Cover Story
Quality indicators
Jim Biggar has used a vision of quality to guide him through both the food and real estate industries.
By Todd Shryock
Smart Business Cleveland | September 2005
Jim Biggar has always used quality as his simple vision that guides his companies forward. The former CEO of Nestle Enterprises and current CEO of Glencairn Corp. says simplicity is the key to keeping everyone focused on the leader’s vision.
“It’s very important that you have a vision, and I would say you must be able to describe your reason for succeeding in one sentence,” says Biggar. “If you do that, then it becomes easy to translate. With Stouffer’s frozen foods (a Nestle product), we were going to have the best frozen food product on the market. There was no reason it should be inferior to fresh food.
“People in the company have to know the vision, believe in it and practice it.”
Biggar was always fighting what he calls the “salami theory.” If you have a long salami and keep taking away small pieces of it, eventually you don’t have anything left. In the food business, to cut costs, it’s always tempting to take out some ingredients or skimp on others to save money.
“We avoided the salami theory by having meetings where we reminded people what our purpose was,” says Biggar. “Our vision was quality, and that’s a pretty easy sell every day. We had quality control people and also took food back to employee panels. These were executives and people in the plant that are making the product. They would taste the products and anything from a competitor. We weren’t trying to be like them but be better than them.
“Some people aim at the middle of the bell curve where they will get the highest volume. In our case, we aimed at the right-hand corner of the bell curve. Some did it cheaper, but they never did it better.”
Part of getting people to believe in the quality vision and to practice it is to show the employees you are willing to live by it and take a loss, if necessary.
“I remember we got a raw material to put in one of our products, then found out the product didn’t match our specifications,” says Biggar. “It didn’t taste as good, and there were too many broken pieces of macaroni in it. We had to scrap the whole thing. They have to see that and see that you are willing to take it as a loss rather than let is slip through. When they see you do that, they know you mean it. If people understand the culture, they themselves will follow it in their own ways.
“There’s always the tendency to get away from quality to save money. You have to fight that and be willing to waste money to prove it. You have to throw away what could have been sold. The quality really gave us an advantage over the other companies.”
The quality went beyond the food. It meant having the best salespeople and using strategies that emphasized quality to the consumers so they understood what Stouffer’s products were about. Biggar focused on using advertising to create demand rather than giving freebies to grocery stores to mitigate the risk of taking a new product. By creating the demand with the consumer, stores would naturally try to stock what people were asking for.
He also led the introduction of Lean Cuisine, low-calorie frozen food entrees that featured the same quality as Stouffer’s regular offerings. Because the taste of low-calorie food had always been so poor, the high-quality Stouffer’s offering was an instant success.
“We thought the first year we’d maybe do $60 million,” says Biggar. “Suddenly, we were selling $200 million a year. It was the most successful grocery product in 20 years.”
Biggar now runs his own real estate development firm, but the vision is the same. “The vision is really not a lot different: It’s to provide high-quality residential and commercial real estate,” says Biggar.
He’s differentiating his products with open space, man-made waterfalls, a daycare center and high-quality construction that are meant to exceed what’s currently on the market — once again aiming for the right-hand corner of the bell curve.
“Your vision has to be your religion and understood by everybody,” says Biggar. “It goes back to the idea of keeping it one sentence. You can explain it quickly and easily. Keep it simple.”
How to reach: Glencairn Corp., (330) 659-7200
