our different business units?” At Smucker, they don’t look at it,
or they didn’t look at it that way. It’s just every year, it’s sort of the same. They were scared of zero-based
budgeting, because it was against their culture. Anyway, I think it’s great. I think that he will bring new
thinking and just smart, strategic portfolio management that they didn’t have.
[01:00:01]
Q: Can you expand on the competitive landscape and the challenges Smucker faces?
JF: I talked about it earlier, again, I’ve been removed from it for a while, but I think e-commerce is
interesting. I don’t know what’s up, but I feel like e-commerce is a place where there’s an opportunity to build
more muscle. I don’t know if they’ve gotten better since I’ve left, or a ton of their sales are shifting over there,
so I just think it’s something maybe they’ve figured out, but all CPG companies have to figure that out, because
of the consumer shift. The other thing that, I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see what they do. They’ve talked
recently about profitable growth and, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, they’ve talked a lot about streamlining
the organisation, cutting out costs. Every company talks about that. I think they did a really nice job when I
was there of doing it. I don’t know what’s left, but I think that’ll be interesting to see. The one thing I do think
they did smart is within the last year or so, their sales force, they split it up between pet and then coffee and
consumer. I think that’s really smart, because there was a sales guy or girl at Walmart that had to sell all these
different categories, and it was just too much and, “Where do I focus?” and all of us brand people calling them
saying, “You need to sell more of my stuff vs the other.” I just think that split, operationally, could help them in
the long run. I don’t know exactly when they did it, but I know that they did it and I think that that was a smart
move.
[01:02:59]
Q: Is there anything else around Smucker and its management team that you think the investment community
should monitor?
JF: This is my opinion, but I’m not sure about their sales leadership. It’s interesting who’s running sales right
now. I know that that individual isn’t viewed within that leadership team, not everybody likes him, which can
be a good thing or a bad thing, because you bring in new thinking. There are a lot of people who’ve been there
a long time, and I think it was about a year ago, I don’t know, but they hired a sales guy and then within six
months he had left and went to Kraft Heinz. Again, they’ve made this really smart move, I think, with the sales
force, but I’m not sure about the sales leadership. There’s been a lot of turnover in that area in the last two
years, so that’s a question mark for me.
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[01:04:23]
NH: I think that’s a great place to end our discussion. Let me close by saying thank you, Jennifer, for your
input and thank you, clients, for joining Third Bridge Forum’s Interview today. If anyone would like to speak
with Jennifer in a private call or meeting, please let your relationship manager know. Thanks again, Jennifer.
Transcription ends at 01:04:43 of the recorded material
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