Naturally Fresh, Inc.

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Naturally Fresh, Inc.

1000 Naturally Fresh Boulevard
Atlanta, Georgia 30349
U.S.A.
Telephone: (404) 765-9000
Toll Free: (800) 765-1950
Web site: http://www.naturallyfresh.com

Private Company
Incorporated: 1966 as Eastern Foods Inc.
Employees: 340
Sales: $120 million (2006 est.)
NAIC: 311421 Fruit and Vegetable Canning

Naturally Fresh, Inc., is a private company based in Atlanta, Georgia, that manufactures and distributes natural salad dressings, sauces and marinades, dips, syrups, oils and vinegars, spring water, and seasonal items such as eggnog to both the retail-consumer and foodservice markets. In addition, the company offers soups, sandwich spreads, condiments, quiche mix, and dressing mixes to its foodservice customers. Most items are packaged under the Naturally Fresh label, but the company also sells an Australian-style barbecue sauce under the Jackaroo name. Naturally Fresh products are manufactured at a state-of-the-art, 250,000-square-foot plant capable of turning out 25,000 gallons of product each day. The company also maintains about 30 distribution centers across the country, owns its own refrigerated truck fleet, and staffs a research and development department and a quality and control laboratory.

FOUNDER, A CHILD OF THE DEPRESSION

Naturally Fresh was founded by Robert H. Brooks, who would become known to friends by his middle name, Howell, and better known to the general public as the chairman of the Hooters restaurant chain. Born in February 1937 on a 100-acre tobacco Farm in Conway, South Carolina, near Myrtle Beach, he was one of six children. Although his father took on occasional dredging work and stints on the Wilmington, North Carolina, docks to supplement the family income, their farm still lacked running water and electricity, relying on a well and an outhouse. The family also raised chickens and traded excess eggs for staples at the general store. Brooks grew up accustomed to hard work; his first paying job was to light the stoves at his elementary school before the other students arrived, for which he received his lunch.

While in high school, Brooks soured on hardscrabble farming during the exceptionally dry summer of 1954. Finding it nearly impossible to plow a cornfield in the hard ground with just a mule, he simply gave up. “After one row, me, myself, God and everybody knew that corn was not going to grow. I slid the plow back in the barn,” he told the Sun News in a 2003 profile. Later that summer he and a cousin visited Clemson University, where his uncles had graduated, and he discovered an available loan scholarship program. Never an especially good student, he took enough remedial classes to gain admission to Clemson. With the loan and a job bussing tables at the cafeteria he was able to work his way through school, changing his major a number of times before earning a degree in dairy science in 1960.

Brooks found work in dairy sales in South Carolina, and in 1961 he moved to Atlanta to work as a sales engineer, before being drafted into the Army. After his discharge, Brooks returned to Atlanta to continue his career with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based, Germantown Manufacturing Co., a food formula firm with operations in the city. During his five-year stint, Brooks was involved in the development of a milkshake formula for Burger King and other fast-food restaurant products. On his own he developed a vegetable-based, nondairy coffee creamer, which he sold to Eastern Airlines. He claimed never to have been especially interested in running his own company, but because he needed to produce his creamer he quit his job to start a manufacturing company. Thus, in 1966, at the age of 30, he used $10,000 in savings to lease a 4,000-squarefoot facility in Atlanta and began what would one day become Naturally Fresh. For a name he chose Eastern Foods Inc., perhaps influenced by Eastern Airlines. Brooks told Business Week, “I picked a big-sounding name because if people had realized how little we were, they wouldn’t have bought from us.”

Eastern Foods soon expanded beyond creamer to offer a variety of products in the 1970s for the foodservice industry. The company’s biggest customer during this period was Waffle House, which bought batter and at one point accounted for about 80 percent of Eastern Food’s revenues. To service this account and others, the company opened its first distribution center. In 1980 the company introduced a line of preservative-free salad dressings, dips, oils, and vinegars that it marketed under the Naturally Fresh Brand to restaurants as well as supermarkets. Later it added the Jackaroo line of meat sauce items. The success of Eastern Foods made Brooks a wealthy man. Uncomfortable with life in the large city of Atlanta, he was able to afford to move his family to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and commute to Atlanta as necessary.

BROOKS INVESTS IN HOOTERS: 1984

Over the years Brooks became involved in a number of business ventures including a hotel in Lakeland, Florida; three motor speedways; and Hallbrook Productions, an Atlanta studio that produced corporate training videos and commercials for his other ventures, including the Hooters restaurant chain. Brooks’ connection to Hooters began in 1984 when he lent $50,000 to a friend, Hugh Connerty, who had invested in Hooters.

Hooters had been launched a year earlier in Clearwater, Florida, as a beach bar concept that featured drinks, finger foods such as hot wings, a juke box, and scantily clad waitresses. The businessmen friends who started the business, the “Hooters Six,” had no background in the restaurant field and no particular aspirations for the bar. They simply created the kind of place they liked to visit. Connerty ran Atlanta-based Neighborhood Restaurants of America and was scouting Florida for a steak-house chain he had established when he happened upon Hooters one night. He was immediately struck by Hooters’ commercial potential and secured the expansion and franchise rights for Neighborhood Restaurants, and then formed Hooters of America Inc. (HOA). The Hooters cofounders retained the trademark and the rights to build more Hooters restaurants in the Tampa Bay area.

