David Best
President & CEO / Newman’s Own, Inc
Newman’s Own, Inc. is unique. Named for one of its founders, the legendary actor Paul Newman, the company has two goals: selling popular family-friendly food products from salad dressing to popcorn and giving 100% of its corporate profit to groups that help children. Mixing food and philanthropy has seen it thrive for more than four decades.
It’s normal for a C-suite executive to keep an eye firmly on the bottom line, but what David Best, President and CEO of Newman’s Own, Inc is committed to doing with that result is out of the ordinary.
At Newman’s Own, the purveyor of the eponymous brand of family food products, Best and colleagues use the same management benchmarks as most top-flight executives. They seek growth, efficiency, sustainability, security and above all, profit.
But then, they give all that profit away to kids. Every penny of profit from the operations of Newman’s Own — founded by the late, legendary, Oscar-award winning actor Paul Newman and his friend and writer A.E. Hotchner in 1982 — goes to help children who face adversity.
Newman’s own was stared with “two foundational promises,” Best explained. “We’re always going to make great tasting, high-quality food, and we’re always going to give it all away. We’ve sharpened that given message to be 100% of the profits we make go to help kids who face adversity.”
After starting famously with a line of salad dressings and sauces, Newman’s Own has expanded to include beverages such as fruit juice, coffee and tea; snacks from cookies to dried fruit; and an entire line of organic products that include spices, olive oil and microwave popcorn.
One of its newest products is a stone-fired crust frozen pizza imported directly from Italy. To launch it Newman’s Own did a nation-wide tour with a “pay-what-you-want” pizza truck to test the generosity of Americans by seeing what they’d pay for a slice if they knew what they paid would go directly to help kids. The result was Newman’s Own Generosity Index.
“We are focused in areas where we can talk about the giving to help kids, the 100% profits to help kids.”
“The collaboration between Newman’s Own and Phelps Pet Products dates back decades as both organizations share a deep commitment to innovation, continuous improvement, and delighting consumers with the highest quality products. We are honored to play a part in furthering the important mission of the Newman’s Own Foundation.”
Rick Ruffolo, CEO & President / Phelps Pet Products
“Time and time again, it resonates with consumers in North America, resonates with consumers in the U.S.,” said Best, who was appointed CEO in 2021.
To further distinguish the Newman’s Own brand the company insists on using no artificial ingredients and no preservatives.
“We use the finest ingredients in making great tasting food that the entire family will love,” Best explained. “That’s a market need that has existed forever and will continue to exist, and it’s a big market.”
The profit from the sales of those products gets to children through the Newman’s Own Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to Paul Newman’s goal of bringing joy to children and improving their lives.
To date, the foundation has donated more than $600 million to thousands of organizations in the United States and other countries around the world, according to its website.
“In much the same way that the Newman’s Own Foundation has innovated to help engage communities and transform lives, Phelps Pet Products is well-known for being an innovator in the pet treat market and recently was accredited by the Pet Sustainability Coalition for its leadership commitment including making USDA Certified Organic dog treats, using certified upcycled ingredients, offering Marine Stewardship Council certified seafood treats, and even being first-to-market with 100% plant-based (meatless) jerky treats”.
Rick Ruffolo, CEO & President / Phelps Pet Products
“There’s a lot of people out there talking about the good they do in the world today,” Best explained. “But we’re unique. I view us as the shining city on the hill that gives 100% of our profits to help others. Very, very few, and nobody of scale, does the same thing.”
But Best and his colleagues are well aware that giving back to the community only goes so far. They are running a business. No business? No money for kids facing adversity. In the end they have to follow basically the same rules as a company that distributes its profits to traditional shareholders.
Newman’s Own, Best explains, is focused on the things that it sees the greatest value for the consumer, the company and its beneficiaries.
“And the beneficiaries are these kids who face adversity, because that’s where our profits go,” he explained. “They are our shareholders, so to speak.
“It’s a wonderful model driven by both top line growth — because we’ve got something that people want — as well as improving the bottom line through effectiveness and efficiency across all touch points from manufacturing to transportation, through everything, across our SG&A,” Best added.
Looking at its ultimate shareholders, the mission of giving to help kids itself is part of the product, inextricable from the from the food and that helps differentiate Newman’s Own products from others that might be cheaper.
In fact, every product sold by Newman’s own is stamped with the slogan: “100% Profits Help Kids.” Each package also has the company logo, a picture of Paul Newman beneath the brand name and above his founding motto: “’Let’s give it all away,’”
“Everything at Newman’s always starts with our mission of great tasting, high quality food and helping kids in need, or kids who face adversity and all of our supply chain mirrors and ladders up to that mission, Best said.
The market position of Newman’s Own as a quality, family product and a vehicle for consumer charitable giving, is also helpful in developing strategic partnerships with suppliers also helps Newman’s Own control both costs and risks.
That’s especially important because Newman’s Own farms out all of it its product operations.
“We are 100% percent third party. We use copackers for our manufacturing,” Best explained. “We use third-party logistics, but what we do uniquely is bring them in along the mission — make sure they care about Newman’s as a brand.
And like nearly all other businesses that depend on large supply chains or networks, Best said he and his colleagues were reminded of how important it is to maintain good relationships with partners during the disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic.
“Everything at Newman’s Own always starts with our mission of great tasting, high quality food and helping kids in need.”
“We make sure we have long-term strategic partnerships — not day-in-and-day-out spot contracts where you’re at the market’s whim,” Best said.
“Everyone ran into problems during Covid,” he added. “But going forward it still is: ‘Can you deliver on time and in full.’ I’m very proud to say we are able to do that with our partners. With our systems in place today we can maintain the sustainability and flexibility.”
To that end, Newman’s Own adopted a new enterprise-resource-planning (EPR) system two years ago. The resulting improvement in electronic data interchange (EDI) has brought savings and simplicity, Best said.
“We see data that we haven’t seen before,” he said. “We can operate with our third parties in a different way, because we have the EDI links all done digitally now, and we’ve just been able to simplify things. Because of that we are able to give even more money to help kids who face adversity.”
In the end Best says he likes mixing food with philanthropy. In the end he’s maximizing profit like any other good CEO, only the shareholder is different.
“Lot of people say they give 1% to this or 1% to that, and that’s great. We say: ‘Can’t you do more? Why not give a hundred percent, or maybe 5%? Don’t just do 1%,’” he said.
We’ve chosen to go 100%,” he concluded. “I understand other people won’t go to 100%, but making a difference in the world, doing good in the world, that’s just simply how we view what everyone’s role should be.”
