Utz builds out leading ranks with 3 C-suite appointments

Dive Brief:

• Utz Manufacturers introduced a series of appointments to its C-suite, which includes the appointment of a COO, a new placement at the organization, a CFO and a main persons officer. 
• Cary Devore, who has been Utz’s CFO given that 2019, will just take above as COO, with Ajay Kataria to replace him as the firm‘s upcoming CFO. Kataria is now Utz’s executive vice president of finance and accounting. Utz also declared Jim Sponaugle, at present the senior vice president of human assets and personnel development, will come to be EVP and chief people today officer. The executives will acquire on their new roles Oct. 4.
• In June, Utz, which has been on an acquisition binge since it became general public last 12 months, named Shane Chambers to the newly created position of EVP and main expansion officer and Mark Schreiber government vice president of revenue and main buyer officer.

Dive Perception:

Utz, a maker of chips, cheese balls, pretzels and other snacks, has spent substantially of its existence as a spouse and children-owned business enterprise with a key presence on the East Coast. But the company’s conclusion final yr to merge with a SPAC and go general public ushered in a host of modifications for the 100-year-old Pennsylvania business. 

Utz officially became a publicly traded entity Aug. 31, and since then it has been actively expanding its portfolio and bulking up the ranks of executives essential to oversee its growth. Devore, who joined Utz in 2016 as a board member and transitioned to a whole-time operational part in 2017, worked with Utz CEO Dylan Lissette from 2016 to 2019 wherever M&A was a person of his main tasks. They finished 8 acquisitions, in accordance to the corporation.

Kataria, who has been with Utz due to the fact 2017, also was touted by the enterprise for his prior operate in M&A.

The prior knowledge these executives experienced doing the job collectively and their former offer-earning underscores the chance that Utz’s new acquisition streak is not going to abate anytime shortly. If that’s the case, it would make perception for Utz to have someone who is not only acquainted with the functions of the business but well-informed about holes that would be rational to fill via a offer. 

Throughout the last yr by yourself, Utz purchased the H.K. Anderson peanut butter-filled pretzel brand Truco Enterprises, a manufacturer of On The Border tortilla chips, salsa and queso and Chicago snack brand name Vitner’s for $25 million. Then in May perhaps it purchased the greatest company of tortilla chips for On The Border to broaden its geographic presence and many others in its portfolio in the course of the Midwest.

“As we evolve as a public company, we will go on to boost Utz’s leadership group to accelerate our means to expand and fortify our organization,” Lissette explained in a statement announcing the most up-to-date executive appointments. “Today’s bulletins offer the firm with the optimum organizational construction to execute towards our tactic, and will ideal position Utz to deliver on its dedication to be the swiftest-growing, pure-enjoy branded salty snack corporation of scale in the U.S.”

The barrage of C-suite appointments in just the previous month show Utz, as a publicly traded corporation with potent development ambitions, requirements a large bench of expert executives to make that attainable. Snacking has grown in level of popularity in latest years, and demand from customers for salty offerings like chips, pretzels and cheese puffs have placed companies like Utz in a primary spot to benefit.

Nonetheless, Utz pales in dimensions when compared to PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay unit and Campbell Soup, which accelerated its snacking presence in 2018 with the $5 billion obtain of Snyder’s-Lance, adding well known snack manufacturers these as Pop Key, Kettle, Cape Cod and Emerald.