This is Twin Cities CEO You Should Know, powered by iHeartMedia. What's another
episode of CEOs you Should Know? And I'm here with Joe Nan from Joe
Welcome and tell me a little bit about Snapta. Thanks Adam. You know,
Snapta is a fifty year old sustainability food company. We were founded in
Canada fifty years ago this year actually, and you might really describe us as
one of the ogs of the sustainability food movement. We produce plant based milks,
organic fruits and fruit snacks and really have been a pioneer and a leader
in developing out sustainability food products. Tell me a little bit about the sustainability.
What does that mean to you? You know, for me, that
sustainability. I think one of the things around sustainability that is often missed is
there's two major dimensions. One is how you run your company and the other
is what company does. And what's exciting about synopt is we're working both sides
of the ledger. Not only are we doing everything we possibly can in how
we run our operation to improve this overall sustainability and minimize the environmental footprint we
have in what we do, but most importantly about our company is the products
we produce are better for the environment. And that's the biggest distinction that we
have versus other companies is plant based milks are undeniably better for the environment in
water use, land use, greenhouse gas emissions, They're better for the environment.
Organic fruits and vegetables are better for the environment. They produce and use
significantly less pesticides and herbicides. And so we're proud of the fact that not
only are we making great strides and efforts in how we run our operation and
adding sustainability there, but the core of our sustainability credentials is rooted in the
fact that the products we make are better for the environment. I think we
feel good about that. But how about the end user? Are you into
the like the packaging sustainability as well? Absolutely, you know we a large
part. We are working right now to move all of the film that we
use so to take our organic frozen fruits. We're moving towards fully sustainable,
compostable, recyclable packaging. Tetrapac is we manufacture all of our plant based milks
in Tetrapac, which is highly recyclable, and they as a company are making
major investments in improving the overall recyclability of those products as well. Can you
tell tell me a little bit about the beverage part of that, because it
kind of freaks me out a little bit. I've been walking through the store
and I see that I was snooping on your website a little bit. The
aseptic milk packaging. Can you talk a little bit about that, sure,
So, Aseptic is a fancy word for basically just making sure that the product
is shelf stable and sterile. Manufacturing is just a process for making product shelf
stable and allowing them to not be refrigerated, which again is a great sustainability
benefit because if you have a product that has to be refrigerated, think of
the entire supply chain from trucking to warehousing, etc. And all the energy
that's being used in keeping that product cold for literally months on end. The
product we make our shelf stable and therefore have a much lower environmental impact because
we're able to produce them and sell them ambient temperature or shelf stable. And
how long can they be on the shelf. It varies by product, but
we're certainly confident in twelve months as a pretty top goal shelf life. They're
good past then, but you know, for conservatism, we say twelve months,
right, Yeah, So people in my family we look at dates very
closely, I guess, so that's good for them. Would you say that
the sustainability is probably the biggest initiative for you guys. You know, sustainability
really defines everything we do in terms of the products we make and how we're
making them. One of the things that we are focused on right now is
just a significant expansion of our manufacturing footprint for plant based milks. So we
spent all of twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty two literally doubling the manufacturing
capacity of our business. So we've gone from roughly a capacity of four hundred
million dollars of revenue in the end of twenty twenty too, now we have
the capacity to produce north of eight hundred million dollars worth of products. So
huge undertaking for US, major major capital investment, including a green field from
the ground up plant build out in mid Lothian, Texas, which is just
south of Dallas Fort Worth, and that facility was completed in record time and
something the organization is very very proud of. Wow, that's fantastic. That's
a lot of growth, no doubt about it. What would you say your
goals are for the next five years or so? You know, over the
next five years, we're dedicated to doubling the size of our business. That
equates to roughly fifteen percent annual revenue growth. And we you know, we
are fortunate to be in product categories where the consumers migrating. You've see in
a thirty year migration from milk from a cow to plant based milks. We
see that that trend continuing, not just in kind of fluid dairy products,
but also in other categories. You see it in ice cream, you see
it in yogurt, You certainly see it in creamers. And we're just excited
to bide the manufacturing capacity and capability to continue to give the consumer what they're
looking for. Are there other product categories that you're involved in as well.
Yeah, we manufactured the oat milk that goes into many of the oat milk
ice creams that you see on the shelf. Some of our product is being
used for oat milk yogurts. And we're also excited about a small but I
think great proof point project for us, which is we just entered into an
initiative to sell the byproduct from our oat milk production to a company called seven
Sundays, which is producing a breakfast cereal with it, and we had a
press release on that a couple of weeks ago. Again, certainly an exciting
up cycled project that allows us to basically use every part of the supply chain.
