From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

LEFT: Scott McCain presents
an award to a Grand Falls
employee.
MIddLE: Allison McCain
(centre), in Turkey, 1998. Han
van den Hoek, vice-president
of agriculture for continental
Europe, is on the far left;
beside him is Folkert Sneep,
CEO for northern, central,
and eastern Europe.
rIGhT: Michael McCain and
Bill Boehm of Kroger at a
McCain party, c.1992.
By the 1980s, the days of Wallace and Harrison pounding the pavements trying to
convince restaurant chefs of the advantages of frozen french fries were long gone. The
company had built up a full-time sales force, one of whose members was Wallace’s
son, Michael. After graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a business
degree, Michael stayed in London, Ontario, to begin his McCain sales career,
later moving to Hamilton.
When Michael moved to Florenceville to work in marketing, his mentor was
Archie McLean, senior vice-president of marketing, who later became CEO of
McCain Foods Canada. He sent Michael a note upon his arrival. “I don’t care if your
name is McCain,” the note read. “That’s not worth a cup of coffee to me. Time to get
to work.”
A year later, McLean gave him another piece of advice that stayed with him.
Michael was complaining about not having enough responsibility to get necessary
things done. McLean told him, “Don’t ever forget this: responsibility is 90 percent
taken and 10 percent given.”
Michael wasn’t the only member of the McCain family eager for responsibility.
Allison McCain, chairman of McCain Foods Limited, worked his way up from
draftsman in the Florenceville engineering department to coldstore manager and
production manager in Florenceville, manufacturing director in Australia and then
the United Kingdom, and CEO of McCain GB.
Michael’s brother, Scott, started as production supervisor in the Scarborough
plant in England, then had several production positions in Florenceville before
becoming manufacturing director for McCain Refrigerated, a cheese business in
Oakville, Ontario. He also was general manager of the Grand Falls, New Brunswick,
operation, which includes potato-processing, pizza, and juice factories. Scott and
his family moved to Grand Falls, helping to cement good relationships among the
McCain family and company, its employees, and the community. Scott later became
vice-president of manufacturing for McCain Foods Canada.
Harrison’s son Peter joined McCain Foods Canada in 1981. He took the manufacturing
training program in Florenceville and then worked as a salesman. Peter
had a series of management jobs before being appointed vice-president for export
sales for McCain Foods Canada. In 1994 he became the first president of McCain
International. Peter died in a snowmobile accident in 1997.
Harrison’s other son, Mark, for many years worked as a business analyst for the
corporate development department and was instrumental in launching the company’s
South African business, of which he is chairman.
In family-owned businesses, the issue of who will lead the company once the
founding entrepreneur steps down often provokes discord. That was certainly the
case for McCain Foods. The company needed to plan for a future without Harrison
and Wallace. But the brothers couldn’t agree on what that plan should be. Their inability
to reach agreement led to an open family dispute that damaged the working
relationship that had so successfully built McCain Foods into a major multinational
company.
Most families avoid the problem of next-generation leadership by selling the
business. According to the Business Development Bank of Canada, only 30 percent
of family-owned businesses are passed on to the second generation. Only
10 percent move on to the third generation, and subsequent succession rates are
less than 5 percent.
156 f rom the Ground up
the home front 157
LEFT: Peter McCain on a 1989
sales trip to Japan.
rIGhT: Mark McCain (second
from left), on a feasibility
study trip to South Africa
during the 1990s. Ponnie
Marais of the West Free State
Seed Growers Association is
on the far right.