Meet the Faces Behind Your Favorite Food Brands

As a longtime vegetarian, Justin Gold, 41, was always on the hunt for delicious ways to add protein to his diet. When he couldn’t find good nut-butter options in the store, he began making his own butters at home in a food processor but quickly ran into a problem: “My roommates would eat them all,” he says with a laugh. “So I had to write ‘Justin’s’ on all the jars.” While working as a waiter in 2004, he started selling four nut-butter flavorsat his local farmers’ market. They were a hit, and his company took off. In 2016 he sold Justin’s, which now makes over 30 items (including the first organic peanut butter cup), to Hormel Foods for $286 million—but he still feels connected to his customers. “It’s really neat when somebody tastes our product for the first time and goes, ‘Wow, this is great!’”