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 A. B. 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. Welcome back to The Oven Light. The switch is on and today we've got an exciting episode for you. This is episode number five. It's tax season as we get into springtime. And who better than to bring on our corporate lawyer, our legal counsel? So let me introduce our guest today. He is our senior corporate counsel and he's actually with Associated British Foods, which is our parent company. He's been there for about five years. You'll have to hold me true on the previous company he spent eight years with an environmental services group.

Rick (01:09): He was a general counsel for Veolia, North America. Prior to that, he was a corporate litigation lawyer for Holland & Knight and actually was a quote unquote pro bono champion. Prior to that, he's a St. Louis kid. He lives in Chicago, but went to St. Louis High School, went to Notre Dame, was an English major. So he likes to tell me how things should be phrased, the conjugation of herbs, all that. Dean's list, all terms. This guy, incredible. Then went to Washington University for his law degree. Then some of his personal time, YMCA doing some soccer and baseball coaching as well, hosting some trivia nights. That's totally a Midwest thing. I mean, this guy's kind of a saint. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Eric Robbin.

Eric (01:55): Thank you, Shaq. You have clearly read my LinkedIn bio and I credit you for that.

Rick (02:00): That's what we do. In the hosting, you got to know your guests and all that. So let's jump into it. I think we're going to have a fun session today. Eric is very much an intriguing character. I think he takes this quote unquote corporate lawyering thing serious, but he's got a real good personality about him. So E, let's talk about your path to ABMR. How'd you get here? I kind of gave a little bit of the background, but you kind of went from this company that was very focused on sustainability, water management, those sorts of things about resources. Now you're ending up in the ingredients environment and even bigger with Associated British Foods.

Eric (02:34): Yeah. You covered off the steps of it really well. I think that for me, I started in commercial litigation at a big law firm and that was fine and it was good, but what I felt like it lacked was some real connection to a business and helping a business succeed. And that's what the times that I got to do that at my law firm job were the times that I was happiest. And so I got a sense maybe four or five years in that I wanted to go in and work in- house at a corporation. And the opportunity popped up at Veolia. I had to Google the pronunciation of it when I sent my resume in there as well, Shaq. So you did good comparatively. And I sort of grew up in the in- house department there as an in- house lawyer, ended up as their general counsel.

Eric (03:23): But I will confess that wastewater law was not a super passion of mine and groceries and food always has been. And so when an opportunity came to make a move to a food company, and particularly one with the kind of history and brands like ABF has, it was something that I couldn't pass up. And I have loved every minute of.

Rick (03:46): So you get a chance to see ... Associated British Foods is a large international P&G-like company. And AB Maori is one division of it. We also have another division that's based in Chicago called ACH. So give a little bit of reference for our listeners out there. AB Maori, for example, owns Fleischmann's Yeast. We make it, we own the trademark, but then our sister company, ACH is actually the retail arm for Fleischman's East. So when you pick up a package of Fleischmann's yeast on the shelf at the grocery store, it'll say ACH on the side. So how is it working with multiple divisions like that? You must see a little more, you've got a different critical eye on the business because you've got multiple vantage points.

Eric (04:30): For sure. Yeah. ABF in the US is a pretty broad collection of companies that are mostly separately managed and there's overlap only in a few of the sort of support functions. For example, me, legal, who supports multiple companies, but we've got business to business ingredient companies. We have agricultural service companies. We have Primark, which is a clothing manufacturer and retailer. And then we've got the collection of companies that I work for include a company called the Cheatham, which is a balsamic vinegar of Madana seller, Twinings Tea, which is a 300-year-old brand that is in your grocery store, team technology company in California, and then you guys down in St. Louis and around the country. I think it's great because it gives me exposure to all different kinds of businesses and brands and issues. I think it makes it more fun to do my job because I get to see all those different things in action.

Eric (05:30): And honestly, I think it helps make me probably a more well-rounded lawyer because something might happen at one of my businesses and a similar issue might pop up at another one, and I've already got that experience that I can bring and that expertise that I can bring to the clients. And the way we're designed is that legal sits on an island sort of on purpose because we want to be able to give truly independent advice to the businesses. And I think that's a smart design for a legal function and it gives some credibility to our work. It gives some protection when we need to tell a business some more difficult truth. And it doesn't make us beholden to the P&L or to the leadership team that might want a different answer than might be legally required.

Rick (06:15): Got it. Well, hey, we've talked enough about business. Let's get going in. We're going to have a little bit of fun. This is what we call rapid fire. So we're going to ask you a few questions just to kind of get to know your personality a little bit.

Eric (06:27): Okay.

