Cathy Ackerman: Welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy, a podcast featuring business and community leaders throughout Tennessee talking about issues and trends of importance to our state and beyond, and sharing some of their very best sweet tea recipes and maybe some tea-sipping stories. I’m Cathy Ackermann and we’re so pleased to welcome Al Williams, CEO of Bush Brothers and Company to our podcast today. So welcome, Al.
Al Williams: Thanks for having me.
Cathy Ackerman: We’re going to start by asking you a little bit about sweet tea. I understand that you’re a native-born Southerner, so you must have had a fair amount of experience to sweet tea thus far in your life. And what’s the best tea you’ve ever had? Where did you have it? A grandmother maybe or a favorite diner somewhere?
Al Williams: Well, it definitely started out with my grandmother. She would always make sweet tea; she had a large garden and we worked there quite a bit, but that’s where it started with. But now there’s no question my favorite sweet tea is Milo’s Sweet Tea. I’m actually on the board of directors for Milo’s.
Cathy Ackerman: Well there you go.
Al Williams: A great family-owned company down in Birmingham, Alabama. And so they started 1946 and Milo’s actually started it and then his son Ron took over and turned it into—they used to do hamburgers and restaurants—and he decided to focus in on tea. And Tricia, their CEO, is a friend of mine now and so they’re a great family and the best tea as far as I’m concerned.
Cathy Ackerman: So you drink their tea and they eat your beans I bet.
Al Williams: That’s right. You got it.
Cathy Ackerman: Thanks, Al. Now we want to turn to the more substantive and interesting topic of Bush Brothers, a truly iconic and well-known brand that is headquartered right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I think Knoxville is very proud of this company. But let’s start with a brief history of your personal journey within the company. From what I understand, you’ve almost "grown up" if you will within this family-oriented business. So trace us a little bit through how you came to be here, the various positions you’ve held that have led you now to become CEO a couple of years ago.
Al Williams: Yeah, well you know I grew up in East Tennessee, grew up in Cleveland in Bradley County. I went to UT and got a kind of an unconventional undergraduate degree in Asian Studies and Economics.
Cathy Ackerman: Wow! That’s an interesting combination.
Al Williams: Right. And so then I went to Ole Miss to get a PhD in Economics and while I was there I met Leanne, my wife, and she decided I should seek gainful employment outside of academia and being a student. So when I got my Master's I went to the placement office and interviewed and got a job with Sara Lee which they had a meat group division in West Point, Mississippi. We got married the next year and I worked for Bryan Foods for about seven years and then I had an opportunity to come back home so to speak, so I had an opportunity to come back to Bush. So I came back to Bush in 1997. Yeah, so you know I started out in an accounting role at Bush and then I moved over into procurement, so I was buying beans and cans and those sort of things. Then I became director of procurement and logistics, so trucks and trains and customer service and production planning, did those kind of things. Had a great mentor in a guy named Tom Rogatski and Tom Ferriter, who was the CEO before me, he was my boss when I was in supply chain, so had a great couple of role models there. Then Jim Ethier, who was our president CEO at the time, asked me to become the vice president of Human Resources. So I moved to Human Resources and did that for several years and our CFO had left and so we had decided to do a—as I jokingly tell people—we did a global search for CFO and I hired myself to be the CFO. But was CFO for several years and then Tom Ferriter decided he was going to retire, so about three years ago I guess we started in a transition of I became Chief Operating Officer, then President, now CEO.
Cathy Ackerman: So Al, would you be a proponent of rolling up your sleeves and tackling multiple areas within an organization as a good foundation for ultimately becoming a CEO? What was the single most important thing you learned along the way that might apply to most business leaders listening to this? Because it sounds like you were able to touch almost every area of the business before you moved into that top spot.
Al Williams: Yeah, I definitely—for me it was perfect. And even being the CFO and not being an accountant, you learn that you have to depend on other people and how important people are. And so when you’re not the technical expert, it teaches you some leadership skills I think. And so as I moved to various roles, you know I was able to understand the roles and pick up on them, but I was really leaned in on the people there and so it really helps build relationships. They, you know I think the people appreciate the ability to teach you and you know they appreciate you trying to support them and do the things that they need to do. So yeah for me it was—I’m kind of a Jack of all trades, master of none anyway, so it worked out great for me.
Cathy Ackerman: And teaches you good delegation skills as well when you realize that you don’t have to know every detail of everything that goes on, you have to develop people who do and trust them and give them the support that they need.
Al Williams: Right. No, that’s definitely the case. And we’ve got a fabulous group of employees at Bush, so we’re very blessed.
