General Mills

As a consumer, it's not always obvious because there's...

It's kind of like the cereal aisle where, you know, it seems like there's a lot of choice, um, but actually it's, like, Kellogggs and General Mills.

It's a similar dynamic in, in the hearing aid industry where there's five big companies, and they make 97% of the products.

So it's like, it's, it's honestly, it's a particularly bitter pill to see-

On today's edition of Tech Talks, my guest is Sanchit.

He is a VP at General Mills.

And to talk about today's interview, but also something that we think we should be talking about a little bit more than we have been recently, I'm joined by Sam.

How are you? I am good.

Yeah, it's early afternoon then.

Okay, well, look, thank you for giving up some time today.

You work at General Mills.

Let's help set some context.

And Alex is especially focused on consumer behavior.

He came out of General Mills, where he was a marketing business analyst.

And you can hear that consumer insets mindset throughout our conversation.

Something I particularly enjoyed was hearing about Alex's aha moment where he was talking with a consumer in the grocery aisle and how that one interaction changed the entire direction of Bizzy's product offerings.

Alex, welcome to the Business of Drinks.

Hi, thanks for having me.

So tell me about your background before Busy and how you went from working at General Mills to building a cold brew company.

Well, the background before Busy starts a very long time ago.

payments would come in the form of incentives from private industry, largely for carbon credits, which is still something that these companies want to have.

And so some of the players in ESMC include General Mills and others.

And so there's a lot of interest in kind of that regenerative ag focus.

Clorinda pulls water from the Nottoway River into settling ponds to reduce sediment so they can process it easier in their drinking water plant.

We also have a lot of managers, directors, procurement leaders, founders, and really across a lot of big companies.

Target, Clorox, General Mills, P&G, McCormick, Post, Kings Hawaiian, Atlas Copco.

So, I mean, I think it's amazing at the breadth of our reach.

It

There are not that many companies in this industry.

You've got ones like General Mills.

You've got Campbell's.

You've got a few other big competitors.

Don't worry.

We'll just dig into some of our deep pockets here, keep giving you dividends." And at the same time, you ask yourself, "How long can it do that?" Another message here is that if you go across these companies, you're going to see a similar pattern.

General Mills.

That was the one today, General Mills.

My guest today is Michael Stick, partner at Court Avenue.

Michael has spent more than 25 years helping some of the world's biggest brands navigate innovation, digital transformation, customer experience, ai commerce and just about every major shift marketing has faced over the last two decades today at court avenue he works with organizations including kia epson general mills dell and the u.s air force to solve complex business and marketing challenges Now, before that, he held leadership roles at WPP, VML, Rockfish, Bridge Worldwide, Texas Instruments, McKinsey, and Dell, giving him a front row seat to the evolution of modern marketing.

And along the way, he's advised Fortune 50 companies, invested in startups, helped launch groundbreaking products, and built businesses that have transformed how brands connect with customers.

He's also been recognized as a Cincinnati marketing legend, by the AMA and has earned multiple industry honors for his leadership.

Mm-hmm.

And I'd say those that are really living it are those that are specialists in a job to be done and those that are deep on AI capabilities and putting those things together in a way that evolves individual tasks inside of the enterprise, but then also leads to some good process reengineering.

And so I'm seeing those that succeed and I'm seeing good things from companies like Pepsi, Tyson, General Mills, Kia, Elanco.

It's those that are allowing for those specialists around jobs to be done to help with or inform the decision making around the actual application of AI.

And so I wouldn't worry too much about, you know, if you really are just ge- like, generally interested in alternative protein or food innovation and you don't have a specific area that you're already specialized in, don't be afraid to work in something that's not, you know, your dream job.

Like a rotational program at General Mills, for example.

Not very sexy, not very exciting, but if, you know, if you're trying to break into the industry and you have some transferable skills, doing that will make you a, a lot more of a compelling candidate later on.

And so who is hiring now? I mean, it, it might change in two years from now, but I wouldn't be too focused on that.