Connerty began opening Hooters units in the southeast but because he lacked capital he went back to Brooks for more cash. When Connerty had trouble repaying the loans Brooks found himself with a stake in HOA. When Brooks finally paid a visit to a Hooters restaurant he was not particularly impressed with the operation, which derived about 70 percent of its sales from beer and wings. Nevertheless, he recognized that the concept had potential and when Connerty continued to struggle financially, he called in his loans in 1988 and seized control of HOA.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

While Naturally Fresh has grown to become one of the leading refrigerated salad dressing companies in the United States, we still remain dedicated to bringing you the best products possible.

Brooks, determined to do business in his own way, soon clashed with Hooters Inc., operated by the Hooters Six. The founders were pleased that Brooks expanded the chain across the country but objected to his insistence that the restaurants buy their salad dressings and other products from Eastern Foods. Moreover, the founders’ tongue-in-cheek approach to the Hooters sense of sex appeal was lost on Brooks. For example, he advocated replacing the servers’ cotton tank tops with form-fitting Lycra, a move that went beyond what the founders considered good taste. Because Hooters Inc. was the licensor, the cofounders maintained they had the final say over all aspects of the restaurant operations. Brooks, however, was not receptive to taking directions, and when an opportunity arose he bought out one of the cofounders to gain a 51 percent controlling stake in Hooters Inc. The five other cofounders went to Florida court where in 1995 they successfully argued that they had the right to first refusal and took back control of Hooters Inc.

The clash within Hooters continued through the rest of the 1990s, and Eastern Foods’ role as stipulated supplier to the chain remained one of the key issues in the lawsuits that were traded between the sides. Along the way, the warring parties began to develop an odd friendship, allowing the executives of the two companies to fight during the day and then enjoy dinner together at night. Finally the Hooters entities reached a settlement on the last of the lawsuits in 2001, when HOA agreed to pay $60 million for the Hooters trademark and Hooters Inc. was allowed to open a Hooters hotel and casino in Las Vegas and develop the Hollywood, California, market. Brooks was free to run HOA without interference. He expanded the Hooters concept around the world and extended the brand to new ventures, including the 2003 incarnation of Hooters Air, a small airline that operated between Atlanta and the golfing communities of Myrtle Beach. While the restaurant chain soon became a $1 billion enterprise, Hooters Air did not work out as a commercial carrier and ultimately became a charter flight operation.

In addition to running Hooters and his other business interests, Brooks continued to serve as the chairman of the board of Eastern Foods. By the turn of the new century, the company, fueled by sales to the expanded Hooters chain, topped $100 million in annual revenues. The Naturally Fresh brand of products had long since become the focus of the company’s business, resulting in the establishment of a 250,000-square-foot production facility, research and development capabilities, a nationwide distribution system, and a fleet of refrigerated trucks. At the start of the 2000s, when many companies were retrenching due to a sputtering economy, Eastern Foods continued to grow. In 2002, for example, it opened three new branches while upgrading two others.

NAME CHANGE: 2003

Because Naturally Fresh was Eastern Foods’ dominant brand, on January 1, 2003, the company changed its name to Naturally Fresh, Inc. Two more branches were added over the course of the year, bringing the total number of branches to 26. Another branch, located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, was added in the summer of 2004.

In addition to expanding its operations to serve a wider customer base, the company’s research and development efforts led to a steady introduction of new products. In 2004 Naturally Fresh unveiled a new ginger dressing to take advantage of the growing demand for Asian-style products. It also extended its best-selling Bleu Cheese line of salad dressings with the introduction of Classic Bleu Cheese and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette, the latter also catering to the growing market for Italian dressings. To make further inroads in this segment, later in 2004 Naturally Fresh brought out a new line of Italian dressings that included Italian Herb Vinaigrette, Four Cheese Italian Dressing, and Lite Italian Dressing. Also in 2004, the company introduced a new package size for many of its dressings, a 1.5-ounce, 60-millimeter cup, designed to accompany packaged salads. In 2005 the company looked to take advantage of the growing marinade market by adding three new items to the product line: Seven Pepper, Lemon Pepper, and Southwest marinade. Naturally Fresh also received kosher certification for 13 of its most popular products in 2005, adding potential sales to observant Jews and Muslims as well as appealing to a portion of the general public who viewed kosher products as higher in quality.

Product introductions continued in 2006 when Naturally Fresh offered Ranch and Bleu Cheese Seasoning Mixes to foodservice customers. The 3.1-ounce packages produced one gallon of dressing. Later in the year the company added a 1 ounce Ranch Seasoning Mix for the retail market that yielded 16 fluid ounces. More noteworthy in 2006 was the loss of the company’s founder and chairman. On a Sunday morning in July 2006, after Brooks failed to appear for breakfast at a local restaurant, his wife and a neighbor found him dead in his home in Myrtle Beach. A diabetic, he had suffered from poor health for many years. He was 69 years old.

KEY DATES

1937:: Founder Robert H. Brooks is born.
1966:: Brooks starts Eastern Foods Inc. in Atlanta.
1980:: Naturally Fresh brand introduced.
2003:: Eastern Foods becomes Naturally Fresh, Inc.
2006:: Company founder Brooks dies.

Naturally Fresh carried on without Brooks. In 2007 it launched a new line of fruit inspired dressings developed with Clemson University’s Food Science department: Mixed Berry, Mandarin Ginger, Pomango, and Apple Cranberry Walnut. The company also introduced a new line of seven organic dressings: Greek Feta, Orange Miso, Peppercorn Ranch, Raspberry Vinaigrette, White Balsamic, Sun Dried Tomato & Garlic, and Aged Balsamic & Olive Oil Vinaigrette.

Ed Dinger