Rick (06:28): So you walk into a bakery. What are you buying first? What catches your eye? It could be anything. It could be bread, could be a pie, could be a donut. What are you walking away with?

Eric (06:37): That's donuts. I love donuts. My kids love donuts. What

Rick (06:41): Kind of donut? Now, Dave Hufford on our previous show was like, "Hey, you got to have an old fashioned." And he's a man after my own heart.

Eric (06:47): Yes. Hufford and I don't see eye to eye on many things, but I have to agree. I love an old-fashioned donut for sure. I like a Boston Cream. I like plain old glazed, and then I'll get as crazy as you want. We were in Portland and went to Voodoo Donuts. I don't know if you've been there, but it's- The

Rick (07:04): Pink box, right?

Eric (07:05): Yes, exactly. And they do crazy stuff with Captain Crunch or I think my kids had one with Cheez-Its and Bacon and crazy stuff. And I'm in-

Rick (07:14): The Royal one's good for sure. Yeah. Awesome. We covered off on Bakery a little bit. You and I share, we have kind of a common bond on music and certain genres of music. Any truth that you're actually in a band and what were your music inspirations?

Eric (07:29): Oh, I've been in many bands. So the bands that I've been in, is that the question or are you one okay? Yeah. So I've been in my first band ever in high school, StirFry Your Mom had one gig and then spectacularly imploded. The Meridians, the PushPops, Tape Deck, the Meteors, the Samsons, honestly, the best times of my life. I mean, anytime you get to make music with your friends, I treasure it for sure.

Rick (07:55): Can you tell us what was your part of the band? Did you play an instrument? Did you sing? And by the way, StirFry, your mom, I'm a little bit cautious about that one, but I'm sure there's some videos out there somewhere, right?

Eric (08:06): Thank God there's not. And you're rightfully cautious of StirFry your mom's music. But I started playing guitar in some of these bands, and I think I was promoted to lead singer, not because my singing was any better, but because everyone else got better at their instruments and I never did. So they would let me play a little bit of rhythm guitar from time to time, but I was the so- called front man of the groups.

Rick (08:33): Okay. So if you know Eric, you know that his head is kind of as clean as you would be born with. Did you wear a wig? Did you have long hair? Did you have a Mohawk?

Eric (08:42): How dare you. Back in the day, I had nice flowing, floppy hair. And I don't know, there's some great bald lead singers out there as well, aren't there? Well,

Rick (08:52): Phil Collins, right? Comes to mind.

Eric (08:54): I oil.

Rick (08:55): Yeah, there you go. That's question two a rapid fire. Here's the last. It's baseball season now, right? Baseball is in session. Who's your favorite baseball player? Oh,

Eric (09:04): This is easy. Number 51, Willie McGee from the St. Louis Cardinals seating in early '90s. I mean, he was the best. I like that Cardinals have semi retired his number. I think only one player wore it after him and very quickly changed numbers when the fans let him know that 51 was reserved for Willie. And I mean, in a perfect world, he would be in the Hall of Fame.

Rick (09:28): Yeah. I've lived in St. Louis for 22 years now, and there is a very fond reverence for Willie McGee. It likens to Ozzy and Stan The Man. It's just really interesting how the fans here just love this guy. I think they loved his intensity. He is always a fan favorite, so that's a good pickup. So keeping on the St. Louis theme, you grew up here, you went to high school, you went to grad school, but now you're in Chicago. How's the big city life there?

Eric (09:56): I like Chicago. My wife is from here, and I tell the story that I had a job offer in St. Louis at the end of law school. I went to WashU in St. Louis, and it was in St. Louis, and I thought I was going to take that job and I wanted to stay in St. Louis. My wife being from Chicago, wanted to come back to Chicago. And so to paraphrase, Abraham Lincoln, we made a compromise and we moved to Chicago. I wasn't super into it the first time we moved up, but we lived in the city on the north side. We actually live a really long home run from Wrigley Field. We were pretty much due straight out from home plate over the centerfield wall about block and a half from the field. And it's great. I mean, the city is great. The lakefront is great.

Eric (10:41): There's a ton of good restaurants. There's a million things to do. When we were studying for the bar, I used to go to Cubs day games routinely, and that was always a treat. I mean, Wrigley Field is a pretty great place. But I will say anyone from St. Louis will always be from St. Louis and will defend it to the death even while pointing out the things that could be better. So I will always be a St. Louis guy for sure.

Rick (11:03): You talked about your wife. You talked about being up in Chicago. Tell me about your family. You guys actually fostered a number of children through the years and actually have made some adoptions too. So tell us a little bit more about that. Plus you're a legal guy. Was that process easy for you because you are kind of in this legal world or did it make it even more difficult?

