B2B Baking Business with Brent Fenton, President of AB Mauri N. America

Rick (00:04):

It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right and having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That’s where AB Maury North America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artists and bakers that help optimize success. We’ll discuss more on this episode of The Oven Light. So let’s get going. Flip the switch. Wow, can you believe it? It’s time for the maiden voyage of the oven light. We’ve got a special guest today. He’s the president of AB Myry North America. He’s been president for about 18 months now. Brent Fenton, coming to us after being at ADM for 26 plus years. Great history growing up in Canada. We’re going to learn a little bit about how we got here, how we got to St. Louis, and what do we have in store for baking.

(00:54):

So Brent, welcome. Thanks, Rick.

Brent (00:57):

Glad to be here.

Rick (00:58):

I mean, who would’ve thought new year? Interesting things, right? We’ve gone through a lot from COVID to supply challenges, and heck, a lot of people haven’t even seen you, or at least seen you without a mask. What a challenging time.

Brent (01:08):

Absolutely. It has been a strange time for everyone, I’m sure.

Rick (01:11):

But 2022, there’s new times ahead and hopefully really exciting times, not only for you personally, but also the company. So thank you for joining us and let’s jump into it.

Brent (01:22):

Great. Let’s go.

Rick (01:22):

So tell us a little bit about your route. I kind of teased a little bit. You spent a lot of time with ADM, a lot of jobs within animal nutrition and oil seeds, things that I don’t even know much about. And maybe some of the listeners have a little bit of background, but boy, that’s a long career.

Brent (01:38):

I spent, as you said, a little bit more than 26 years with ADM, with Archer Daniels Bindland Company. I spent a lot of time in Canada and the US, as well as in Europe running operations there. And so ADM, of course, being a large food company or food ingredient company, I learned a lot about the industry. So I’m pretty familiar with the food industry overall and also familiar with the animal nutrition industry because I ran that business for a time in my tenure at ADM. Then when I left the company, I spent about a year just kind of taking some time off for myself and my family and then joined AB Mawry in August of 2020.

Rick (02:11):

Well, we’re excited you’re here. One thing I want to talk about, I never get a chance to say the word Saskatoon.

Brent (02:15):

Yeah.

Rick (02:15):

So you went to the University of Saskatchewan. Quick quiz out there. What is the Mascot?

Brent (02:21):

The Huskies.

Rick (02:22):

That’s right.

Brent (02:22):

The fighting

Rick (02:23):

Huskies.

Brent (02:23):

Yes.

Rick (02:24):

I had to look it up, but Howler is the name of the actual Husky.

Brent (02:27):

Right.

Rick (02:28):

So pretty cool. Pretty exciting.

Brent (02:29):

Yeah.

Rick (02:29):

So tell us about those days. I mean, is Saskatoon kind of the Midwest of Canada? Could you say that?

Brent (02:35):

So wow, that’s a good question. So certainly Saskatchewan, the province is one of the Western provinces, of course. Saskatoon is one of two of the main major cities within the province. The other one being Regina, the capital of the province. And then of course, there’s two major universities in the province, one of them being University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, and the other one being the University of Regina.

Rick (02:59):

Well, I saw US actually has really, really strong marks, has

Brent (03:02):

One

Rick (03:02):

Of the leading educational institutions in Canada. So tip of the cap to that,

Brent (03:07):

Right? Yeah. It’s a large agricultural school. They have a large engineering school, commerce, business, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Rick (03:13):

Could you have forecast going back decades to say, wow, I’m going to be in St. Louis, Missouri working

Brent (03:18):

For

Rick (03:18):

A

Brent (03:18):

Baking ingredients? I could not have painted this path if I tried. No, absolutely not.

Rick (03:23):

Tell us a little bit about your family.

Brent (03:25):

Yeah. So maybe I’ll go back a little bit to my background. So I grew up on a farm in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, which is about a couple hours away from Saskatoon. My brother still farms there today. My father, parents, everybody, all of our relatives are in Canada actually. For my immediate family, my wife is also from Saskatchewan, so we’ve been married for about 27 years. I’ve probably got that wrong. You got to remember that number.

