Most “top executive” lists in food and beverage rank by revenue. That tells you who runs the biggest company, not who’s shaping how the industry actually works.
We took a different approach. We asked a harder question: When this person speaks at a conference, publishes on LinkedIn, or makes a strategic move, do other executives in food manufacturing pay attention and adjust their own strategies?
To answer it, we evaluated executives across seven influence signals: LinkedIn platform reach, earnings call narrative-setting, M&A deal-making, conference keynote invitations, trade press visibility, policy and regulatory shaping, and transformation impact.
We deliberately looked beyond the Fortune 500. You’ll find mid-market operators whose innovation the biggest companies eventually copy. A food safety architect whose thinking is now embedded in federal regulation. Transformation leaders whose playbooks are being studied across the industry.
We also cross-referenced our picks against four major competing lists. Names that appear on every list only made ours if they demonstrated influence beyond revenue. Eight of our picks appear on no other list at all.
Here are the 25 executives who are shaping food and beverage in 2026.
1. Poul Weihrauch, CEO, Mars, Inc.
When Poul Weihrauch orchestrated Mars’s $35.9 billion acquisition of Kellanova in December 2025, he didn’t just close the largest food deal in recent history. He forced every competitor to rethink their portfolio strategy. Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, and RXBAR now sit alongside M&M’s and Snickers in a private-company empire that operates on a fundamentally different timeline than its public rivals.
“We act in generations, not in quarters,” Weihrauch has said in an IMD CEO Dialogue, a philosophy that gives Mars a structural advantage in long-term bets. He’s backed it up: 40% of top Mars leaders’ long-term compensation is tied to non-financial goals.
In the past year alone, Weihrauch has appeared on the HBR podcast, the IMD CEO Dialogue series, and CNBC alongside Steve Cahillane to discuss the Kellanova integration. His visibility isn’t accidental. It’s a signal that Mars, historically one of the most secretive companies in food, is stepping into a public leadership role under his watch.
2. Beth Ford, President & CEO, Land O’Lakes
Beth Ford has done something few food executives attempt: she’s turned a policy issue into a personal platform. As chair of the Business Roundtable’s immigration committee, she has become the most visible executive voice on the agricultural labor crisis, a position that puts her in direct conversation with lawmakers shaping workforce policy for the entire food supply chain.
Her LinkedIn presence reflects it. With 56,000 followers, her August 2025 post “A Storm Is Gathering in American Agriculture,” which was published in TIME magazine, drew nearly 1,900 likes and 173 comments, numbers that rival consumer brand CEOs with ten times the marketing budget.
Fortune ranked her #12 on the Most Powerful Women in Business list for 2025. She’s a TED speaker and Conference Board regular. But Ford’s influence extends beyond stages. When she speaks on immigration reform, it’s covered by Fortune, the New York Times, and agricultural media simultaneously, because she’s saying what other food executives are thinking but won’t say publicly.
3. Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder & CEO, Chobani
No food manufacturing CEO commands a larger audience than Hamdi Ulukaya. His 234,000 LinkedIn followers make him the most-followed executive in the industry by a massive margin, with posts averaging 2,700 likes. His TED Talk, “The Anti-CEO Playbook,” has become a reference point for a generation of food entrepreneurs who believe purpose and profit aren’t mutually exclusive.
The numbers back up the philosophy. Chobani hit $3.8 billion in net sales in 2025, a 28% year-over-year increase. Ulukaya raised $650 million in equity in October 2025 to expand production capacity, following the 2023 La Colombe acquisition that pushed Chobani into coffee.
He’s been named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People, the NatGeo 33 (2025), and received the Oslo Business for Peace Award. But Ulukaya’s influence is less about accolades and more about proof of concept: he built the #1 yogurt brand in America from an abandoned factory in upstate New York, and his model — immigration-friendly hiring, employee equity, premium positioning — is being studied by mid-market manufacturers nationwide.
4. Brian Sikes, Board Chair & CEO, Cargill
Brian Sikes runs the largest private food company on Earth. As only the 10th CEO in Cargill’s 160-year history, his moves on protein sourcing, sustainability commitments, and supply chain infrastructure ripple through every tier of the food manufacturing ecosystem.
Named to Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful People in Business in 2024, Sikes was also appointed to the John Deere board of directors in December 2025, a cross-industry signal of influence that extends well beyond food. He led the transformation of Cargill’s North America protein business before assuming the CEO role, giving him operational credibility that few peers can match.
Cargill’s sheer scale means Sikes’s strategic decisions, on everything from regenerative agriculture investments to commodity pricing, set the conditions that smaller processors operate within. When Cargill moves, the industry adjusts.
