PET Food Processing - March 2019 - 53

BUSINESS STRATEGY

DREAM TEAM
A power group of professionals, many with deep roots in pet food,
are joining forces to help entrepreneurs innovate and scale-up.
By Jennifer Semple | jsemple@sosland.com

In a renovated Bethlehem Steel Corp. factory building
built in 1940 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a new team of
seasoned consumer packaged goods pros have opened
Factory, an innovation center with $250 million of investable capital. The center is actively looking for successful entrepreneurs in high-potential food, beverage
and pet companies to form a partnership with Factory
and move to its innovation center in Pennsylvania.
With that move, an entrepreneur will get a team of
experienced professionals to address sales, marketing,
human resources, finance, packaging engineering and
design assets, social media production, consumer insights to get feedback from customers, research and development and co-manufacturing management. Factory
provides all these disciplines under one roof with the
goal of achieving rapid growth. This venture is led by
Managing Partner Rich Thompson, who has an impressive record of creating enterprise value.
His first big win was with the American Italian
Pasta Company located in Kansas City. Then in 2001,
Thompson teamed up with private equity investor JW
Childs Associates and purchased Meow Mix from Nestlé
S.A. for around $160 million. Nestlé purchased Ralston
Purina Company and, as part of the purchase, Nestlé was

required by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to divest the Meow Mix and Alley Cat brands, which formed
the core of Thompson's The Meow Mix Company.
Thompson and partners invested $45 million in nine
months to renovate a Decatur, Alabama manufacturing facility they purchased from Nestlé for $1.00, as
part of the FTC ruling. The renovated plant was the
largest dry cat food plant in North America at the time
and won recognition for both its production volume
and quality control standards. The company renovated
two additional facilities - one in Missouri and one in
Pennsylvania; and, in total, had three plants producing
Meow Mix cat food.
According to Forbes, under Thompson's leadership,
Meow Mix made news not just by aggressively introducing new products, but also as an innovative marketer.
That focus on innovation and fast change paid off when,
in 2006, Del Monte purchased the Meow Mix brands for
approximately $705 million.
A core management group who had worked at Meow
Mix prior to the sale to Del Monte started Freshpet.
Although Thompson was not one of the founders of
Freshpet due to a three-year non-compete agreement,
he joined the company as CEO in 2010 and helped

Once leaders
of partnering
companies relocate
to Bethlehem,
they work inside
modular shipping
containers where
everything is
designed for
maximum flexibility.
Images by Factory

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PET Food Processing - March 2019

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