Rick (03:44):

And I’ve

Brent (03:45):

Got two children, two boys. My oldest is at Purdue going to School of Engineering. And my youngest is at Butler University in Indiana taking business.

Rick (03:54):

Awesome. So let’s hit you. We’ve got some rapid fire questions. Maybe let’s call it the hot pan. Favorite baked good. What is Brent’s favorite baked good?

Brent (04:02):

Well, that’s a good question. I would say if it’s a sweet good, it’s a brownie. If it’s a bread, I’d have to go with a really good sourdough.

Rick (04:09):

Okay. All right. Those are both really good answers. So we don’t do much in brownies at AB Maury, so maybe we can help push that along. Here’s the one that’s hotly contested is a taco a sandwich.

Brent (04:20):

Without a question. Yes. Okay.

Rick (04:21):

What’s your rationale?

Brent (04:22):

Because you put all the ingredients that you have in a normal sandwich, it’s in a wrap, it’s wrapped up, it’s enclosed. So yeah, I think it’s got all the parameters that you have in a sandwich, albeit it’s a bit of a different sandwich for a normal person.

Rick (04:34):

I

Brent (04:34):

Buy

Rick (04:34):

That. Absolutely. So you’re at a ballpark, could be a football game, baseball game. What are you ordering? Hot dog, pizza, or nachos?

Brent (04:42):

Hands down a hot dog, for sure.

Rick (04:44):

That’s very pro- American for a guy from Canada.

Brent (04:46):

Well, Canadians like their hotdogs too.

Rick (04:50):

Nothing wrong with meat and bread, right?

Brent (04:51):

Rado.

Rick (04:52):

How about sports teams? Are you a loyalist to the Canadian national hockey team or do you say, “No, I’m in the US now and now I’m a Blues, Cardinals, St. Louis City soccer fan.”

Brent (05:03):

Yeah. So with football, I got to go with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. You can’t give that up.That’s impossible. I mean,

Rick (05:09):

That’s a great

Brent (05:09):

Name,

Rick (05:09):

Rough Riders.

Brent (05:10):

Right. Absolutely.

Rick (05:11):

Okay.

Brent (05:12):

And for hockey, I guess my roots would be, I would say Edmonton in baseball, Toronto, Blue Jays. But you guys are trying to sort of convert me to Cardinals here in St. Louis Blues. And I’ve been running one. Did you grow up playing sports? Yeah. Yeah, I grew up playing a lot of baseball.

Rick (05:26):

Okay. Baseball. What position?

Brent (05:28):

I was a pitcher, first baseman, and played in left field.

Rick (05:31):

Okay. If you could be on a team, what position … Are you going to take first pitching, first

Brent (05:36):

Baseball? I would love to be a pitcher. Yeah.

Rick (05:37):

Why?

Brent (05:38):

But I just wasn’t fast. I couldn’t throw the ball fast enough and did not stop.

Rick (05:41):

If you got some junk, that’s okay, right? And you find your spots.

Brent (05:44):

Right.

Rick (05:45):

Why did you find pitching intriguing? That’s a good question for people because now you’re in charge, you’ve got the ball every play.

Brent (05:50):

I like it because it’s you against the batter. You’re staring him down and he’s staring you down and it really is about who has the best will and the best skill.

Rick (05:58):

I love it. You’re a man after my own heart on that one because I’ve done the Pittsburgh Pirates Fantasy Camp a few times and I never pitched as a kid, but I’ve pitched now as an adult and it is. It’s a contest against kind of yourself and against one batter. So pretty cool. All right. How about maybe an author or is there a book that you kind of live by or is there somebody that you follow that-

Brent (06:18):

I think a book that I really like is actually the biography of Steve Jobs.

Rick (06:22):

Okay.

Brent (06:23):

And another one would be Ben Franklin. I think you can learn a lot by reading biographies of people that have been really successful.