Cathy Ackerman: So pivoting now to the company itself, which I understand is more than 110 years old and started in a rural part of East Tennessee canning tomatoes and then hominy and then sauerkraut before beans became the main focus. So take us if you would through that sort of fascinating corporate history that led to where you are today that’s also a family history in many ways.
Al Williams: Oh yeah, so it started in 1908. Actually, I believe it was 1907 there was a little bit of a joint venture with the Stokely family to start canning and then right after that I believe A.J. bought the canning plant or at least the equipment—he already had the plant—bought the equipment and started out doing primarily tomatoes. And then the company started to grow, but you know once you know we’ve had some really big changes in the company’s history. If you think about with rural electrification and creating—building the TVA system—they flooded a lot of the farmland. And so tomatoes that were grown in the valley were now—the valley was underwater, so we had to start doing other things. So then you have to have crops that you can haul in. And at that time, tomatoes were—you couldn't haul tomatoes very far, so it wasn't going to be a lucrative business for us. So the family started to diversify at that point and get into other vegetables that they can. We bought plants—small plants—throughout the Southeast, eventually bought a plant up in Augusta, Wisconsin. And that plant is where Condon went, Condon Bush who was our chairman and CEO when I started back in the 90s. And that’s where he, as we say, invented the baked bean. He, you know, he had the family recipe. So as the joke goes, he and a couple of his coworkers—I think maybe one of my mentors Tom Rogatski was with him—and they were making it. They had a bathtub and a boat paddle and they were trying to stir up and create the secret sauce and you know try to cook it and see what it would turn out to be. And so then I believe it was 1969 they started to commercialize the first baked bean. And the rest is history. Baked beans started really doing good and it was a necessity I believe. Jim’s father at the time was the CEO of the company and that plant wasn't doing very well and he was like, "Hey we’re going to have to close this plant because we don’t have enough work for them." And so the motherhood of necessity—is the motherhood of invention I guess—so he made it and he said the rest is history. So then as you go into the 90s and Condon and Jim then took over, Jim became President of the company, Condon CEO as Jim’s father passed away. And then Jim really brought a—Condon had that very entrepreneurial spirit to him, Jim is a just a brilliant leader and manager, so you think of kind of a Peter Drucker-esque type of person. And so he brought a lot of the marketing expertise and you know I think some of the cultural foundations that we have in our company. So he introduced that throughout the 90s and the brand just took off, really invested a lot of money in the brand. And of course you’ve seen the commercials Jay and Duke, and so we just carry that tradition forward.
Cathy Ackerman: And you know now the brand is almost exclusively on beans. And during some times in the retail product world when diversifying the product line of a food company seemed like the thing to do, Bush Brothers I think chose to go in a different direction and really focus on what you want to do best and what you want to be known for. But has that focus always served you well?
Al Williams: You know, I think so. We went through a period, probably the earlier part of this decade, we were looking at a lot of other things, maybe things outside the can and other options. And I remember telling the board a story—this is why you study Asian studies I guess—but there's a Buddhist story that this young Buddhist was trying to get back home and you know he walks and gets to the river. And he walks up and down the river and he’s like, he’s going to give up his journey and he was like, "Hey I don’t know how to—" and he looks over and he sees this Zen master on the other side. And he says, "Hey how do I get to the other side of the river?" And he said, "My son, you’re already on the other side of the river." And so you tell that story just to—we were already where we needed to be. We were in beans which are incredibly sustainable, we’re in cans which are unbelievably sustainable. They’re highly recyclable, you know they're the most—cans are the most safest food container in the world, there’s no food waste associated with it. I mean I can go on and on about the virtues of beans and cans and why we should be there. So for me, we were already on the other side of the river. We were where we needed to be already. And so I think that focus—it has served us well. We use—if you go back to Jim Collins and think of Good to Great—you know he talks about a hedgehog.
Cathy Ackerman: Yes.
Al Williams: What can you be the best in the world at? You know what drives your economic engine? What finances your—or what—you know, we talk about what drives our economic engine and what can we be the best of the world at and what we’re truly passionate about. And that’s beans and cans drive our economic engine and our brand we think we can be the best in the world at, so.
Cathy Ackerman: So how did the current COVID pandemic actually contribute to an uptick in your business?
Al Williams: Well you know there is the shelf-stable nature of the can. And then we’re—the majority of our business is retail, primarily you know when you think of the large grocery stores—the in our area for example—the Walmarts, the Krogers, the Food Citys, the Publixs, you know. We sell most of our products in retail, so people were going to be eating at home and you know beans go well with hamburgers and hot dogs. If you want to make tacos, black beans, soup, you know you can—they’re so versatile. And so they’re a nice source of vegetable protein, you know. And so I think it just people were going to the store, they knew a brand that they could trust, they had a product they could trust. So yeah we’ve benefitted quite a bit from people coming back to the store.
