Degrees of Separation

By Richard Turcsik

Higher education is increasingly important to effectiveness—and career success—in food marketing and retailing.

Real World 101 is still being taught on selling floors across the country. But for a retailing executive to make his or her mark in today’s rapidly changing business world, that course needs to be supplemented with a university degree and continuing education.

Colleges and universities have tailored and updated their food management and marketing programs to keep pace. Courses no longer span a semester, but are concentrated into a single weekend. Enrollment has been expanded from retailers and wholesalers to include manufacturers, suppliers, food brokers and people from the restaurant and foodservice industries, creating an unparalleled real world environment and networking pool.

“We’re not looking to make our students better educated food marketers, we’re looking to make them better food marketers,” says Dr. Richard George, professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “It’s not just about dispensing a bunch of facts, but about being able to manage $50 million-a-year stores and $1 billion operations.”

St. Joe’s has always had a “nice mix” of retailers and manufacturers, George says, but recently the program has gotten more participants from the foodservice sector, and even from government. “The net effect is that everybody who is selling food is in the program,” he says. That aids in both vertical education, in which students learn from the professor, and horizontal education, in which they learn from each other. “There is interaction, and the supermarkets can learn from the Campbell Soups and Pepsis of the world,” George says. “I think that is the real beauty of our program.”

Likewise, manufacturers can pick up a thing or two from the supermarkets.

That’s what happened to Glenn Llopis. Today the president of Glenn Llopis & Associates, a consulting firm in Irvine, California and Senior Managing Director at Luna Rossa Corp., a gourmet specialty foods company based in Anaheim, Calif., Llopis attended the Food Management Program at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles in the mid-90s.

“I understand today how to develop and construct a private label business with a retailer as if I worked for the retailer, because I understand how to approach, position, construct, and design a program that is going to generate incremental margins, simply because now I understand how a retailer truly operates,” he says.

That’s what makes USC’s program so valuable, he says. “It wasn’t a program about how to market or package your product, or how to warehouse, develop or create ideation, but more about this is what the retail environment is like,” Llopis says.

PROFESSIONALIZING RETAILERS
“The retail grocery industry is made up with people who started from merchandising and bagging groceries and then went up the ranks,” Llopis says. “Part of what these educational programs are trying to do is to professionalize retailers. We got into things like inventory management, logistics and distribution. As a manufacturer, that taught me to understand the retailer, what was the essence and benchmarks they used for how they selected merchandise and marketed product. Just because you were doing business at Ralphs didn’t necessarily mean that you were going to do it at Albertsons, because they had a different operating philosophy.”

USC’s current catalogue includes an Entrepreneur Program designed for those who want to start or own a high-growth business, join an emerging business or participate in an entrepreneurial venture in a mature corporation. The 16-credit program offers an international exchange facet, allowing students the opportunity to participate in a one-semester exchange with an institution in Asia or Europe.

Other universities are also broadening their international outreach. Last year the Cornell University Food Management Program did a customized, week-long program for a retailer in the Baltic. “We went and worked with one of the market leaders in the three Baltic countries, and gave them a supermarket/hypermarket week-long workshop,” says Edward McLaughlin, Robert G. Tobin professor of marketing and director of the Food Industry Management Program at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y.

Cornell has been increasing its offerings of tailored, customized company programs.

The university also offers open enrollment programs, such as the Cornell Food Executive Program. It runs for 12 days during the summer, attracting a mix of about two-thirds retailers and wholesalers and one-third suppliers. Most of the participants are American, but each year sees a few international participants.

REGULAR PARTICIPANTS
“Most of the major supermarket companies in the United States have attended, and we see a lot of the A-brand suppliers, like Nestle, Campbell’s, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble,” McLaughlin says. “There are certain wholesalers and retailers who invest very intensely in management development, and with them we’ve seen regular participation for over 20 years. But there are other companies that we don’t see that often. That may be because they have cut the money they spend on executive education or because they believe in doing it internally.”

To increase support within the industry, Cornell has teamed up with the National Grocers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores to run programs on its campus, and its summer Food Executive Program is co-sponsored by the Food Marketing Institute. “We’re working on developing two new programs for two additional food-related trade associations,” McLaughlin says.

“One of the new areas in which we’ve moved strongly in the last couple of years is leadership,” he says. “There’s a real feeling that anybody can teach accounting and finance, but you don’t fail to get promoted in business because your accounting and finance skills aren’t sharp. You fail to get promoted because you can’t coach, can’t motivate, can’t mentor and can’t lead. We’re doing much more leadership instruction, and it’s been very well-received.”

