Executives of the Year

Unlike in college, life gives experience first and lessons later. If that's true, the executives at Snak King have received a fistful of degrees from real life school of business.

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery selected Barry Levin and his team at Snak King as our executives of the year for several reasons. Over the years, they persevered and even thrived despite the challenges they have encountered.

Perhaps the biggest one happened in October 2004 when a 12,000-sq.-ft. section of the snack producer’s roof collapsed after days of torrential rain. More than 40,000 sq.  ft. of production space, or about one-fifth of the plant, had been knocked out of commission. However, within a week, the largely unaffected pork rind operation was up and running. Within a short period of time after that, the majority of production was running as fast as it could.

I remember visiting the company and walking through the plant with Barry Levin, the company’s chairman and CEO, about 18 months after the disaster. Production had been shoehorned into the unaffected areas of the facility. A new roof had been installed, but there was still much more to do.

This month, we followed up on this remarkable story. It not only took strength, but also teamwork, dedication, a laser-like focus on customer service and the pure will to succeed and overcome a disaster that would have forced many businessmen to throw in the towel. These are the character traits found in leaders not only in business or the snack food industry, but also in every walk of life.

Congratulations to the executive team at Snak King Corp. Check out the articles on Snak King on our home page. Or view the before and after of the event on our digital edition.