Cathy Ackerman: So talk a little bit about your canning process and how canned food products are extremely safe in the whole recyclable element of that.
Al Williams: Yeah you—so what you do actually is you soak the bean and then you put the bean into the can and then you put a lid on that can. And once you put the lid on the can, you run it through a hydrostatic cooker is what we have. And so you just run it through a cooking process that actually—and you cook it long enough to kill all the bacteria that could possibly be in the can. You know you just heat it, it’s a thermal process. You’re cooking the bean and you’re softening that bean up to eat, but it also is locked in that container. And so once it’s locked in that container, just like your grandmother would have done when she did her green beans, it’s the same thing. She would put the green beans in the can, put the lid on it, cook them. And in the night if you—you could sit in bed and hear the cans pop where the—as you can see the vacuum, remember? You could hear it. And so that’s what happens, you know the—you got to make sure you have a vacuum and if you don’t then you know that that can wasn't processed correctly. So there’s a built-in food safety mechanism there. But there’s no chemicals or anything for preservatives, you know we don’t—we cook our beans so we don’t have to preserve them. So we lock the freshness right in the can.
Cathy Ackerman: So what about your environmental story? I think you’ve got some interesting facts and figures there in terms of your contributions from an environmental standpoint.
Al Williams: Yeah, you know and I think it starts with the bean itself. I think the bean locks nitrogen in the soil where you know some corn takes it out. So if you think about, farmers rotate crops. So you put, you know you want to rotate a bean crop in with a corn crop for the nitrogen so you have less chemicals on the soil. You know the amount of water that it takes—so if you think about the amount of protein that you have to feed a pig or a chicken or a cow and the amount of water that it takes to grow that protein to feed it to the pig or the cow or the chicken and then the process—you know it’s just much more sustainable just to feed people the protein—the vegetable protein. So that’s a great sustainability story. From a can standpoint, 70—over 70, 75 percent of all cans you know get recycled. 37, 38 percent of the steel or the cans we use come from recycled steel. So a you know really telling story. And then if you think about the waste—you know if you think about the water that we use—we have a water reuse facility. So we pull basically spring water in, run it through the plants, recycle it. And we take the natural gas that comes from the wastewater—we recycle that natural gas to go fire our boilers and then we take the water and spray it back on the field, so it goes back you know gets absorbed into the—into the water table.
Cathy Ackerman: So it’s sort of a perfect storm in terms of an environmental success story.
Al Williams: Yeah, very environmentally friendly.
Cathy Ackerman: Turning to the business side of the business Al, talk a little bit about Bush Brothers' overall kind of business and management philosophy, as well as your growth over the years and how you’ve stayed at the top of your industry for so long. That’s so rare for a company to have the longevity that you have in terms of being a true industry leader.
Al Williams: Yeah I think, you know for us, there’s a Irish philosopher named Charles Handy. And Charles Handy you know he says it takes three things to be a great company: you have to have products that people want to buy, you have to have the ability to finance your future, and you have to have a place that people want to work. And I think if you can do those three things simultaneously, it really creates that ability for long-term sustainability. And so for us I think as we move along I think it’s—you know it’s important to be—there’s another—it’s a company called The Living Company, a book called The Living Company that Jim had me read years ago, had a lot of us read. But it talks about the conservative financing is very important, being sensitive to the world around you is important, having a company purpose or identity is extremely important, and then the tolerance of new ideas and being flexible—having that adaptability. So I think if you—you know that’s it—it’s not the survival of the fittest, you know it’s the survival of the most adaptable. So I think that really helped us you know maintaining that and having good core values, a good family you know supporting that and then you know just a—I guess a business model that is stakeholder-driven. And I think that’s very critical for the long-term success that you understand who your stakeholders are, that they’re larger than just your shareholders or just your management team, that you’re supporting a whole community.
Cathy Ackerman: And you all are known in the business community as being fairly low-key and very private for a company your size, but yet very philanthropic and community-minded. So and you’ve talked about that a little bit, just touched on that a little bit now, but what are some of the things that your company is committed to long-term from a philanthropic standpoint?
Al Williams: Well for us, we’re a food company and that’s what we do best. And so we are very involved with Second Harvest, Feeding America. And that is our primary philanthropic effort. Now we provide what I believe is a very nice lifestyle kind of work environment for our employees, so you know a friendly environment for you know we’re not working people crazy hours. So I believe we can have a lot of our people do a lot of their own philanthropic efforts, but as a company that’s our primary focus because that’s what we do best—we do food and you know there’s a lot of people that need food and that’s where we try to try to focus.
Cathy Ackerman: Makes perfect sense. So what’s next for Bush Brothers? I know that you’re a big proponent of research and development and have been for a long time as a company. Anything on the horizon that would be really interesting that you’re free to talk about at this point in terms of the future?
