New Leadership Lineup
Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. is bolstering its C-suite with two external hires: Kevin Zidron, appointed Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, and Brad Hartzell, named Chief Supply Chain Officer. The moves, announced during the cooperative's annual cranberry harvest season, signal President and CEO Abigail Buckwalter's intent to tighten operational discipline and accelerate volume growth across a portfolio that reaches more than 100 countries.
Hartzell fills a role vacated by Earl Larson, who retires at the end of September after nearly 22 years with the cooperative — an unusually long tenure for a supply chain executive in the branded consumer-packaged-goods space. His exit closes a critical window: supply chain resilience has become a central cost lever for agricultural cooperatives managing volatile input costs, logistics constraints, and seasonal harvest variability.
Executive Backgrounds
Zidron arrives with a blue-chip CPG résumé spanning Nestlé Health Science, Vital Proteins, and Kraft Heinz, where he led enterprise strategy and commercial transformation across North American and global businesses. At Ocean Spray, his mandate covers enterprise strategy, value capture, project management, commercial strategy, and insights — a scope that suggests the cooperative is looking to sharpen its revenue-growth-management capabilities and better align innovation with customer demand signals.
Hartzell brings more than 25 years in manufacturing, supply chain, and operational excellence across consumer products and ingredient businesses. His most recent post was Chief Operating Officer, Beauty & Body Solutions at KDC/ONE Development Corporation; he also served as COO at NovaTaste and spent 18 years at International Flavors & Fragrances, culminating as Vice President, Operations, Flavors North America. He holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD and began his career in the U.S. Navy — a profile that maps well onto the discipline-intensive demands of cooperative supply chain management.
What It Means for Operators
For foodservice buyers and distributors, the dual hire carries practical implications. Ocean Spray's cranberry-based ingredients — including juice concentrates, dried fruit, and functional beverage components — feed a wide range of foodservice applications, from QSR beverage programs to healthcare dining and lodging breakfast dayparts. A more capable supply chain function could translate to improved fill rates and more consistent pricing visibility, both persistent friction points in the cooperative's commercial relationships.
Buckwalter, who framed the appointments around "clarity, pace and discipline," is leaning into a turnaround posture familiar in legacy cooperative brands navigating private-label competition and shifting retail shelf dynamics. The strategy hire in particular suggests Ocean Spray may be repositioning its commercial architecture — potentially including category management, trade investment, and operator-facing channel development — to compete more aggressively against both branded peers and private-label juice and ingredient suppliers.
For broader context on leadership moves reshaping the food and beverage supply landscape, see our coverage of CPG supply chain trends and cooperative business models in foodservice.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