Rick (06:29):

You’ve been at AB Maori for a year and a half now. Boy, a lot’s going on in the world. What do you see for the days ahead? Knowing that the pandemic is still lingering, supply things have been going on, right? Challenges in terms of getting product, price increases, things like that. If you had a crystal ball, what does Brent Fenton say could potentially happen in 2022?

Brent (06:48):

I would say what I see as this, is that we’ve spent now, what, I guess, 18 months or so in a pandemic. Well, actually it’s almost two years, I guess, by now, right? And I think that as the industry’s navigated through that, there’s been a massive change in trends in people’s eating habits throughout the pandemics that we saw. And I think also through that time, our customers didn’t introduce as many launches of new branding, new products throughout that timeframe. And so I think what’s going to happen now as we come out of pandemic, we’ll see more of that. So more technologies will be introduced, more products, more launches, et cetera. And I think that’s what will be the exciting thing that’ll happen in 2022 and 23. So almost like a pent-up kind of a pipeline, I suppose, that will come to market.

Rick (07:29):

And I think maybe you look at that in the same lens where e-commerce has really come online pretty quickly during the pandemic. People buying groceries and having things delivered, restaurants having to change quickly and all of a sudden cater to takeout customers and things like that. Do you think that’s maybe a similar path?

Brent (07:47):

Yeah, and I think a lot of that will stick. I mean, we’ve advanced. In a few short months, we probably took on something like what might have taken two or three years to happen or maybe five or 10 years from a technology perspective in a lot of cases. And so I think a lot of that will continue. Yeah. I would doubt that we go back to the norm as we knew it pre-pandemic.

Rick (08:05):

Got it. All right. Well, let’s shift the direction a little bit. Let’s talk about AB Maori. Again, you’ve been in a company for a long time and now you come to AB Maori. What was intriguing to say, “Wow, this company’s got something that’s pretty cool.”

Brent (08:15):

Several things, actually. One of the main ones is that it was connected to the industry that I already knew. So I’m not familiar with the baking industry, but very familiar with the food industry in general. So it was very connected to my old roots at Archer Daniels. Then I would say that as I researched the business, which I didn’t know a lot about at the time when I first started entertaining the idea of coming to Maori, I realized that there was a deep level of respect in the industry for the company and for its people. So they had good solutions, good people, good technologies. And when I came to visit and see the innovation center and all that the company was doing, that really kind of sold me on the deal. And then of course, AB Mallory is part of a much larger organization being associated British Foods, which is our parent company.

(08:56):

I’ve always had a deep level of respect for the way that ABF has run their operations worldwide and they’re a very well respected company.

Rick (09:03):

Well, let’s talk about that global umbrella. One of your jobs, I believe that you handled part of the business for ADM over in EMEA, so in Europe. So tell us about that experience. Where’d you live, what’d you do? How did you make that connection? And again, you’ve got that big tie with a global company like ABF to AB Maori.

Brent (09:19):

We moved to Europe in 2009, I guess in late 2009, and we were there for about four years. We lived just outside Geneva, Switzerland. Well, that sounds horrible. In Switzerland. Yeah. So it was a great place to live. How was that? Great place to live. It’s fantastic, right? Yeah. Lots to do, fantastic downhill skiing, which we all love to ski. So it was fantastic. Was it tough

Rick (09:38):

To come back to state side, North America side?

Brent (09:41):

It’s always an adjustment, right? Yeah. For sure. You couldn’t have two opposite spectrums of the world living in Switzerlander versus living in America. They’re quite different.

Rick (09:49):

You come to a business and I know you’ve made the rounds during the pandemic of going to the plants. What do you like? What’s intriguing about going to Montreal and LaSalle and seeing the yeast plant there or going to Cedar Rapids and seeing where the mixes come from, having that connection with the employees out there. How has that been?

Brent (10:06):

Yeah, so it’s been great actually. And I think that’s one of the strengths of AB Maori is that our people, when you go and you spend time with them, you realize that they’re very passionate about what they do. They’re very engaged. They’re willing always to go the extra mile. And even though the manufacturing operations are quite different, if you’re producing yeast or fermentation or you’re blending an enzyme solution or whether you’re blending out different mixes for sweet goods or whatever it is, the attitude is the same across the whole organization. And I think that’s just a great call out to the culture of the company.