Al Williams: Well we’re going to have a line of products come out—we’ve got some chips now that are out in the marketplace in a small test—but we’re going to be coming out with some more bean products in a can. And so we will have—because right now we are focused on the can and focused on the bean still. We’ve got a lot, a lot of consumers coming back to the center of the store, a lot of consumers are coming back you know coming back and so what we’ve got to do is really make sure that that’s a good experience for them and we’ve got to tell that story. I think that’s the most important thing we can do is make people feel good about what they’re doing today because we’ve got millions of new consumers if you go back you know less than a year ago you know when back in March when a lot of this started to happen. Those will—and so we just want the consumer to understand what they’re doing is really beneficial for the environment, beneficial for their families and their health and just tell that story. But we’ll be coming out with new new flavors and new platforms of beans over the next year year or two.
Cathy Ackerman: And there’s so many pieces of research these days who that show that consumers want to do business not only with companies that produce good products but also companies that are good companies. That’s becoming more and more important in terms of a consumer differentiating between products that can be fairly commoditized otherwise is: are they doing business—are these products coming from a company that they can feel proud of doing business with because that company stands for positive things. And I think Bush Brothers really incorporates that and you always have. But I think it’s probably becoming more important as consumers become more aware of what goes on behind the scenes besides just the product that they pick up off the shelf and purchase.
Al Williams: Yeah that is important.
Cathy Ackerman: So if you were asked to describe Bush Brothers in only three words, what would those three words be?
Al Williams: I would say "Bean Goodness" is a term that you will hear from us. And then I think "caring" is a term that I hear a lot. I ask our employees to talk about our core values and our—and give examples of fellow employees that they have seen show our core values. Caring kept coming up, and so you know that’s a—it’s a very nice characteristic to have you know in a corporate environment. You have a very close-knit group of people that really care about each other. And so you know that’s—I think from a cultural standpoint that’s probably—even though all the core values, trust, caring, responsibility, integrity are important—you know I think it’s one that resonates with our employees probably more than anything. And then the goodness of the bean, like I keep telling you, keep saying.
Cathy Ackerman: The goodness of the bean! That’s right. So before we conclude is there anything else that you want to talk about that we have not yet covered? This has been a great interview and a great opportunity to sort of look internally into, as I said earlier, an iconic brand and an iconic company here in the East Tennessee area, but anything else you’d like to mention?
Al Williams: You know, no, you know I do remember when I when I became—got in this role—I got an article from a friend of mine. It was there was a guy, his name was Adam Bryant I believe his name was, and he wrote an article for the—for the New York Times, I think it was called "The Corner Office." And he had interviewed 500 and something you know CEOs. And they asked him what his favorite story was. And he tells a story—and I may butcher the story, so if we do any fact-checking here I may be in trouble. But as he tells the story, you know he’s the CEO of Accenture, the guy that told Adam the story. The CEO of Accenture, this was years ago, he’s at Babson College and he looks—he’s had all these people come in with these flashy resumes and he gets this resume, this kid comes in, his name’s Sam. He’s got a 3.2 in finance, no fraternity, no athletics, no clubs, no nodes, no anything. And so he sits down and the first thing he says, he said, "Well hey what did you do with all your time? What else were you doing?" And he said, "Well um, you know my family owns a diner about an hour from here and so every Friday afternoon I go home to Sam’s Diner and you know I work to from work to close. Saturday I open, work to close, Sunday I open, work to close, then I drive back to school. And it’s my family business and that’s what I do." And he said he just wrote down on a sheet of paper: "Hire this guy." You know? Because he didn't you know and you know he didn't make excuses, you know he didn't he wasn't victimized by the situation. He’s a kid that took his circumstances as they were and made the best out of it, you know. And so I just think you know to me um I think at Bush we have a lot of people like that. Um you know when you go through the interview process, it’s a lot of people taking—take their circumstances as they are and really just go roll their sleeves up and I mean because we sell beans, you know, we’re not—we don’t make rockets or anything. I mean we know what we do and we just got to work hard and you know kind of be be smart and make the best of it.
Cathy Ackerman: It’s a great story. It’s a great story. Al, we thank you so much for spending time with us on Sweet Tea and Strategy. We appreciate you and your company being the committed corporate citizens that you are and for sharing a little bit about Bush Brothers and what makes you tick. So thank you very much for joining us.
Al Williams: Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it.
Cathy Ackerman: We hope you enjoyed today's Sweet Tea and Strategy podcast, a production of Ackerman Marketing and PR. To hear more about business strategy, Tennessee's top business and community leaders, and their favorite sweet tea recipes, visit https://www.google.com/search?q=thinkackerman.com.