Robert J. Sipper's background is diverse and entrepreneurial in nature. Bob has been working with emerging brands, establishing and managing broker and distributor networks for the past 20+ years. After practicing law for ten years (partner for eight years), specializing in litigation and business law, he became the Senior Vice President/Chief Operating Officer of Mootch & Muck, Inc., a metro New York beverage and specialty food distributor. As the COO, the Company sold over 1,000,000 cases of Evian Water and had sales of $18,000,000. After negotiating the sale of the Evian Water distribution agreement, Bob acquired two micro-brew beers: Perry's Majestic Beer (an organic beer) and Post Road Ale as well as the Leroux Creek Applesauce brand. As President of the parent company, Perry's Majestic Beer, Inc., sales of the brands were increased and subsequently sold. Bob established distribution systems through his brand management company, H & H Day, Inc. for the Evian brand as well as for microbrew beers, specialty foods, applesauce (national distribution through the Natural Food Chain Supermarkets such as Whole Foods, Fresh Fields, Bread & Circus and Wild Oats and such national natural food distributors as United Natural Foods and Tree of Life), and new age beverages. Bob has also successfully managed a successful IPO, a secondary offering, and has raised capital for all of the companies he has been involved in. As the Chief Operating Officer of Phlo Corporation, the manufacturer of the McCoy's and ZO beverage brands, Bob was responsible for all of the operations of the company including sales, marketing and production.
Robert Sipper
PRINCIPALS
Bill Sipper is Managing Partner at Cascadia Managing Brands. He founded Cascadia Consulting Group in 2003 and merged with Managing Brands to form Cascadia Managing Brands in 2012. He has held senior-level sales, marketing, operations, as well as c-level positions at several of the top beverage marketers in the world including Evian, Clearly Canadian, Nantucket Nectars, Fresh Samantha/Odwalla, and Ultimate Juice Company which owned Naked Juice and Zeigler’s Apple Cider, before selling to Pepsico. Fresh Samantha Odwalla was sold to Coco Cola. Nantucket Nectars was sold to Ocean Spray. Bill has been helpful in acquiring and selling companies and has often led the transition from one to the other.
Bill served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Tear of the Clouds. A for profit environmental charity that has donated over $1,000,000 to environmental charities.
His market reach and depth of knowledge of the food and beverage industry includes the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Sipper's track record for helping develop rising brands is unparalleled and will be key to any brand's development and deployment.
Bill has been featured on several episodes of the TV Food Network's "Unwrapped" and in a PBS documentary called "The Water Wars." He has been a guest speaker at Columbia University School of Business, and has given many speeches throughout the world including addresses at the Third Annual Bottled Water Congress in Torino, Italy, the Pan Arab Congress on Osteoporosis in Tunisia, Natural Products Expo East (Baltimore), Natural Products Expo Asia (Hong Kong), Innobev US (New York), BevNet Live (NY and CA) and others. He has been quoted in several trade and consumer publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal, Beverage World, Barrons, New York Times and even Playboy Magazine. Bill's articles have been printed various industry publications throughout the world. He is a frequent contributor at BevNet Live and Project Nosh and is a Judge for FoodBev Media’s Innovation Awards.
Bill was an original Advisory Board Member of The Walden Woods Project (www.walden.org) for 18 years and a two time member of the Board of Directors of the National Osteoporosis Foundation (www.nof.org). He remains active in philanthropic and political causes.
Cascadia Managing Brands have helped many brands successfully navigate sales and marketing in the food and beverage space. Brands include Zico Coconut Water, Hint Water, C2O Coconut Water, Rubicon Exotic Fruit Juices (UK), WOW Nutrition (Brazil), The TH Company (Vietnam), Steaz, Pre Antioxidant Drink (Dubai) and more. Cascadia Managing Brands consults for preeminent beverage companies worldwide.
Bill Sipper
ADVISORS
Frank Freguletti has 20 years of experience in the consumer products industry. He has significant experience and accomplishments in new product development and introductions, speed-to-market efficiency, strategic thinking, technology management, operations, logistics and productivity.
He has provided technical consulting services to company's such as Pepsi-Cola, where he has worked with both the R&D and Concentrate Operations executive teams to develop long-term, multiple-business/function strategic and technology plans across the $9B Pepsi-Cola portfolio.
