With a name like Smucker’s, their profit and revenue has to be good, right? Apparently so. Their latest quarterly report was very good.
After profiting $42.3 million last year at this time, Smucker’s saw their profit just to $98.1 million. The jump in revenue was even more impressive — from $663.7 million last year to $1.05 billion this year.
Most analysts point to last year’s purchase of Folgers coffee as the biggest reason for the improvement.
“We are off to a strong start this year,” said Richard Smucker, the company’s co-CEO, “with good results in our core Smucker business and the addition of …read more

Despite a decrease in revenue, Kraft Foods has managed to post an 11 percent rise in profits for its fiscal second quarter. This result surpassed analyst expectations and has led Kraft Foods to enhance its outlook for the rest of the fiscal year, banking on a recent restructuring effort and the improvement of its products.
According to company CEO Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft’s higher-priced products are still managing to lure shoppers, but that Kraft will now focus on increasing volume and product variety rather than prices. She also credited the company’s three-year turnaround plan with its surprisingly strong performance this quarter.
As part …read more

Very interesting issue popped up the other day as I was speaking with a food manufacturer. They are very high quality and taste is everything. They therefore cringe when talk of continual improvement comes along because they do NOT want to mess with the process of food preparation even though they are a manufacturer and not a restaurant. Efficiency, as it relates to continual improvement, can lead to what they call recipe “drift”. In other words, many companies have started small with taste and quality of their food as the key differentiator, only to inexplicably lose that taste edge as …read more

Becky at www.myorgnanizedbiz.com recently wrote about the value of calendaring your “biz” and your life. One thing that stuck out was her proposal to try a two week experiment that could change your life:
Becky: Try this for the next two weeks: each day, figure out the five most important things that you need to accomplish that day. Then schedule time for them on your calendar. Schedule it around meetings and e-mail and errands. Actually block out time where you concentrate on that task.
And when that time comes, work on the task. If you only have a 1/2 hour, then see …read more