All Ideas Are Welcome

Joel Demro knew it as soon as he tasted it: “We might have something here.” This was late 2022, and Demro, a retail sales director at Hormel Foods, was at a team-member potluck. The dish he tasted was brought to the gathering by Feng Walkup, an international accounts sales manager on Demro’s team. It was a pork dish, inspired by a long-cherished family recipe. “Feng put that out on the table, and it was the first thing gone,” Demro remembers. “It was absolutely delicious.”

Demro was so blown away by the dish that he approached Walkup with an unusual request. Would she be willing to share her recipe? He thought the flavor of the dish was so good, it could also be a hit with consumers nationwide.

“I asked her, ‘If you’re comfortable, I’d love to go to R&D with you and talk about creating a new item,’” Demro said. “We had already been talking for several months about how we need some innovation around our marinated line. Feng’s recipe was just so good, I had a feeling it might be a winner.”

Feng Walkup is known among her peers to be an excellent cook, and she’s used to compliments on her contributions, but she was taken aback by Demro’s request to bring her pork recipe to R&D.

“I thought he was kidding,” says Walkup, “I did not think he actually wanted my recipe. After we talked a little bit more, I knew that he was serious. So then I thought, yeah sure I would be happy to help out if that’s something we think consumers will like. I was happy to help.”

Walkup’s excitement was no surprise to Demro. “She’s Hormel Foods through and through,” he said. “You’ll have to look a long time to find a more dedicated team member than Feng.”

Creating a Culture of Innovation

Fostering a work culture that inspires team members to speak up and share their unique perspectives is vital for any successful organization, something that Hormel Foods both understands and encourages.

All 20,000 of the company’s team members, from the production floor to the C-suite, are relied upon to “speak up” with their ideas. Someone has a suggestion to improve worker safety? Let’s hear it. Wait, we can accomplish this task more efficiently? Tell me more.

Encouraging dialogue across all levels of the business helps identify challenges early, fostering a proactive approach to problem-solving while uncovering solutions that may have otherwise gone unnoticed or unheard. In pursuit of those solutions, Hormel Foods leaves no stone unturned.

“It doesn’t matter where you find ideas,” said Nate Smit, team leader of breakthrough innovation at Hormel Foods. “It doesn’t matter what your title is. The merits of the idea are all that matters. That’s what I love about our approach to innovation. If you have a good idea, just bring it.”

This culture of openness extends beyond process improvements; it can also lead to groundbreaking product innovations.

It doesn’t matter what your title is. The merits of the idea are all that matters. That’s what I love about our approach to innovation. If you have a good idea, just bring it.
Nate Smit, team leader of breakthrough innovation

From Potluck to New Product

Even the best ideas can’t survive on their own — they require follow through. For Walkup’s recipe to become a success required engagement from multiple departments, beginning with the R&D team.

To ensure the authenticity of the Hormel Foods version of her recipe, the R&D team created more than a dozen product variations to sample and tweak, taking their cues directly from Walkup. Demro got the chance to watch her work with the R&D team as they iterated, and she had the final say.

My experience shows this is a company that wants to hear people’s ideas so they can create something that is good for our consumers.
Feng Walkup, international accounts sales manager

“I would try versions of the product,” Demro said, “and I’d turn to Feng and say, ‘Wow, this is delicious! We can’t get this to market fast enough!’ And she’d respond, ‘Hold your horses, I’m not getting enough garlic, or I’m not getting enough brown sugar.’ She was not going to settle, and we didn’t want her to settle. It was cool to see her holding our company to that level of accountability, and it was great to see our R&D scientists working with her to get it exactly right.”

The end result: HORMEL^® Sweet Garlic Ginger Marinated Pork Loin Filet, which was first launched in March 2024 and is now selling at more than twice the rate it was when it was first introduced.

“It’s an honor for me,” Walkup said. “It really is awesome that my recipe can be used by a Fortune 500 company. I would have never thought this was possible. My experience shows this is a company that wants to hear people’s ideas so they can create something that is good for our consumers.”

Walkup’s story shows that Hormel Foods is committed to exploring the potential of innovations brought forward by team members. “That’s just a part of the DNA of this company,” Smit said. “That’s the way we’ve always approached things. We have an obligation to innovate for our customers and for our consumers, and that obligation dates all the way back to when the company was founded: how can we create value for people? That’s always the goal, and we need all of our team members’ input to accomplish that goal.”

From Brainchild to Bacon Breakthrough

When Dan Vierkandt goes grocery shopping with his wife, he tends to get lost in the aisles.

“She usually loses me somewhere along the way,” said Vierkandt, product manufacturing manager at Hormel Foods. “I’m usually looking at things that I don’t necessarily want to buy, but just looking at which companies are doing what.”

During one of those grocery trips about five years ago, Vierkandt spotted a noticeable handful of frozen items that featured an oven-ready tray, which he found interesting. Things like frozen pizza, he thought, didn’t really need an oven-ready tray because it’s easy enough to throw pizza on a pan or a rack, and there’s little to no residual mess afterward.

But bacon? Different story. That got Vierkandt’s wheels turning.

“I said to myself and to my wife, you know, it’d make a lot more sense if we did a tray like that with bacon,” Vierkandt said. “Bacon is so much more time consuming and it’s so much more effort to clean up. A disposable tray would make that a lot easier to deal with.”

Just to get people to see my vision and for others to believe in it and want it, that was pretty cool.
Dan Vierkandt, product manufacturing manager

Thus began a multi-year innovation journey for Vierkandt, who initially workshopped the vision in his own kitchen before introducing the concept to Hormel Foods. He reused oven-ready pizza trays and other disposable platters, prototyping different shapes, testing different bacon varieties.

“I was running my own little R&D kitchen,” Vierkandt said.

He eventually submitted the idea as an entry in a companywide innovation contest. Vierkandt’s idea merited a place in the final round of the competition, but the outbreak of COVID-19 soon followed, which put all non-essential plans on hold. Still, the vision of oven-ready bacon never stopped percolating in his mind. Just over a year ago, the first major domino fell when a pair of large retail chains expressed particular interest in the oven-ready concept, with both requesting the product — officially dubbed HORMEL^® BLACK LABEL^® OVEN READY™ Thick Cut Bacon — for placement in 500 stores apiece.

From there, a vast cross-functional team at Hormel Foods sprang into action, bringing Vierkandt’s vision to life before his very eyes.

“There have been a few ‘holy cow’ moments in my time working at Hormel Foods. That was definitely one of them,” Vierkandt said. “Just to get people to see my vision and for others to believe in it and want it, that was pretty cool.”

Innovation thrives at Hormel Foods.

The journeys of team members like Feng Walkup and Dan Vierkandt underscore how a supportive, collaborative atmosphere can transform ideas — no matter from where in the company they originate — into impactful realities. By nurturing this environment of creativity and collaboration, Hormel Foods not only fuels its own success, but also reinforces its commitment to enhancing the lives of its valued team members, all of whom have something meaningful to offer.

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