He has held numerous leadership positions with Nabisco and General Foods, where his experiences and responsibilities ranged from Engineering and Operations/Logistics to Product Development, Quality Assurance/Regulatory and Strategic Development.
Frank Freguletti
Al Gever
Al Gever is a seasoned business executive with a strong track record of creating business value. He has over 30 years of general and financial management experience in consumer products, with a career focus in finance, planning and business development, and procurement. He has built and led high-performance teams at multi-billion dollar organizations as well as small and start-up enterprises and has a track record of leveraging his entrepreneurial leadership style and broad business background to deliver strong results.
Al's current consulting assignments include: (i) acting as President of an import company, leading the introduction of a unique beverage from Europe into the US market; and (ii) acting as Chief Financial Officer of an emerging beverage company, providing leadership and support in the areas of general management, capital raising, and financial modeling/forecasting.
Previous Positions & Key Accomplishments:
Al served as Chief Financial Officer of the Ultimate Juice company where he restructured the portfolio of the Company, divesting assets to provide portfolio focus, reduce debt and optimize cash flow. He designed and implemented financial controls and reporting systems to monitor performance.
Before joining the Ultimate Juice company, Al spent the obligatory time in the internet start up business as Co-Founder & President of ShareMax, Inc. He started the tech-based strategic procurement business raising nearly $20M in investment capital.
Al served as Executive Vice President, Beatrice Foods Group — ConAgra, Inc. and led the integration of ConAgra's acquisition of the Nabisco Refrigerated Foods Group. He created the strategy for the newly-integrated $1.5B business.
Prior to joining ConAgra, Al served as General Manager & Chief Financial Officer of Nabisco's Refrigerated Foods Group which included Egg Beaters, Snackwells' Chocolate Yogurt, Flesichman's and Blue Bonnet margarines, etc. In his position he led the development of Nabisco's Private Label Margarine business and cholesterol lowering spreads. He led the acquisition of Kraft North American Tablespreads $200M business which became the best performing acquisition at Nabisco in 20 years. He then sold Nabisco's Refrigerated Food Group, a division that was not profitable until he took the reigns, to ConAgra for $500M, $100M over the expected price.
Prior to that, Al served as Vice President of Global Procurement at Nabisco during which time he developed word class procurement strategies for this multi national, multi-billion dollar company. Nabisco saved over $300M dollars because of Al's strategies.
James J. Harford
Jim Harford was born in Albany, New York and grew up in the New York City metro area.. He joined the army after high school and participated in a 6 month active duty and 7 1/2 year reserve obligation and enrolled at Fordham University after completing his active duty training assignment. Mr. Harford was graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting in 1960.
After graduating, Harford entered the soft drink industry as an independent owner-operator distributor for Joyce Beverages, which at the time, was the largest Seven Up bottler in the world. He subsequently managed the Washington Seven Up Bottling Co. and later joined Royal Crown Cola in 1967 and became the youngest corporate Vice President in the company's history in 1969.
He left Royal Crown Cola in 1972 and managed bottling plants for Canada Dry in San Francisco and Chicago before returning to R. C. as Vice President, Sales & Marketing and later President of Company Owned plants, before leaving again in 1978 to become President of Canada Dry Mid-South in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1980, Harford was recruited by Citicorp Venture Capital and the Coca Cola Co. to become President of Mid-Atlantic Coca Cola Bottling Co., the first large leveraged buyout ( LBO ) in the soft drink industry. Mid-Atlantic grew organically by 39% in case volume over the next 5 years and became the low cost producer in the Coca Cola system. The company achieved the highest profitability of any operation with a parent company investment under Harford's leadership.
Mr. Harford was recruited to become Chairman of Joyce Beverages, the company where he started in 1984, and later became President of The Seven Up Company in 1987, when the national company in Dallas, TX , was acquired from Philip Morris by a group of investors formed by Tom Hicks. Under Harford's leadership, 7-UP brands achieved the first volume increase in 8 years and generated an operating profit of 41 million dollars compared with a prior year loss under the ownership of Philip Morris.