Eric (11:25): Yeah, those are good questions. Yeah, we're a foster family. That started back seven or eight years ago. We got our license and we have had, for various lengths of time, 22 kids, 22 foster kids who have been placed with us or stayed with us, some for as short as a week and some for a year or more. Our house is thankfully pretty flexible to our daughter's bedroom has at times had two or three girls stay in there and then our daughter moves out for time or she's had roommates. My son has lived with kids. People move into the guest room and out and we just sort of try to keep things flexible so that we can accommodate who we have or what we have at any given time. But it's something that is super hard and can be frustrating and can be heartbreaking and takes a ton of work and attention and a new perspective on parenting because you have to think about not just normal parenting strategies, but think about the background that some of these kids have come from and the circumstances that they've dealt with and sometimes parent differently than you would think you could or you should.

Eric (12:35): So really, really difficult, but undoubtedly one of the best things that we've ever done, not just for us, but for our kids and hopefully for the foster kids too. I think you mentioned that we adopted and we did. We had a brother and sister who were placed with us in October 2018 and they stayed with us for three years and we finalized the adoption of them in October of last year. So pretty much right on the third anniversary of welcoming them to our family, they became a permanent part of our family.

Rick (13:05): Well, congratulations. You set the bar high literally for the world and make it a better place. So we appreciate that. All right, so we're going to get a little more focused on the work. We'll come back to a little bit of the fun world of our guest today, Eric Robin, who is our senior corporate counsel for AB Maury and really from a higher level at Associated British Foods. So let's talk about your day-to-day job a little bit. So what's the toughest part of the gig? And are there other parts that you're like, "Boy, I can't wait to do this. I love to go through contracts. I like to get right." What is the tough part and what's the fun part?

Eric (13:35): Yeah, the toughest part administratively or procedurally is what you mentioned at the top of this, which is that I do work for four different companies and the flow of work is totally unpredictable. And so sometimes there will be multiple crises happening across our businesses. And I want each of my businesses to think that I am their lawyer and only their lawyer and that they can call me whenever and however, and I will be instantly responsive. And it can be frustrating when that's not possible. And hopefully you don't see that very often, but that's something that is sometimes tricky to manage. And then substantively taking hard decisions and having to communicate with the business. I try not to do this very often at all, but there are sometimes when you have to tell the business what you want to do is not in accordance with the laws or the regulations don't allow that.

Eric (14:32): And you can find as many creative arguments as you can to try to work around things, but sometimes you can't. And having to share that and be direct is never very fun. And then also when you have an employee who's doing something that they shouldn't be and you end up having to terminate or to discipline or things like that, I know that's obviously part of the job, but it's never fun. And you try to remind yourself that all of these people are people first and foremost and treat them with dignity and with kindness.

Rick (15:07): You certainly do a good job of that. So we're going to go back to a little bit of fun stuff here. So your family tends to like the Lake Michigan area, right? And I've seen things you're known for having cool out of office messages, not the standard like, "Hey, I'm out of the office on Tuesday, blah, blah, blah, returning on Friday, feel free to reach me on my cell phone, that sort of thing." You tend to have good messages. And one was related to a cool whiffleball field that you and your family put together on this little lake place. So

Eric (15:36): Get

Rick (15:36): A scoop on this. I mean, whiffleball, what a great activity.

Eric (15:40): Yes. First, I will tell you that those clever out of office messages serve a dual purpose because I find that people will not ignore, but they won't pay as much attention, let's say, to a standard out of office message. And when I'm out of the office, I really want to be out of the office sometimes. And so I find if you put something a little whimsical or fun, it will remind people that you're gone and they will bug you less. So there's a pro tip for anyone out there listening. Wiffleball is something I grew up playing with my family and my buddies in the backyard. It's one of the best sports ever. We played it in college almost every day my junior and senior years, and we have an empty lot next to our place in Michigan. We have a place in Manistee, Michigan, a great little town that's pretty far up there north in Michigan, right on the lake.

Eric (16:30): And we have an empty lot next door, and my son and I thought it would be fun to build out a whiffle ball field. So we got spray paint and nets and construction fencing and poles and things like that. And built not a permanent structure, but what someday might be a quasi-permanent structure that's a whiffle ball field out in the side yard. And it's a great way to spend time on a summer day for sure.