5. Sean Connolly, President & CEO, Conagra Brands
Sean Connolly is doing something rare among food company CEOs: he’s narrating his strategy in real time, publicly, and with enough specificity that competitors are taking notes. His CAGNY presentations and earnings calls have become must-follow events for food industry analysts.
His thesis? Invest through inflation rather than retreat. Conagra committed $450 million in capital expenditure for FY2026 supply chain resilience while shifting its portfolio toward frozen and snacking, categories where he sees durable consumer demand. “It’s hard to build brands when relentless pricing actions lead to protracted volume declines,” he said on a Q4 2025 earnings call, publicly pushing back on the industry’s discounting addiction.
On LinkedIn, Connolly posts weekly to his 5,000 followers, averaging 170 to 382 likes per post — consistent engagement from a CEO who treats the platform as a strategic communication channel, not an afterthought. He presented at CAGNY 2026 and regularly speaks at J.P. Morgan investor forums. His frozen-and-snacks pivot is being watched by every mid-cap food company rethinking its own portfolio.
6. Ramon Laguarta, Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo
As the leader of the largest food company in the United States, Ramon Laguarta’s strategic moves function as industry-wide signals. His $1.95 billion acquisition of poppi in 2025 declared PepsiCo’s bet on functional beverages, a signal that reverberated through every beverage startup and legacy brand simultaneously.
But Laguarta’s influence on food manufacturing runs deeper than M&A. On earnings calls, he’s been explicit about rationalizing “manufacturing nodes that are not needed anymore — the least efficient older manufacturing nodes.” This isn’t an abstract strategy. It’s a template for how the largest food companies are approaching plant optimization, automation investment, and operational efficiency.
Under Laguarta, PepsiCo has unified its North America businesses and advanced AI and technology investments across manufacturing. His automation and rationalization playbook is the one other large-cap food CEOs are benchmarking against.
7. Steve Cahillane, CEO, Kraft Heinz
No executive in food is running two major narratives simultaneously like Steve Cahillane. As the former CEO of Kellanova, he navigated the $35.9 billion sale to Mars, the industry’s biggest deal. Then, effective January 2026, he took the helm at Kraft Heinz to lead the company through a planned separation into two independent, publicly traded companies.
That combination — selling one major food company and restructuring another — puts Cahillane at the literal center of food industry transformation. His 30-plus years across Coca-Cola, AB InBev, and Kellogg/Kellanova give him a breadth of experience that few peers can claim.
In a notable development just weeks into his tenure, Cahillane paused the company’s planned split, calling the challenges “fixable and within our control” and announcing $600 million in investment to fuel a U.S. turnaround. Every food executive navigating portfolio complexity, corporate separation, or CEO transition is watching how Cahillane handles the next 18 months.
8. Kimberli Carroll, President & CEO, Ruiz Foods
Kimberli Carroll’s story is the food manufacturing industry’s story, and it’s one that no other “top executives” list tells. She spent 23 years at Ruiz Foods, rising from the operations side to COO and then to President and CEO of the largest frozen Mexican food manufacturer in the United States.
Carroll was inducted into the Convenience Store News Hall of Fame as the first female supplier executive to receive the honor. She led the most successful new product launch in Ruiz Foods’ history and was named to D Magazine’s Dallas 500 in 2025.
With over 4,000 employees across five plants and brands including El Monterey and Tornados, Ruiz Foods operates at a scale that’s big enough to matter, but private enough to move fast. Carroll’s trajectory — two decades of climbing within a single mid-market manufacturer — is exactly the career path that makes food manufacturing leadership distinctive.
9. Frank Yiannas, Founder, Smarter Fy Solutions
Frank Yiannas is the only person on this list who isn’t a CEO, and he may be the most influential of all. As the former FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response and former VP of Food Safety at Walmart, Yiannas is the architect of the FDA’s “New Era of Smarter Food Safety,” the framework that the entire industry is now implementing.
At Walmart, he pioneered blockchain-based food traceability that reduced trace times from days to seconds. He’s past president of the International Association for Food Protection, past vice-chair of the Global Food Safety Initiative, a Michigan State University professor, and the author of two published books on food safety culture.
With over 25,000 LinkedIn followers and a relentless posting cadence on traceability and safety culture, Yiannas remains the industry’s most cited voice on food safety. He delivered the closing keynote at FSX 2025 and is leading a Food Safety Culture Workshop in 2026. His thinking isn’t just influential, it’s embedded in the regulation that every food manufacturer must follow.
