![]() Goldman stayed in a hands-on role for several years after the purchase, maintaining some semblance of innovation and creativity that seems to have entirely fled the brand now that he’s gone.īut he’s the rare exception. Though he’s never confided any frustrations to me, it couldn’t have been easy: I recall how disconcerted he was when Honest Tea, of all brands, found itself in the crosshairs of a nascent consumer boycott because parent Coca-Cola had been found to be spending millions to oppose mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. Ready to defend his organic cred to the death, but pragmatic about how many of his delicious flavors the typical Coke bottler would find room for on the truck (hardly any). Even-keeled, good-humored, able to mingle easily with the adults in Atlanta who’d bought his little contraption of a company. He seems like the kind of guy with a high emotional IQ, if you believe that concept. The one who comes to my mind is Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman. So is it possible for an entrepreneur to thrive within the corporate colossus that just acquired your company? Surveying our beverage space, I can think of very few who have, which makes me think Brenner is right. (Journalists like me may, of course, find it easier to understand this disconnect because it’s a key element of our own careers: the very qualities that lead many of us into the trade – short attention spans, disdain for authority figures – make us supremely unsuited to becoming middle managers, which, when you think about it, is really what being promoted to an editor entails.) Entrepreneurs and consultants “are like oil and water. Why do you think this is the way?’” The consultants they bring in to figure it out only make things worse. When you say, ‘Let’s try to sell in Japan,’ it’s, ‘Why Japan? Who told you it’s a market?’ But the Japanese love dark chocolate! ‘How do you know, show us research. It’s, ‘Let’s think about it, analytics, who told you this is true? Why this packaging? Why these colors? Why are you changing the brand language?’ It’s endless. ![]() The corporate process is extremely different. He wants to do things, he wants to see them happen right now. Usually, an entrepreneur is a very impulsive, gut-instinct person. His conclusion: “It’s almost like an impossible marriage. (Strauss didn’t comment.)Īs interesting, to me, though, was Brenner’s take on entrepreneurs trying to work in a corporate environment, a frequent enough occurrence in beverages as startups accept investments from strategics or sell outright to them. He was served with legal papers and found himself ousted from both enterprises, broke and stuck with a five-year non-compete. The way Brenner described it, he managed to cut himself an exceedingly poor deal in selling Max Brenner that left with him with a negligible 3.5% equity stake, he became less and less influential and engaged, and eventually won permission to tinker with a new concept – that Little Brown store – until, fairly abruptly, he was told he didn’t have permission after all. It wasn’t until I came across a remarkable profile and interview that had run in Entrepreneur magazine last spring that I realized that, at the time I encountered Brenner, the life of the good-humored entrepreneur was about to spiral into an abyss of financial ruin, anxiety and self-doubt. In fact, that store was located just a couple of blocks away from Max Brenner’s flagship store. A few years later, I heard that Brenner had zeroed in on the core constituent of chocolate, cacao, with a new retail concept called Blue Stripes. It certainly wasn’t the location: the site currently supports what seems to be a thriving Variety Coffee Roasters store. But the store didn’t last long, and I assumed it just hadn’t worked out. To me, Brenner epitomized the spirit of the serial entrepreneur, constantly observing, experimenting, tinkering with the minute details that separate success from failure. “The bald head, alert, friendly eyes and thick earring certainly made him look familiar,” as I wrote – ah, it was the chocolate guru of the Max Brenner empire, which he’d sold to Israel’s Strauss Group conglomerate. ![]() Before I ran into him at Expo West a few weeks ago, my last encounter with Oded Brenner occurred a decade ago, as I chronicled in this very space, when I blundered into a new coffee shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side called Little Brown Chocolate Bakery & Café and spotted him surveying customer activity at his new concept.
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