Food Maker Manages to Mix Politics, Profits

Clad in hiking sneakers, a green vest and khaki pants, Gary Hirshberg hardly looks the part of a CEO whose company’s sales have multiplied twelvefold since 1990.

That assessment probably would not bother Hirshberg, who has made a career of the unconventional. He is president and co-founder of Stonyfield Farm, which sells premium yogurt and dairy products with a dash of social awareness.

Lids on the company’s refrigerated and frozen yogurt products, some of which are organic, promote gun safety or encourage customers to tell congressional representatives to be more efficient “but not at the cost of a polluted world.”

Hirshberg said taking a political stand can be risky, but the company he joined in 1983 has found it’s a winning strategy.

Still, he said, Stonyfield’s political views don’t sell yogurt. People buy it because they like the taste--Stonyfield had sales of $31.5 million in 1996, compared to $2.5 million in 1990.

“We see ourselves as a premium yogurt and ice cream maker from the point of view of health and taste,” said Hirshberg, whose favorite Stonyfield flavor is organic maple vanilla yogurt.

The child of a shoe manufacturer, Hirshberg said he was never interested in business as a young man. But after working as a fund-raiser for nonprofit groups, he found new respect for the power that companies can wield.

“If you look at any problem that we face in society--AIDS, homelessness--government is essentially irrelevant to solving those problems,” he said. “Any problem on Earth will be solved if business makes it a priority. Any problem that has not been solved is because business has not made it a priority.”

He and Samuel Kaymen, the company’s now semiretired chairman, began pursuing in 1983 what they believed was a market for yogurt crafted with same care as “a fine wine, a great beer.”

The company contributes 10% of its profits to environmental causes, and employees get free massages to improve morale, but idealism and business do not always mesh, as Hirshberg has learned.

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Stonyfield’s outspoken opposition to bovine growth hormone, a synthetic hormone that increases cows’ milk output, irritated other dairies that used the product.

“We also argue for higher dairy prices and it’s earned us the ire of other producers,” Hirshberg says. “That’s because we’re committed to the health of small family farms.”

Stonyfield was flooded with angry calls in summer 1995, when the company issued a yogurt container lid that featured Stop Handgun Violence, a gun safety group whose board members include Sarah Brady, wife of James Brady, former aide to President Reagan.

Store buyers complained the company had stepped over the line of acceptable social advocacy. Hirshberg said outraged customers pressured stores to pull Stonyfield off the shelves.

The yogurt stayed, however, and the experience did not deter Hirshberg from launching a campaign last year that encouraged customers to mail pro-environment Stonyfield yogurt lids to politicians.

Katie Paine, a marketing expert at the Delahaye Group in Portsmouth, N.H., said the benefits of advocacy marketing can outweigh the risks if consumers believe the message.

“What this marketing philosophy says is you’re going to get more consumer loyalty out of supporting causes than by advertising,” Paine said, adding that Stonyfield’s focus on the environment and nature is timely, especially given the expansion of the health food market.

Hirshberg is not worried that his support of the Democratic Party and the New Hampshire Audubon Society will antagonize customers. In fact, he said, his market research suggests customers like merchants to take a stand, provided they sell quality products at a fair price.

“One the one hand, there are probably some detractors who feel we should keep our big mouths shut,” Hirshberg said. “On the other hand, our financial results speak for themselves.”