Mr. Harford left the business when the company was sold to Prudential-Bache in 1990, and moved to St. Simons Island, GA where he invested in real estate and restaurants. He re-entered the soft drink business again as C.O.O. of All American Bottling Co., a large Seven Up – R.C. bottler in the central U.S. in 1994 and later managed Everfresh-LaCroix for National Beverage Co. He subsequently managed the Asian business for Monarch Beverage Company and Eon Beverage Group , which marketed a structured bottled Mr. Water product for the health food channels.
Mr. Harford has operated a beverage consulting practice which has involved carbonated, non-carbonated, bottled water and juice products, both in the U.S and Internationally and joined Cascadia Managing Brands in 2008.
Michael is the Founder and President of Do Good Marketing – a marketing and advertising agency based in Ridgewood, NJ. Do Good Marketing represents the evolution of Michael’s vision to use business to make the world a better place. Ever the idealist, Michael has helped clients in the real world such as: Adler Aphasia Center, Alpha Wire Corporation, American Red Cross, Bergen Catholic High School, Change for Kids, Children’s Aid & Family Services, Chilton Memorial Hospital, Continental Tires, Covenant House, Fairfield University, Fidelity Investments, Golf Magazine, Habitat for Humanity, Holy Name Hospital, Ilford Photo Corporation, Jaguar Cars, Kaman Music Corporation, KPMG, Lenox Hill Hospital, LP Italy, Lincoln Mercury, Lipton, Manhattan Labs, Massey Quick Wealth Advocates, Merck Medco, MGM/UA, Morris County Surgical Center, NAPA Auto Parts. Nyack Hospital, Palisades Financial, Perugina, RIA (Research Institute of America), REED Academy, St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center, Steuben Glass, Samuel Goldwyn, SAAB, Tuxedo Park School, U.S. Golf & Entertainment, Vigon International and Volvo.
Michael Haviland
Jason Kern
Jason Kern is an integrity driven business executive with big picture vision, who is an expert in building leading, fast moving consumer brands. He is a results driven change agent with a track record of exceeding revenue, profit and market share growth targets within both mature and start-up business environments. His ability to drive change and turn around poor performing business units is evidenced in the impact he’s had through his numerous assignments in sales, sales support, trade marketing, operations and human resources at both Altria (a Fortune 500 company) and NJOY (the leading independent e-vapor brand in the U.S.). Throughout his 15 years in CPG, Jason has perfected the art of complex problem solving, new business development, and the creation, improvement and implementation of people, process and program infrastructure. Jason is known for rolling his sleeves up and doing whatever it takes to get the job done and meet deadlines. His tenacity, incredibly strong business acumen and keen understanding of his customer’s needs have helped him cultivate influential partnerships amongst many of the nation’s leading wholesale and retail customers (including McLane, Core-Mark, Costco, Albertson’s Safeway, Chevron, Circle K, ampm, etc.). Jason has been sought out as a strategic thought partner by several trade organizations and leading CPG consulting firms, including being asked to join the SIGMA Membership and NATO Strategic Planning Committees. As employee #14 at NJOY, Jason was a critical driver of the company’s meteoric rise in valuation, resulting in the company being named #6 on Forbe’s “Hottest Startups of 2014”, alongside other leading companies such as: Zenefits (#1), Uber (#3), The Honest Company (#9) and Airbnb (#15), to name a few.
Cydney A. Whitmoyer founded Parkside Beverage in 1996. She has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and already established non-alcoholic beverage companies to formulate their new brands. Clients deal directly with Cydney to work through the process of idea to commercial bottling at contract manufacturers. These custom formulations are owned by the client.
Born and raised in York County, PA, and upon receiving a B.S. in Food Science from Penn State University, her career began in Connecticut at Cadbury Schweppes. Early projects focused on the Mott’s Brands and then moved into all soda brands in North America. At that time, brands included Canada Dry, Hires, Sunkist, Crush, etc.
McCormick and Wild, Inc. In Hunt Valley, MD was the next stop for several years creating anything and everything non-alcoholic beverage related in mostly fruit flavor applications. Her Cadbury Schweppes training in soda and juice calculations was instrumental in working with the new team there. Needing to relocate coincided with the dissolution of McCormick and Wild, thus becoming the perfect time to begin her own company.
She utilizes a common sense and very direct approach while literally handling everything herself. This results in new brand owners having a true sense of the process, how to speak the beverage language and, finally to have a product in the bottle that is safe, properly formulated and something they own and control 100%.