I’ve been aware of Gary Hirshberg as an increasingly
magnetic figure for several years,
ever since I was a police reporter covering crack
dealers in northeast Massachusetts.
At the time, Hirshberg’s yogurt company,
Stonyfield Farm, was just begging to flex its
muscles on the national scene, and his presence
just across the border in New Hampshire made
him one of the area’s biggest business stories.
A friend on our business staff went to speak
with him and wrote a profile. Speaking with
me afterwards, my friend told me he’d bought
into Hirshberg’s rap all the way, that the guy
was a real mensch (good guy, to you non-Yids),
and that he’d be surprised if he spent his life
working in yogurt.
Well, it’s a few years later and Gary Hirshberg’s
become a pretty rich guy, and he’s still
working in yogurt, and also, as we note in our
cover story this month, in beverages. But I’m
starting to understand what my buddy meant –
Gary Hirshberg works in the food and beverage
industry, of course, but he’s also in the industry
of ideas. They’re the same kind of ideas that
inspired entrepreneurs like Ben & Jerry and
Alice Waters – the idea that good products
and good works can go hand in hand, and that
food and drink can be more than individual
sustenance, but something that sustains community
and ecology, as well.
We get
a lot of notifi
cations from
companies that they’re
getting involved in one kind
of charitable project or another, and that we
should publicize it, and we try to do it when
we can. And we know that when mainstream
companies do good works – and they do, with
a pleasantly increasing frequency – they can
really improve people’s lives.
But we also see some companies that are
founded on do-gooder principals, and we like
that, as well, because they take the business
model and invert it, trying to, as they all say,
“do well by doing good.”
We don’t know which way is better. As I said,
the big companies, when they go into action,
can do a lot of good. But it’s interesting to see
that we’ve reached a point where some companies
that do well by doing good are starting
to do not just well, but really well. So we thought
we should hear from at least one of them,
because we’re here to make sure that you do
really, really well, as well.
We’re living in a time when consumers are
starting to really question the impact of what
goes into their bodies, and individual products
and product arrays supplied by retailers
reflect that.
If Hirshberg
and his compadres
are correct,
we’re moving in a direction
in which products and product
arrays will have to take into account all their
ramifications, not just consumption. Production,
marketing, transportation, all might be
factored into the social and environmental impact
equation. If the mensches have the right
idea, the retailers who capitalize on these products
will do very well, indeed.
I don’t know if it’s that simple. But as we enter
the next sell-in season, it might very well be
food for thought.