Rick (16:54): Let's chat about mascots. All right. So let me tell you a little story and I'm going to have you fill in the blanks a little bit. So a few years ago, IBIE 2019, something I had in mind since I joined the company in 2014 was to bring back a corporate mascot for Fleischman's Yeast. This character dates back to 1910, so that's decades. We're talking 40 plus years before The Pillsbury Doughboy. Hopefully I can say that on the air, Eric. But we had a character named John Doe who was made up of different types of bread loaves and baguettes and rounds and things like that. And a very jovial kind of fun guy reached out to a group. They created this great mascot costume and I got a chance to put it on and walk around the office. And then IBI came around in 2019 and we were going to take this a little more public and finding out that your corporate attorney was a former mascot in high school and during college years was unbelievable.

Rick (17:51): So here's a guy, Eric Robbin, who jumps in the suit for multiple days in Las Vegas and performed like none other. So how was that experience?

Eric (18:00): That experience was the highlight of my ABF career so far, I would say. No joke. It was probably the most fun day I've had in the office. And now I'm thinking of this, my legal colleagues around the world are likely to get a link to this podcast. So well, it was the most fun. Let's just be honest. So I liked it. In part, you talk about Pillsbury Dougoy and stuff, and you and I did some legal research and other things about trademark and copyright issues and things before we brought old John Doe back to life. And so that was kind of fun to be able to both look at it from a legal perspective and then actually and have it John Doe and get to play him. That was kind of a rewarding thing, but it was great.

Rick (18:42): Well, it shows the unique personality that you have both on your kind of outward facing job as a legal counselor as well as the behind the scenes as a maskup. So for our listeners out there, if you've got any kind of questions, whether it's for Eric or anybody on our team or just a general question, we can answer those. Feel free to submit that to the ovenlight@abauri.com and we'll get you an answer. And looking ahead for future episodes, we're going to be talking about tortillas. Tortillas ain't flat, as they say, flatbread's non, all those sorts of things. And we'll pull in a couple of our experts there. Subsequent episodes, we'll focus on emulsifiers, clean label. We're titling that one emulsifier, smulsifier. We'll also talk about clean label mold inhibition. We'll pick up some history on Fleischman's yeast and talk about yeast leavening. We talked about chemical leavening a few episodes ago.

Rick (19:33): And as we get into the summer, we're going to start opening up a little bit of our plan for IBIE in September. So that's mid part of September in Las Vegas. We've got big plans again to expand people's minds as they get into this really important every three-year trade show. So before we sign off with our friend, Eric, I thought I'd give you one last question here looking ahead, looking in your crystal ball, there's a lot going on in the world. We've talked previously with our experts about supply and procurement. Now you've got global conflict things going on. From a legality perspective, what do you think bakers or anybody in the food industry needs to at least have on their radar? Anything that's pressing or heavy on the heart?

Eric (20:17): That's a great question. I think that looking forward, this will probably come as no surprise to people in the industry that one thing that we have seen and that we continue to see from a legal perspective is a focus on labeling and whether that's a drive toward clean label stuff, whether that's technical regulatory issues like the bioengineering statements and certification marks and things like that, which are a focus. And then because I'm a lawyer, the legal risks that come from labeling lawsuits, we've seen people, plaintiffs bring suits about pure and natural labeling or about the use of certain toxics in packaging, things like that. So I think what is on your label and what your stuff is made of and how you declare that and how you characterize it continues to be a focus and something that is really worth getting right on the front end because it's much more fun to put in the time and get it correct than to have to answer or be in a lawsuit down the road because of it.

Rick (21:22): Let's say you're developing a new product or maybe a new promotion. How important or why is it important to get legal involved on the front end so you don't have issues later down the road?

Eric (21:33): Yeah, that's a great question. I think that one thing that legal does on a product that we're good at because it's part of the sort of law school training you get is the sort of issue spotting. So maybe your product is something that might be patented somewhere else. We can help you survey the landscape and understand whether you have the freedom to even operate to begin with. Maybe you're inventing something that isn't patented, but that is patentable. And we can help you with that as well to understand when and how to make that patent application, what kind of things you should be doing to protect the patentability, things like that. We can help with label review, both from the regulatory, the sort of strict legal review of where the words go and how you have to characterize ingredients and flavors, what belongs on each panel, things like that so that your labels look right.

Eric (22:28): And then we can also help you with claims that you can make. Wellness claims are a big item right now, calling out nutritional facts, calling out structured function claims, making qualified health claims. So I think that legal is someone who can touch the process at various parts and not only can we help you make sure you're compliant, but hopefully we can help you improve the product or the offering so that the commercial success is more likely as well.

Rick (22:58): Fantastic. Those are good pointers, good tips. I appreciate that. So our guest today, Eric Robbin from our legal team at AB Maori and Associated British Foods. Hopefully you've enjoyed this episode. Next one, we'll jump a little more into product focus, but to our good friend Eric, we thank you for what you do within the business and thanks for listening to The Ovenlight. The switch is off and we'll see you next time. 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.