10. Jeff Harmening,Chairman & CEO, General Mills
Jeff Harmening proved that legacy food companies can reinvent themselves, and the proof is a dog. His $8 billion Blue Buffalo acquisition in 2018 transformed General Mills from a cereal-and-yogurt company into a diversified food and pet company, and in 2025, he launched a national fresh pet food line targeting a $3 billion market.
“Our new product news is the best I have seen since I’ve been CEO,” Harmening said on a recent earnings call, a statement that reflects the confidence of a leader who bet big on category expansion and won. His stated priority for fiscal 2026 is restoring volume-driven organic sales growth, a goal that has him investing in innovation rather than retreating to cost-cutting.
Harmening opened CAGNY 2026, the first presentation of the conference. When the industry’s most important annual gathering begins, General Mills sets the tone.
11. Shane Smith, President & CEO, Smithfield Foods
Shane Smith is navigating one of the most structurally complex leadership situations in food. In January 2025, he led Smithfield Foods through its Nasdaq IPO, the first major pork company to go public in years, while parent company WH Group retained the vast majority of ownership.
That dual reality — public-market accountability with concentrated Chinese ownership — makes every strategic decision Smith makes a case study in corporate governance. Smaller food companies in similar ownership structures are watching closely.
Smith joined Smithfield in 2003 and has served in leadership across both U.S. and international operations. He’s been an executive director at WH Group since 2021. His challenge isn’t just operational. It’s navigating the intersection of global ownership, U.S. public markets, and the political dynamics of protein production at a time when all three are in flux.
12. Mark Smucker, CEO, President & Chair, J.M. Smucker Co.
In February 2026, Mark Smucker made a move that sent a signal across the industry: he eliminated the COO role entirely, created a new Chief Product Supply Officer position, and expanded his CFO’s scope. It was a deliberate organizational redesign that prioritized supply chain innovation at the C-suite level.
For a family company integrating a post-acquisition portfolio spanning coffee, snacking, and pet food, the restructuring reflects Smucker’s conviction that supply chain is no longer a support function. It’s a competitive weapon. He reassumed the president title alongside CEO and chairman, consolidating decision-making authority.
Mid-market food companies watching Smucker’s organizational redesign are seeing a template for how to restructure leadership around supply chain priorities without going through a full transformation initiative.
13. Kevin McDaniel, President & CEO, Wayne-Sanderson Farms
Kevin McDaniel leads the company that other food processors voted Processor of the Year. Under Wayne-Sanderson Farms’ leadership, the nation’s third-largest poultry producer posted an $8.85 billion year, a jump from $8.51 billion in 2024.
McDaniel became CEO in April 2025 after serving as COO, bringing 30-plus years in poultry including the presidency of Aviagen North America and senior roles at OK Foods and Pilgrim’s Pride. He sits on the boards of both the National Chicken Council and the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, and previously served as chairman of The Poultry Federation.
With 26,000 employees, 2,000 farm partners, and 23 processing facilities across seven states, Wayne-Sanderson operates at enormous scale, yet appears on no other “top executives” list. McDaniel’s operational playbook is what drives the kind of performance that earns industry recognition, not just revenue rankings.
14. Carrie Jones-Barber, CEO, Dawn Food Products
Carrie Jones-Barber has been CEO of Dawn Food Products since 2006, nearly two decades leading a global bakery ingredients and distribution company that most “top executives” lists don’t even know exists. Dawn doesn’t file 10-Ks. It’s family-owned. And under Jones-Barber’s leadership, it has grown into a global operation with 4,000 team members worldwide.
Her career trajectory is remarkable: she rose from sales representative to CIO to international president to CEO. She serves on the American Bakers Association Board and the WMU Advisory Council, and has been recognized by the Society of Bakery Women. She’s spoken at the Forbes Global CEO Conference and the American Bakers Association Annual Conference.
Jones-Barber represents an entire tier of food manufacturing leadership that’s invisible to lists that only track public companies. She’s one of the longest-tenured female CEOs in the industry, leading a company that touches bakeries worldwide, proof that influence in food manufacturing doesn’t require a stock ticker.
15. Brendan Foley, CEO, McCormick & Company
In 2025, Brendan Foley gave food manufacturing a real-time masterclass in tariff mitigation. When McCormick disclosed $140 million in gross annualized tariff exposure, the industry braced for impact. Then Foley demonstrated aggressive mitigation strategies that cut the net exposure to $70 million, and every food executive facing similar pressures started taking notes.