St. Joseph’s food marketing program has been running for over 40 years, and for close to 20 it has offered a graduate program. “We are the only graduate food marketing program that’s offered through a business school in the world,” says Christine Hartman, director of the university’s Executive Masters in Food Marketing Program.

The format of St. Joe’s program is unique, according to Hartman. “Our mission is to develop leaders in the food industry on all levels—undergrad, grad and continuing ed—and this is designed for the time-pressed professional. It is built around people who have serious work obligations, family and other obligations, and who actually want to have a life,” she says.

To earn a master of science degree, students take 27 courses, which are offered over weekends. “Students can do it as fast or as slow as they want,” Hartman says. “They can take a class anytime any weekend, and earn their degree in two or up to six years.” In total, the university offers around 60 courses, and at least one is offered every weekend from September through June, except for holidays.

“With a weekend program you can concentrate,” says George. “Most of our classes are taught by a combination of a faculty member and someone from the industry, so it’s a nice blend. I couldn’t get an industry guy to come every Wednesday night, but I could get him for a Friday/Saturday.”

St Joseph’s is emphasizing its MBA program and a post-masters certificate. “This is for someone who already has a masters degree, but is moving into the food industry and wants to get ramped up about food very quickly,” Hartman says.

Two classes were held in Ireland in April in conjunction with the University of Ulster, and this month a two-day supermarket tour will visit 30 outlets in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Instead of offering executive-level training, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo is targeting undergraduate students interested in careers in the supermarket and foodservice industries. “This is not necessarily a major that most students think of top of mind,” says Dr. Frank Gambino, professor of marketing and director of the Food CPG Marketing Program. “When they go to college there is sometimes a stigma associated with ‘Gee, I’m going to school for four years and I’m going to be a stock clerk.’”

PRACTICAL STUDIES
WMI dispels that notion with an exciting program where students learn practical things like category management. “Our category management class utilizes industry software from IRI, Nielsen and Spectra Marketing,” Gambino says.
“Our students go through a full-blown semester of category management training where they’re working with regional retailers, like Jewel-Osco in Chicago, Meijer and the Kroger Co.”

Students do live category management projects for those chains. Each student is assigned a category and a retailer. “We have access to all of their live data, so we’re able to download their sales data,” Gambino says. “Then the students make actual presentations to the retailer.”

In late March WMI hosted its 41st Annual Food Marketing Conference. Held in conjunction with FMI and the Network of Executive Women, it attracted retailers from throughout the Midwest, along with brokers, manufacturers, consultants and representatives of ACNielsen and Information Resources, Inc. Speakers included executives from Kroger, Sara Lee Foodservice, PepsiCo, Trax Retail Solutions, the Center for Workforce Excellence and Machado Garcia-Serra Communications.

“The unique part of our conference is not only do we have the industry members in attendance, but we also have our food marketing students attend,” Gambino says. “It gives them a great opportunity to rub elbows with these industry executives. We utilize our students as hosts and they work the registration desk, introduce speakers, pick them up at the airport and take them around.”

TEACHING CPG SALES
A new program at WMI is the CPG Sales Course. “Because so many of our students end up working for a broker or manufacturer, we felt it was necessary that they have the skill sets they might need when they go out to work for some of those companies,” Gambino says.

While degree programs from major universities offer the greatest breadth, even local colleges can teach retailers a thing or two.

Tim Metcalfe, co-owner of Metcalfe Sentry Foods in Madison, Wis. recently joined the Family Business Center at the University of Wisconsin in town. “It’s open to other industries besides supermarkets, but for us it is really kind of a neat deal because we meet so many people,” he says. Metcalfe was surprised when he attended a class on estate planning to learn how much rules and laws change in just a few months. “What is interesting is: As much as you think you know something, you don’t,” he says. “It is always, always changing.”

Subjects offered include “How Boards and Owners of Family Businesses Can Work Together Efficiently and Productively,” “Family Dynamics and Family Governance,” “Family Business Essentials” and “How to Keep the Business in the Family and Protect the Senior Generation’s Financial Security.”

Metcalfe’s still not sure his 18- and 21-year-old children want to someday follow in his footsteps and inherit the family business, but he’s planning to take them with him to the seminars, at least for the life lessons they offer.

“I am so happy we found this [program] just to keep on educating ourselves,” Metcalfe says. “I think all family businesses have to find stuff like this. If it’s not a share group, just continue your education.”

That’s the key to how to succeed in business.