I'm jumping around here a little bit because I hear or see something shiny
and I moved to it. But we talked about five your five year plan
a little bit, Well, how about longer than that? You know,
longer term, we see ourselves moving from you know, a billion to roughly
two billion in revenue. Again, super the fortunate to be operating in product
categories that have high growth. We're in healthy snacking category. We see huge
growth in our recent entry into the ready to drink protein shake category, and
then core plant based milks. We think have you know, at least a
decade, if not a lifetime's worth of growth ahead of them. We're talking
to Joe n N, CEO of Senapta. Tell tell me a little bit
about you. How did you arrive in this industry? What's your background?
You know, my background I've been in the food business for thirty five years.
I've worked for many of the leading packaged goods companies Kelloggs, General Mills,
Knagra, PepsiCo. Spent seven years on the retailer side of things working
for safe Way, and then I was CEO of a private equity food company
prior to joining Synapta. So my career really came up through traditional brand management
and innovation roles and eventually led into general management, but always been in and
around health and wellness adam, either running health and wellness businesses like Healthy Choice
and the Kellogg Serial portfolio, or helping transform and build businesses through innovations.
So you know, when I was at safe Way, we more than double
the revenue of our private label health and wellness products in seven years. So
that's always been a passion of mine and something that I've been very very focused
on. What is your vision for maybe the next year we'll back up.
We're again jumping all over the place, but I mean, just in the
near term, what do you what does twenty twenty four look like for Synapta
growth in a word, you know, we're continuing to focus on developing new
customers and growing our business with existing customers through our core product offerings. I
mean, we again feel great that the categories we're participating in our on trend
and growing, and we're excited that we have capacity to be able to work
with our customers to grow our business. You know, many many of our
products that we manufacture wouldn't be branded Synopta branded. We're a bit of the
brand behind the brand, if you will, meaning we're the manufacturer of the
majority of the brands that you would see on the shelf in terms of shelf
stable plant based milks, and we dominate the coffee shop category with probably the
vast majority of the products being behind the barista being produced by us. You
may have kind of answered this already, but I'll ask it anyway. What
is what is synoptas mission? You know, our mission is to improve the
overall sustainability of the food chain. You know, food and food production is
a huge part of the global economy, and while we're not a giant company,
we absolutely believe that every little bit helps. You know, people talk
about those small steps add up, whether that's in our individual helping onless journeys,
but the same absolutely applies to sustainability. I think sometimes people are walking
around looking for a silver bullet, and the fact of the matter is it's
going to take billions of people making small steps to make massive progress. You
guys are based here in the Twin Cities in Eaton Prairie, right we are.
We are based in Eaton Prairie. Any successful company usually needs people to
help with the mission. How many people work for you in Minnesota? We've
got about one hundred and sixty people at our headquarters, and then we have
two manufacturing plants up in Alexandria, Minnesota with several hundred employees there as well.
What makes an Opta such a great place to work? Why do that
many people want to work there? You know, I think it's a couple
of things. Number one is we have a very simple model, which our
employees have kind of played back to us, which is at an OPTA,
I make a difference and collectively we make a difference. And what that means
individually day to day is we have a very empowered culture where we really believe
and we try to run the company where anyone at any level can make a
difference and make an impact and champion change and make change happen. And that
collectively what we're working on as a company in terms of sustainability, food and
beverage products. Collectively, that makes a difference in the communities in the world
we live in. I would also point to we have built a very dynamic
culture focused on what we call our mvbs or most valued behaviors. They are
alive and well and incredibly modeled by our amazing team members every day. And
those are speed, entrepreneurship, customer centricity, passion, dedication, and problem
solving. One of the exciting things about our company is we have a website
in a way for employees to recognize each other for modeling and those behaviors.
And last year alone, over fifty percent of the company recognized one of their
peers for demonstrating one of those most valued behaviors. And you know, there's
no financial compensation that comes with that. It's just people want to recognize and
acknowledge the great teammates that they're surrounded by. What's one piece of advice that
you or is maybe something you observed as an example from somebody else that you've
carried into your career. In terms of a great piece of advice that I
received early in my career that has really defined how I run businesses and companies
is if you want to do something meaningful and impactful, you have to get
outside your comfort zone and take risks. And I think so much a business
is focused on risk management, meaning minimizing risk and not taking risk. But
what that fails to recognize is all great accomplishments, all big achievements, come
from putting yourself out there a bit and taking some big risks. And while
nobody wants to take reckless risks, I certainly have throughout my career and the
businesses I've run, in the teams I've built, risk taking is absolutely of
paramount importance if you want to have disproportionately better results, If you want the
same results as everybody you're competing with, you don't necessarily have to take many
risks. But if you want to be in the top tier, if you
want significantly better results than everyone else around you, you're going to have to
take some risks. Can give me an example of why it could be just
a little one. I mean, there's probably different sizes all the time.
