Chiquita Brands Reviews

Pros

Chiquita is full of great people. The company has always been family friendly and promotes and lives up to a good work / life balance. The management is usually very fair and acknowledges hard work and achievements. Salaries and benefits are excellent.

Cons

Very little upward mobility across the board. New top management seems to prefer hiring external talent over promoting from within.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop letting your knowledge capital slip away. Hiring the "top talent" does no good if they dont understand the business and its history.

Pros

I love the people that I have worked with but many are leaving since teh company is relocating it's headquarter office.

Cons

Company has no regard for the knowledge that it's employees has and doesn't feel like losing all of those people matters.

Advice to Senior Management

Value the knowledge that your employees bring to the table. Consider how to motivate employees. Constant layoffs are not the answer. Reduce costs in other ways vs head count reduction.

Pros

Low cost of the benefits

Cons

Moving to Charlotte, laying people off, constant cost saving mode

Pros

Great place to work, great benefits and flexible with personal schedules. A place to work long-term.

Cons

Unforeseen layoffs every few years. Corporate stability will be challenged with HQ move.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on growing the company.

Pros

Chiquita has given me the opportunity to expand myself professionally. Compared to other companied where I've worked, Chiquita's structure is very flat. This means I regularly have the chance to make a bigger impact.

Because the company is so spread out around the world, I've gotten the chance to travel to Europe and Central America and regularly work with my coworkers around the globle. It has been very rewarding to learn how business is done outside the US and on 5 continents.

Cons

Not sure if a con, but to be successful at Chiquita, you definitely need to be able to thrive in a fast-paced environment. You need to be flexible and also very comfortable in the spotlight (for better and worse).

Because the organization is so flat (and you get exposed to every corner of the business), there just aren't that many positions to get promoted into. Rather, people advance at Chiquita by picking up the skills in adjacenct areas and then using those to create a bigger impact...and then getting promoted.

Advice to Senior Management

Since the company has so many global locations, my advice to mgmt would be to communicate, communicate, communicate.
Not that we don't do it, but it is very hard to consistently communicate with people on 5 continents. Especially when many work on farms in Latin America, Fresh Express facilities throughout the US and also other professionals in 40+ countries.

Pros

Great opportunity to learn and grow. Great leadership.

Cons

Physical environment can be challenging.

Pros

Global travel, laid back environment

Cons

Sometimes difficult to move up

Advice to Senior Management

Work on developing employees more

Pros

Location is great and a challenging and changing job. The remaining employees are great. There is little or no supervision which is good if the employee is engaged in the job.

Cons

Does not appear anyone is in charge and senior management is not located here nor do they visit except for a photo opportunity. All management come from Proctor & Gambel with no produce knowledge and do not seem interested in learning about the business. Decisions are made remotely without understanding the impact. Unfortunate management is not interest in their $1.3 billon division and that it is headed toward a $1.3 million division

Advice to Senior Management

Make an attempt to understand the business and don't listen to the yes men in between. Listen, learn, and make informed decisions for yourself. Apply P&G learnings as appropriate but recognize that selling dish soap is different than selling salads. Stop wasting time and money on niche product development out of the catagory and focus on building and supporting the business you have. When supporting the core business don't execute incredibly expensive ideas that sound good coming from Chiquita but your experienced people in the industry advise that they may not be the right thing to do.

Pros

Chiquita Brands offers workplace balance.

Cons

Chiquita Brands needs innovation in product development.

Pros

nice building, work hours ok

Cons

communication and learning opportunities are void in the dept I work in