Rick (10:36):

Are there any trends product-wise that you’re saying, “Hey, this is pretty cool.” I know you mentioned sourdough earlier

Brent (10:42):

Because

Rick (10:43):

It’s one of your favorites, but as a consumer, what’s important to you?

Brent (10:47):

I think one of the most important things in the trends that we see there are some of the strongest is in the area of clean label, right? So improving the label and making it cleaner than it has been in the past. And consumers seem to want it and we’re there to try to solve that for them. And then I would say maybe another area might be around texture improvement. We’ve done an enormous amount to extend the softness of the breads and the buns that we produce. And now there’s an issue of how do you make sure it has the right texture? And a big thing is how do you make sure that it’s resilient that helps with its stackability in a store and things like that so that the product is fresh and in good condition when people buy it. So you’re

Rick (11:25):

Talking clean label, you’re talking texture.

Brent (11:28):

How

Rick (11:28):

About some of those other things, especially this time of year, right? We’re in the middle of start of a new year, people have resolutions, “Hey, I got to get fit. I got to get healthier, all that. ” Do you see that? Are there probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, robotics? I mean, what’s the next-

Brent (11:41):

There’s all those types of things. I think sugar reduction is probably always one that’s at the top of the list. As Americans, especially we do eat a lot of sugar and everything that we have, obviously. And there’s opportunities to reduce that with products that we have like RevM, et cetera, that can help as an alternative

Rick (11:56):

To sugar. That kind of leads me to a new area where our company’s looking at sustainability and trying to get your take on that, right? I mean, we have one world here, how do we protect it? And you can see some of the things that our parent company, ABF, Associated British Foods is trying to do. So what’s your take on it?

Brent (12:12):

Well, I think it’s super important and we’re all obligated to take part in that and make sure that we are responsible in terms of taking care of the environment and being socially responsible. We do a great job of that and I take a lot of pride in it and I know everybody else does too. I guess being part of the industry, which it’s a massive supply chain, getting food from farm to fork, if you will. And we can certainly play a large part in that by offering technological solutions that can help our customers be more efficient in their operations, which of course helps from an environmental standpoint and perspective. And I guess second to that, our operations, which are manufacturing operations as well as all the logistics and supply chain around it, we can do a lot as a company to make sure that we minimize our impact in those areas as best we can.

(12:58):

I just think it’s super important to look at the world from that perspective because I think we all just need to look at how we can leave it at a better place than we found it. Put it that way.

Rick (13:06):

Well, and the company’s done some really interesting things, right? It takes water to make east. So we have to be really cognizant of that in Calgary, for example, or using solar power and cedar rapids with a new warehouse there. So any comments on that?

Brent (13:20):

Those things are something we always have to watch is our energy usage, our water usage, our affluent, and all of those things in large manufacturing operations, just taking care of things and tweaking by small percentages can make an enormous difference on the amount that you use, right? Yeah. And then we look for other ways to see how we can capture things and reuse or things like that also to lower our environmental footprint. Well,

Rick (13:43):

That kind of leads me into an area. We had a campaign a couple years ago, and it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was talking about who’s behind you matters. A lot of industrial bakers, they’ve got great teams themselves, but they may not always realize they’ve got a team behind them too, and that’s their suppliers, and that’s companies like AB Maori. And our job is to make their jobs easier to make them more successful. So when I say who’s behind you matters, and AB Maury’s there for our customers, what does that mean?

Brent (14:12):

To me, it means that AB Maury truly is behind you when it matters. So our technical service teams play a really critical role with our customers going into their operations and working with them to solve problems every day. So from that perspective, I think we’re there, we’re on the ground trying to help our customers be successful. And then second to that, I would say who’s behind you matters from the sense of having Associated British Foods as a parent company to AB Maury North America and having AB Mawry Global as an organization that has operations all over the world is extremely valuable as a supplier for your customers to know that supply typically is going to be on time as expected. It’s going to be of the proper quality and they’ve got a solid company behind them from a financial perspective and from a technical perspective with the right manufacturing footprint to do the job.