The 11th CEO in McCormick’s 135-year history, Foley joined the company in 2014 and rose from COO to the top role. He’s a Business Roundtable member, has appeared on CNBC, and sat for a Bain & Company CEO interview. He presented at CAGNY 2026 and spoke at the Deutsche Bank Consumer Conference in June 2025.
Foley’s influence is specific and timely: in an era where tariffs, supply chain disruption, and ingredient cost volatility are the defining operational challenges, McCormick’s playbook is the one being referenced in boardrooms across the industry.
16. Richard Ferranti, CEO, Rich Products
Rich Products is a $5.8 billion company with 13,000 employees, more than 2,000 products sold in 112 countries, and a publicly stated goal of reaching $6 billion. It has been privately held since its founding in 1945. And unless you work in food manufacturing, you’ve probably never heard of it.
Richard Ferranti is only the fourth CEO in the company’s history. He joined in 1986 (39 years of institutional knowledge) and represents the massive private food company tier that operates at genuine scale while remaining below the radar of public markets, analysts, and most industry lists.
Ferranti’s inclusion here is deliberate. Rich Products is exactly the kind of company that defines food manufacturing’s middle market: large enough to compete globally, private enough to invest for the long term, and invisible enough that its leadership rarely gets the recognition it deserves.
17. Ryals McMullian, Chairman & CEO, Flowers Foods
Ryals McMullian is demonstrating how a traditional bakery company can expand into adjacent categories without losing its identity. His 2025 acquisition of Simple Mills for $795 million, a better-for-you snacking brand, signals a strategic pivot beyond Flowers Foods’ bread-and-bakery core into a category with higher growth rates and younger consumers.
McMullian joined Flowers in 2003 and held roles spanning chief strategy officer, M&A lead, deputy general counsel, and COO before becoming CEO in 2019. That breadth means he understands both the deal mechanics and the operational integration that make acquisitions work.
With brands including Nature’s Own, Dave’s Killer Bread, Wonder, and Tastykake, Flowers’ portfolio now spans traditional bakery, premium organic, and better-for-you snacking. The Simple Mills deal is a case study in bolt-on acquisition strategy for mid-market food companies looking to expand without transformative risk.
18. Steve Oakland, Chairman, CEO & President, TreeHouse Foods
Steve Oakland runs the company that makes what’s actually on the shelf when you buy store-brand food. TreeHouse Foods is North America’s largest private-label food and beverage producer, and as private label continues to gain share, Oakland’s strategic decisions affect a growing portion of what Americans eat.
With 40 years in food and beverage, including a VP role at J.M. Smucker, Oakland brings institutional knowledge that spans the industry. He was appointed to The Andersons board in August 2025, reflecting cross-sector recognition.
Oakland’s influence is structural. Private label isn’t a trend, but a permanent shift in how consumers buy food. The executive leading the largest company in that space is, by definition, shaping how the industry responds.
19. Michael Smith, President & CEO, Lamb Weston
At 48, Michael Smith is the youngest CEO on this list, and he inherited one of its toughest assignments. When he took over Lamb Weston in January 2025, the company was already in the middle of plant closures, production curtailments, and headcount reductions. This isn’t a growth story. It’s a turnaround story.
Smith had served as COO since May 2023 and previously ran Lamb Weston’s Foodservice, Retail, Marketing, and Innovation divisions. His operational experience across the company gives him credibility for the restructuring ahead.
Every food manufacturing executive facing overcapacity, margin compression, or the need to rationalize a production footprint is watching how Smith navigates the next two years. His playbook (and whether it works) will become a reference point for the industry.
20. Mick Beekhuizen, President & CEO, The Campbell’s Company
Mick Beekhuizen became the 15th CEO in Campbell’s 155-year history in February 2025, taking the helm of a company mid-transformation. His predecessor completed the $2.7 billion Sovos Brands acquisition, bringing Rao’s into the portfolio, and rebranded the company from “Campbell Soup” to “The Campbell’s Company.” Beekhuizen’s job is to make that transformation deliver.
He joined as CFO in 2019, then led the Meals & Beverages division, which represents more than 50% of company sales. That operational experience, combined with financial rigor, positions him for the integration work ahead.
The Campbell’s-to-Campbell’s Company rebrand is more than cosmetics. It signals a portfolio-first strategy that other legacy food brands — companies defined by a single iconic product — may follow. Beekhuizen’s execution will determine whether the rebrand thesis holds.