Sure you know, over the last twenty four months I mentioned we doubled the
size of our manufacturing base. The level of investment there of two hundred million
was actually more than our profit during that window. So you know, we
absolutely believed in the potential of the categories that we're competing, in the quality
of our team, and you know, we made that investment to try to
get ahead of the curve and make sure that we have capacity available for our
customers to grow. Yeah. Once you expand that, there's no going back,
right, the facilities are bigger and all of that. So tell me
something that people the people are surprised at of Sonapta. One of the things
that people are surprised about Synapta is just how many different household brands were involved
in and partnered with. You know, from the world's leading coffee chain who
uses d it's a millions of dollars worth of our products every year to many
many of the brands you see on the shelf. They're surprised by the depth
and breath of our product offering. Yeah, I think my daughter will be
impressed by that because she's at that that particular coffee place all the time.
So that's awesome. What would you like people to know more? You know,
I'd love people to know while we are in a high growth mode.
You know, we need great people and we're a place that people can come
and regardless of you know, kind of age or background or you know,
it's a culture where people can come in and really make an impact. And
you know, we had a story of one of our research and development leaders
who said, I used to work at another large company and you know,
I would go into work and I'm not sure if I left for a month,
anybody'd missed me. And she said, that's an opt If I'm ten
minutes late for a meeting, people are blowing up my phone saying where are
you? We need you? And you know, we try to create a
culture where everybody feels valued and everybody feels like they're contributing to the team.
And at the end of the day, isn't that what everybody wants? You
know, you want to feel like you're part of something, that you're valued,
and that you're contributing. How do you do that? You have specific
things that make people feel included or is it does it just happen or you
just great people? How does that happen? You know, part of it
is candidly out of necessity. We're not a huge company, you know,
we don't have departments of fifty or one hundred people. I mean we have
small departments. You know, some departments are three or four people. Our
biggest department might be twenty five people. So you know, everybody needs to
be on an oar rowing the vote, and you know, we just were
not big enough where we can have people not contributing and candidly, you know,
almost every single person we hire is excited about making an impact and feeling
valued. While speaking of impact, what is Synapta do out in the community
as far as sort of charitable actions. You know, Synapta is very involved
in the local community, both within our plant environments as well as our headquarters.
There's several different areas where we're focused on. One is hunger as a
food company, not a surprising passion point for many of the people in the
company, is specifically childhood hunger, and we have great volunteer teams that go
out and donate product, build meals for underprivileged kids, as well as environment
environmental and sustainability and efforts. So whether it's everyone in the company picking up
trash around the local communities or going out and doing volunteer work focused on environmental
things, like planting trees in the local community. We try to live the
values of our products, which are sustainability and health and wellness. Anything else
you want able to know about Synapta, you know, whether it's part of
your mission in the community, whatever, you know. We have built a
really amazing headquarters. We built it during COVID, so we have the opportunity
to imagine what a post COVID work environment might need to look like. And
we built it for collaboration, We built it for innovation, and we built
it for sustainability, and it is sixty five thousand square feet of space focused
on building community within our team as well as driving a big innovation agenda.
One of the things that we've recently done is we are wrapping up the installation
of thirty six thousand square feet of solar on the roof of our building,
which will power two thirds of our annual energy needs. Then in the summer
months like June and July here more than ninety percent of our energy needs will
be self produced, so, you know, really demonstrating that commitment to sustainability.
But through and through everything we built was focused on sustainability. Thirteen thousand
feet of renewable bamboo flooring, nine hundred led lights, six hundred and thirty
plants throughout the building. Just really focused on living and bringing our sustainability credentials
to life. Do you have a plant watering department that seems like a lot
of plants, you know, some of them are outside and they get naturally
watered, But on the indoor, we have one of those living walls,
and we have a partner that comes in and make sure everything's looking great and
looking green, just like most offices. Well, Joe Enna and CEO of
Snapta, thanks for being here. Um, you made the pitch kind of
for recruitment. So I know you have a career's page on your website,
which is what www dot snapta dot com. You guys have social media accounts
as well. We do. You know, we've got a very active LinkedIn
that's a great place to follow what's going on in the company. I think
we have we're fifteen thousand followers, and we really use that as a central
communication vehicle for us to talk about great new people joining the team, initiatives,
milestones, accomplishments, and if you're ever looking for a little bit of
inspiration around sustainability or what a fun working environment looks like. I'd encourage you
to follow along. Nice. Thanks so much Joe again at sunapta dot com
and thanks for being here. Thank you Twin Cities CEO. You should know.
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