Rick (15:05):

2022, we talked a little bit about it and kind of the crystal ball. We got a big year, right? Every third year, there’s a big trade show called IBIE and it’s in Las Vegas. Fingers crossed that we have a chance to present ourselves to the world again, 25,000 people, 100 different countries. Are you hopeful that everything kind of comes back into play here?

Brent (15:24):

I am extremely hopeful that we’re able to do that this year. I mean, it’s critical for the industry, I think to get back in step and having these trade shows that are important to get the connections made that haven’t been possible now for almost two years. So yeah, I think it’s a great event and I really hope we’re able to do it in person. I’ve always found that in person you’ll learn more about your customer or their issues in, let’s say 30 minutes versus six months talking to them on a telephone or on a video call or whatever it is. So we can do a lot with technology, but the in- person cannot be substituted.

Rick (15:52):

Amen to that, for sure. What have we missed today? What’s out there? What’s on your mind that is important to the industry or we’re in this great spot in St. Louis called Cortex. It’s an innovation district. Usually it has hundreds of people every week that are flowing through these buildings and it’s been a little bit light for the last two years, but same kind of thought, hopeful that things get back to business, if you will. Is 2022 that kind of attitude?

Brent (16:18):

Yeah, I think the most important thing for the industry is to get back to what’s been normal, right? If you can, or as close to normal as we possibly can, there’s just a lot of customer contact and teamwork contact that hasn’t been possible throughout organizations. And we’ve managed very well through that, working remotely and responsibly as we could. But I do think that over time, there’s a bit of a disconnect that can happen if you can’t get together with your teams and your customers. So I’m very hopeful that we’re able to tie that together and get back to normal, not only for the industry, but even in this area of the cortex.

Rick (16:51):

What would you say to bakers out there, industrial ones, artists and bakers who don’t know much about AB Maori and they don’t know who we are and what we stand for? What would you tell them?

Brent (17:01):

Rick, I guess what I would tell them is that we’re passionate about baking, we understand baking, we understand the industry, and AB Maori has a large toolkit of technologies and solutions that can help any industrial baker and probably can help artisan bakers because as artisan bakers become more successful, they cross that divide where all of a sudden they’re doing higher and higher amounts of production and it gets more difficult to keep it as artisanal as it once was. And solutions that we have in our arsenal can help them with that. So that’s what I would say is that we’re a technological company, we have great technologies, we have great technical support that can help almost anyone’s operation.

Rick (17:43):

And we have great people. And speaking of people, I’m looking at the list of future episodes of the oven light and here’s what we’re going to be covering in no certain order. We’re going to be talking about mixes. We’re going to be talking about tortillas, so a couple products. Then we’re going to talk about the supply chain, right? It’s been a challenge, but there are opportunities that come along with that. We’re going to talk about specific technologies, as you mentioned, things like emulsifiers. We’ll look back with the Fleischman’s family, been at it since 1868, the Fleischmans have been within the baking east side. We’ve got some cool days ahead and we’ll have some nice surprise guests, not only from within our own experts within the company, but also external. And I think we’re going to have some great conversations, not only within baking, but also just kind of talking about a little bit of the lay of the land.

(18:28):

So we appreciate you being our first guest. It’s exciting. And Brent, one more thing before you go. We’ve got some exciting news, right? Obviously the podcast is growing. You can download it through Apple or through Spotify, but more importantly, we’ve got a new email address. So if there are listeners out there and they’ve got a question for any of our guests or for me, you can email us at theovenlight@abaury.com and we’ll get you an answer. So we appreciate it. Thanks for listening and it’s been great to get to know you even more. Thanks, Brent.

Brent (18:57):

Great to be here. And that sounds like an exciting plan. And I think that over time, our audience will never look at a loaf of bread the same. Love it.

Rick (19:08):

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Oven Light. Until next time when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking technology, trends and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.