21. Darlene Nicosia, CEO, Hearthside Food Solutions
Most consumers have never heard of Hearthside Food Solutions. But if you’ve eaten a granola bar, cookie, or snack from a major brand, there’s a good chance Hearthside made it. As one of the largest co-manufacturers in the food industry, Hearthside is the hidden backbone of brand-name food production.
Darlene Nicosia brought 30-plus years of CPG experience to the CEO role, including serving as President of Canada and the Northeast U.S. Zone at Coca-Cola and holding procurement and supply chain leadership roles at PepsiCo and Kraft Foods. She also serves on the board of Foot Locker.
As more food brands outsource production, co-manufacturing becomes more strategically important, and its leader becomes more influential. Nicosia is one of only four women on this list and one of the few female CEOs in food manufacturing, leading a company whose growth is structurally tied to the industry’s biggest trend: brands focusing on marketing while outsourcing the making.
22. Peter McGuinness, President & CEO, Impossible Foods
Whether plant-based protein succeeds or fails as a mainstream food category, Peter McGuinness is the person making the strategic call. His bold 2024 rebrand repositioned Impossible Foods away from environmentalists and toward meat-eaters, a fundamental pivot that the entire food industry is watching.
McGuinness came from Chobani, where he helped scale the company from $1 billion to over $2 billion in revenue. At Impossible, he acquired Motif FoodWorks’ heme intellectual property, consolidating a core competitive advantage. He spoke at the UC Berkeley Haas Dean’s Speaker Series and the World Economy Summit in 2025.
His “forget the vegans, target the meat-eaters” thesis is the most debated strategic bet in food right now. If it works, it redefines the category. If it doesn’t, it’s still the most watched pivot in the industry, and McGuinness is the one who made the call.
23. Jim Snee, former CEO, Hormel Foods
Jim Snee’s 36-year career at Hormel culminates in a legacy defined by one audacious move: the $3.35 billion acquisition of Planters from Kraft Heinz, which made the nut brand Hormel’s largest overnight. For a company historically identified with SPAM and deli meats, the Planters bet showed that mid-market food companies can swing for the fences on transformative acquisitions.
Snee was elected Meat Institute Chairman in January 2025, the voice of the entire U.S. protein industry. He launched Hormel’s Transform and Modernize initiative, reorganizing the company’s operating model. He’s spoken at the Kansas State University Distinguished Lecture Series and presented at CAGNY 2026.
With his retirement at the end of fiscal 2025, the successor search is itself an industry storyline. Snee earned this spot not on tenure alone but on the willingness to make bets that changed what Hormel is.
24. John Richardson, Chairman & CEO, SugarCreek
John Richardson took a family-owned pork processing company doing $50 million in annual sales and grew it to over $1 billion. Since assuming leadership in 1990, he has transformed SugarCreek into a modern, technology-forward food manufacturer with six facilities across Ohio, Indiana, and Kansas, including a $36 million West Chester expansion.
What makes Richardson’s story relevant for every mid-market food manufacturer: he invested heavily in plant-floor technology, including the Ignition platform for real-time production monitoring and OT-IT convergence, without going public or taking on private equity. He was inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame in 2022.
Richardson is proof that a family-owned food manufacturer can invest in automation and digital infrastructure at scale. That’s the exact playbook that food manufacturing executives running $100 million to $500 million operations need to see.
25. Wesley Batista Filho, CEO, JBS USA
Wesley Batista Filho leads the U.S. operations of the world’s largest protein company. In May 2025, JBS received shareholder approval for a NYSE dual-listing, a watershed moment that brings the Brazilian-headquartered giant fully into U.S. public markets.
With 250-plus production facilities globally and products in 180 countries, JBS operates at a scale that makes every decision — on pricing, capacity, labor, and automation — consequential for U.S. protein processors of all sizes. Batista Filho’s leadership of North American operations means he’s making the calls that affect the competitive landscape for every beef, pork, and poultry processor in the country.
The NYSE listing is more than a financial milestone. It signals JBS’s commitment to transparency, U.S.-market accountability, and a new chapter in the global-local dynamics of protein production.
What’s next: The 2027 list
This list is a starting point, not the final word. We know there are influential executives we missed, leaders at companies we haven’t covered, voices in supply chain, technology, and food safety who deserve recognition.
For the 2027 edition, we’re considering opening nominations. If you know an executive who’s shaping the future of food manufacturing, especially leaders at mid-market companies, in operations and supply chain roles, or driving transformation that the industry needs to know about, we want to hear from you.
And if you’re an executive featured on this list (or one who should be), Food Industry Executive covers the leaders, strategies, and operational challenges shaping U.S. food manufacturing. Subscribe to stay connected to the conversations that matter.
