Pros

• Great locations
• Great products
• Stable company
• Huge potential

Cons

• Lack of innovation
• Finance-driven
• Too many meetings
• Micro-management
• Lack of diversity in upper management

Advice to Senior Management

• Hire talented/experienced people and trust them to do their jobs.
• Invest in your people first and foremost and the productivity/profits will come naturally.
• Take a genuine interest in the well-being of employees. Put more emphasis on work/life balance and employee development.
• Foster greater innovation, creativity and risk taking. Allow mistakes.
• Share economic success equitably at all levels.

Pros

- Summer hours - 2-hour early dismissal on Fridays during summer
 - Good location
 - Good products
 - Good staff

Cons

- Low salary compared to competitors (for non-Managers)
 - Too focused on metrics/reports (large portion of time spent on running reports)
 - Too focused on multiple employee reviews, which are pointless as they typically result in very low raises, even for top tier performers, and little helpful feedback
 - Way too much time spent in meetings - often 75% or more of work day, which makes it necessary to work unpaid overtime to catch up on day-to-day activities

Advice to Senior Management

- Increase salaries for lower-level employees to make more competitive with others in Pittsburgh
 - Offer benefits similar to other area employers (modified work schedules, day care assistance, casual attire, allow part-time work from home, etc.)
 - Focus time on value-added projects, rather than multiple employee reviews and unnecessary meetings

Pros

Great company history and still developing. The company is on the fast track in a competitive market and I only see stability.

Cons

Company pays way below market values for jobs and often require a large amount of experience and education for low pay. Individual facilities fail to recognize achievements and the company fails to promote employee development. Lack of succession planning cause mostly external hires and few internal promotions.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce employee workloads, eliminate hybrid jobs that hold no additional value to the employee and focus on employee development so the company doesn't lose their future leaders.

Pros

* Great location.
* Smart co-workers with an enthusiastic new CMO.
* Highly recognizable porfolio well positioned for immediate future.
* General management experience useful if small to medium-sized company is your eventual goal.

Cons

* Company runs by Finance and is very operationally driven.
* Senior Management obsessed with past performance and demands endless reviews.
* Increased focus on consumer marketing but most VPs and Directors lack necessary experience.
* CMO has passion but is not given the power to make real change.
* If you stay on past Brand Manager, you will be deficient versus peers in other CPGs.

Advice to Senior Management

Decide what you really want to be when you grow up and put in place the meaningful changes required to get there. Merely increasing the marketing budget is not the solution. Lip service to Wall Street will only get you anothe year.

Pros

Great people, great brands, good for you products

Cons

65-70% of your time is spent doing volume forecasting, answering management questions with detailed analysis, and very little effort is spent on really knowing the consumer.

Advice to Senior Management

Put more trust in all the Sr. Brand Managers you just brought into the company. Don't let the long time Del Monte employee Senior Management take away their enthusiasm

Pros

Del Monte Foods corporate headquarters is based in San Francisco, CA at 1 Market (across from the Ferry Building) in the historic Landmark building. It is across the street from the BART station.

It has a diverse portfolio of brands it sells and markets, including such flagship brands as: Del Monte, Fruit Naturals, Contadina, S&W, Milk-Bone, Meow Mix, Kibbles 'n Bits, Gravy Train, etc. Since their products are manufactured around the US, you will have the opportunity to visit lots of various manufacturing plants, retail customers, and R&D facilities.

As with most employers, the people you work with are what makes your work life tolerable. Del Monte Foods is no exception. Del Monte Foods does a good job by bringing in good people (down to earth, smart, etc) to work for them.

Cons

Senior Leadership needs to change (ie CEO/COO). They recently brought in a CMO to shake things up, but made it where he reports into COO, not the CEO. The new CMO is sharp but he will be challenged to change the status quo.

Del Monte Foods is a financially driven CPG company. Everyone in Marketing/Brand Management takes their orders from Finance. Del Monte Food's competitors are all marketing driven companies, and spend greater amounts of dollars on advertising/marketing (industry average is 5-7%, while Del Monte spends about 3-4% of gross revenues).

Others things that disagree with me:
Dress Policy: Business Casual (no jeans)
Vacation Benefits: 2 weeks (this is typical in the CPG world)
No discounts or freebies for Del Monte Foods products

Management Style is Reactive, not proactive. You will spend alot of time reacting to a situation, having to do alot of time sensitive reports, versus planning for a situation, having time to think strategically and collaborate ahead of time.

In addition, they have really bad processes in place; I wish they would spend a little money and maybe even consult an outside expert on a few process improvement initiatives in the areas of forecasting, demand planning, budgeting, recruiting, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some quality time with the people at the bottom who really run the company; empower them to make decisions; force employees to make rotations around the company in different functions

Pros

US market leading brands in Pet Snacks, affording the opportunity to learn how to establish meaningful emotional connections with pet parents.

Cons

Overexposured to the US market (over 95% of net sales), conflicting incentives across functions, manufacturing silos running as independent cells on defense posture and survival mode.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to assess and mitigate risk, empowering and entrusting managers who are closer to day-to-day business. Foster a healthier culture supported by values, principles and true lasting purpose, which in turn will instill pride and deeper commitment. Job retention should be the by-product of a healthy culture instead of resulting exclusively from the glamours San Francisco location.

Pros

Competitive pay. Great people overall. Job stability.

Cons

Long hours. Many deadlines. Very old school and behind the times with respect to working from home, casual dress, part-time opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to do some benchmarking and upgrade the way they handle nontraditional employment situations, such as telecommuting, casual dress, and other flexible options that would keep employees happy.

Pros

Good People and great weather in the Bay Area

Cons

Company direction is mixed at best. Direction seems to be run at full steam, stop, wait, run at full steam.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide clear direction to the team with goals that make sense for increasing the very low stock value.

Pros

low key and relax atmosphere. a lot of room to educate yourself and grow and learn in the company. almost anyone can be your mentor to you. a lot of promotions available if you are skilled. they have a great career path system. they are a little company with a big heart and even bigger name. they do a lot of charity work. extremely supportive with balancing work and family life. they poor out compliments all the time so you know where you stand all the time. they are really good at showing compassion even when you make a mistake. you don't have to worry if you will loose your job. they will walk you through your mistake and help you learn from it.

Cons

constant changes all the time. you have to be prepared. read the book 'who moved my cheese' before working here. busy-ness comes in cycles. april through october is extremely busy and then it slows down in november. january it tries to pick up but it is still slow. by march, the things you tried to get people to jump on is hitting them in the head and soon they are scrambling to get things done by or before the end of april (end of fiscal year). for me this is difficult to encourage others to stay ahead of the curve because everyone thinks 'we still have time'... when we really do not.

Advice to Senior Management

salary, bonuses and increases according to SKILL and work volume is oft times MORE important than who the person works for and titles that 'entitles' someone else to a pay level who may have narrow skills.