When Michael Finete arrived at Mary’s Gone Crackers in July 2023 as the new chief executive officer, he knew the business needed some work, but he also recognized that the brand and its values of making clean label, gluten-free organic crackers and cookies were solid.

“One thing that’s always been very important to me is potential and opportunity for growth,” he said. “There were a number of things we wanted to focus on. Some things we’ve already completed; other things are ongoing. I’m really happy about our strategies in terms of growing the topline, fixing and optimizing our operation and taking a look at our products.”

In less than a year, the 425,000-square-foot gluten-free plant in Reno, Nev., doubled capacity, improved on-time in-full (OTIF) delivery from about 80% to 99%, and took several steps to make the company a leader in the gluten-free organic cracker and cookie categories.

“When I saw this company, it was not very proactive,” Finete explained. “It had a lot of things to fix and improve, but at the heart of the company, the brand, the products, the consumers’ image and perception about what the brand means were very deep and authentic. All that connected to who I am, with sustainability and authenticity being very important to me personally.”

The company takes pride in supporting regenerative agriculture, sourcing from family farms and producing healthy, high-quality products. Moreover, it’s raising the profile of the brand through improved marketing, expanded R&D efforts, and revamped branding and packaging. And the team is just getting started.

Mary’s Gone Crackers started in 2004, but its origins reach back to the 1990s when founder Mary Waldner, who lived in the San Francisco area, discovered she had celiac disease. She struggled to find tasty gluten-free foods, so she decided to make her own.

“There weren’t many good options for gluten-free products, gluten-free crackers especially,” Finete said. “Her development evolved from her own kitchen for her personal consumption to friends who were interested, then small stores, then it grew from there in a grassroots way.”

Waldner and her husband started a small operation that continued to grow. The company was acquired in 2013 by Kameda Seika Co., a rice cracker manufacturer in Japan. Seven years ago, the company operations moved from Gridley, Calif., into a new plant in Reno, where it currently resides. All Mary’s Gone Crackers products are made there, and it’s one of the largest gluten-free facilities in the world, according to the company. 

When Finete arrived, he found a challenge, but it’s one that he welcomed.

“I’m somebody who’s very focused on fixing things, improving things,” he said. “And I have a need to improve and grow and to look back and see certain accomplishments. I call that going from the bottom left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner. That’s what gives me satisfaction.”

One of the first things that needed attention was operations, which was suffering from too much unplanned downtime and wasted product. Nate Lindsay, vice president of operations, arrived at the plant just two weeks before Finete.

“When I got here, the equipment was in some dire straits,” Lindsay said. “In the beginning, a lot of the things you normally do in operations as far as production was lacking. From the PMs (preventative maintenance) to accountability and a lot of bottlenecks. My first step was I spent a lot of time on the floor.”

The plant lacked key performance indicators (KPIs), so the team didn’t have a way of measuring if it was succeeding or failing, he said.

“In the beginning, we were failing,” Lindsay said. “There were a lot of challenges with downtime.”

But the team started adding key people, including a top maintenance person and an automation engineer. Having the right people in key roles is vital, Finete explained.

“One thing that’s very important to me is having people who are experts in their specific areas,” he said. “A strength that I’m proud of is making good decisions, but in order to make good decisions you have to have the right information. By having the right people who have the deep expertise in many different areas really allows us to make better decisions, and I would say that’s a competitive advantage. Having the right people, having the right expertise and empowering them is really something that’s been key to our progress thus far.”

A crucial first step was eliminating the problems standing in the way of worker productivity, like equipment that was perpetually breaking down.

“Being out there on the floor, being engaged, removing barriers and demonstrating that we are removing barriers built up a lot of confidence in our leadership team,” Lindsay said. “We were able to start minimizing the downtime, start actually fixing the problems.”

The company improved understanding of their equipment by building partnerships with key suppliers, like Ishida, Bühler and Triangle, which helped them fix ongoing issues. Some of the equipment had been customized for the company, so operators needed more information to optimize it.

“Michael allowed me to bring out experts to help us train our operators, our supervisors and our maintenance team to better enhance and understand our pieces of equipment,” Lindsay said. “Then we brought in Madhu (Bangalore, automation engineer) to help us understand the data we were getting from our ovens and being able to get real-time information instead of getting information the day after.”

This article is an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Mary's Gone Crackers, click here.