Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3 - 121

conagra brands inc. food & beverage

Conagra Brands History

Conagra Brands combines a rich heritage of making great food with a
sharpened focus and entrepreneurial spirit. Over the past 100 years, the
Chicago-based company has become respected for its great brands,
food, margins and consistent results as it continues to challenge and
disrupt the marketplace.
Frank Little and Alva Kinney founded what would later be known as
Conagra Brands in 1919 when they brought together four grain mills as
Nebraska Consolidated Mills (NCM), headquartered in Grand Island,
Neb. Three years later, the headquarters was moved to Omaha, Neb.
In 1940, the company began producing flour at its own mill and in 1942
got into the livestock feed business. That same year, company President
R.S. Dickinson opened the first out-of-state facility in Alabama with a
flour mill and animal feed plant.
To broaden its portfolio, NCM established the Duncan Hines brand of
cake mixes in 1951 as a way to market more flour. Because of this successful venture, the company grew to become the third-largest flour miller in
the United States.
Changing Direction
Despite NCM's success with Duncan Hines and even as more American
households purchased more prepared and instant foods, NCM sold its
assets in Duncan Hines to Procter & Gamble in 1956. NCM decided to go
in the opposite direction of the trends, focusing on raw foods like poultry
and expanding its livestock feed business.
In 1971, NCM changed its name to ConAgra Foods (the predecessor to Conagra Brands), combining "con" for consolidated and
"agra" for agriculture. The early 1970s brought years of turmoil for
Conagra as it lost money in the fertilizer, catfish and pet product
industries. It wasn't until 1974 when Mike Harper, an experienced
food industry executive, took over the firm and brought it back from
the brink of bankruptcy.
Building a Portfolio
Over the next two decades, ConAgra Foods purchased more than 100
prepared food brands starting with its 1980 purchase of Banquet Foods.

important to manage a relationship
with that level of intensity and that
frequency of engagement. We've
all heard stories where suppliers
have walked away from customers
because they felt wronged. So communication is important, transparency is important, and I have to add
it is important to educate and invest
in your employees to focus on suppliers and strong relationships."
Investing in its workforce is a
constant for Conagra. For example, the procurement team does a
series of "101s," O'Rourke notes, to
give employees a base knowledge
in areas such as legal, finance and
project management, or on how

Banquet sells various food products, including frozen pre-made entrées,
meals and desserts. The brand is best known for its line of TV dinners.
From there, ConAgra Foods focused on the frozen food business and
the packaged meat industry, picking up a selection of other brands from
RJR Nabisco and Beatrice Foods. ConAgra Foods invested $500 million
in smaller firms in 1993 and in 1998 purchased $480 million in brands
from Nabisco.
2016 was a transformative year for ConAgra Foods. It sold off the
private brands business, divested JM Swank and Spicetec, and spun off
Lamb Weston to become a pure-play branded foods company called
Conagra Brands. Today, Conagra's iconic brands include Birds Eye®,
Duncan Hines®, Healthy Choice®, Marie Callender's®, Reddi-wip® and
Slim Jim®, as well as emerging brands, including Angies®, BOOMCHICKAPOP®, Duke's®, Earth Balance®, Gardein™ and Frontera® that offer
choices for every occasion.
Leaving Nebraska
In June 2016, Conagra Brands moved its headquarters to Chicago from
its longtime home in Omaha. Under the leadership of CEO Sean Connolly, the company's new open floor plan in the Merchandise Mart helps
promote the values that the company is trying to embrace as it becomes
leaner and more performance-oriented. "We've already been behaving
in a way that's more entrepreneurial, more collaborative and more innovative," Connolly says. "What the physical space does is help facilitate the
culture you're looking for."
The company's 170,000-square-foot office space on the 13th
floor of the Merchandise Mart allows for room to grow. Conagra's
headquarters features 52 conference rooms and 25 open meeting
spaces. Every work station has sit-stand desks. Today, Conagra
operates about 50 locations and employs more than 17,000 people.
"We're transforming the way we operate to fulfill what consumers and
customers want, in a smart, simple way," the company says. "We're
modernizing our iconic food brands, leveraging fresh opportunities
and adapting to a changing landscape - all with a culture that's ready
to capture growth and drive shareholder value."
-Janice Hoppe-Spiers

to read a 10Q or 10K, or how to use
different SAP systems. The focus is
to help everyone be more effective
in their roles, so procurement
offers ongoing workshops and daylong trainings. These are all taught
in-house using real work examples
by experts in each area.
This year, the procurement team
started a development program to
allow interns in their junior year
of college to convert to full-time
hires once they graduate their
senior year. They learn the basics
of the department as interns, and
once they are hired, they start a rotation across three different roles
in the supply chain division, such

as in buying, business systems,
planning or logistics. After their
third rotation, they get to declare
which area of the business has
their strongest interest.
"It's a great way to make that investment and help retention rates
when you can put a program in
place like that - the people can feel
that investment," O'Rourke says.
"We have to invest in our people."

'Huge Enabler'
The Conagra supply chain is
organized in a centralized manner.
What makes it more effective,
O'Rourke notes, is that his boss,
Chief Supply Chain Officer Dave
VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3 Supply Chain World

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Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Supply Chain World - Volume 7, Issue 3