An Interview with Acosta Foodservice’s Taylor Crown

Website: https://www.acostafoodservice.com/

Written by Maria Campbell, Partner/Productivity Specialist One Degree Coaching 

And Ed Doherty, Founder/One Degree Coaching

Featured Business: Acosta Foodservice is a full-service sales and marketing agency in the consumer packaged goods industry. Since March 2012, Acosta has steadily built a leading presence in the foodservice industry by bringing together many top regional agencies. Combining strategic expertise, innovative technology, integrated solutions, and extensive reach, they provide top-notch sales and marketing services to more than half a million foodservice operators across the United States. Acosta serves the College and University, Healthcare, Multi-unit commercial, Non-commercial, K-12, Lodging, Independent restaurant, and Entertainment sectors.

Featured Leader: Taylor Crown, President of Acosta Foodservice

Location: Taylor is based in Charlotte, NC and leads 60+ offices across North America and on US military bases around the globe.

According to Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths (Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2017), there are specific action items that every leader will face. These range from attracting and retaining talent to leading transformational change. When Taylor Crown became President of Acosta Foodservice in November 2019, he knew how much work lay ahead based on his past leadership experience. He had no idea that he was about to face the extraordinary challenge brought on by a global pandemic. Ed Doherty, Founder of One Degree Coaching, and I interviewed Taylor to learn his unique leadership story. By sharing his journey and personal perspective on leadership, we hope to help others understand how a large business like Acosta Foodservices could stay on track even as the food industry faced a seismic experience. 

Taylor Crown’s vision for Acosta Foodservices is the same today as it was pre-pandemic, “To become the most effective professional foodservice team in North America.” What’s changed are the steps he is taking to reach that goal. Taylor realized that he needed to invest in his company’s most valuable resource: their people. “Fundamentally, we are a people-based business,” he says. March 16th, 2020, the first Monday of quarantine, was an inflection point for the leadership team. The focus became “How we connect with employees, keep them tethered to our culture, and how to show them we care.” Taylor was quick to point out that connecting all employees to the culture is not a skillset typical of a large company like Acosta. Taylor shared his action items with us, demonstrating how he used leadership to stabilize Acosta Foodservice and to help his greatest assets thrive in a crisis. 

Action Plan 1: Include What’s Most Important to our Team: Their Families

The first investment Taylor made as a leader during a pandemic was in morale and engagement, striving to make his team feel as comfortable as possible in the new business environment. Acosta brought people together with virtual happy hours and pushed for new ways to connect their offices, located across the U.S. and Canada. In May 2020, as kids were missing out on end-of-year recitals & activities, Acosta hosted a virtual talent show and invited the children of employees to perform for their parents’ peers. These caring actions spread joy while building connections that might not have been possible otherwise.

Action Plan 2: Invest Time in Training our Team in Virtual Sales and Technology 

Over the past ten months, Taylor and his team focused heavily on training. His employees had to quickly learn new skill sets that were not part of the foodservice industry pre-Covid-19 quarantines. The Acosta Foodservice leadership team trained the team on new technology formats, like Zoom and Google Meetings, as well as how to best engage with customers in a virtual format. They built a social media engagement strategy, which was relatively new for their section of the food business, and invested in industry webinars for staff. They also realized that even though they couldn’t travel and meet in person, they could bring small groups together through virtual roundtables to create connection points that wouldn’t have existed before.

The new work environment called for risk-taking and experimentation, and Taylor encouraged his team to lean in. They listened to what employees were asking for (more staff development opportunities) and worked closely with customers to help them find solutions they might not have known they needed. Specifically, this meant working to develop opportunities to take positive food experiences outside of restaurant settings into sectors that weren’t structured around a take-out or delivery service model.

Taylor demonstrated his humanity leading while facing uncertainty. He shared an anecdote about writing personal cards to employees across the company who had lost loved ones to Covid-19. He also shared some of his concerns surrounding his family and their safety. Were there moments of panic? Of course, there were. But there were also moments of seeking to find the best in an unprecedented situation. It’s important to seize opportunities while also making time to take stock by asking essential questions about the business operations’ strategy and functionality, all while keeping in line with its culture.  

Similar to the Stockdale paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’s bestselling book Good to Great, the discipline of survival psychology shines a light on the present moment. It contains wisdom for how leaders can manage a growing crisis. Taylor and the senior leadership asked themselves honestly, “Can we face the brutal facts?” and “Will there even be an industry (once this is all over)?” Then they examined the answers. The fact was, the foodservice sector is an 800+ billion dollar industry (as far as consumer spend) that collapsed by 85% in the 1st weekend in March. The Covid-19 crisis was an unprecedented occurrence. However, Acosta sells food to consumers wherever they are, and 330 million Americans still have to eat. Their challenge was to find the best way forward, and it seems like Acosta Foodservice, under the leadership of Taylor Crown, has adapted to meet this challenge. 

“Being a great place to work & attracting the best talent is not a ‘one and done’ situation,” Taylor said. Neither is leading a large company to fulfill their mission of being the best and most effective at what they do. Success in both regards involves being agile and open to changing quickly while still keeping both eyes on the future vision and success strategy. In Taylor Crown’s words, “The people are the strategy,” and success is a tricky proposition without satisfied employees or satisfied customers.

ODC Take away: 

We realized that Taylor Crown is a student of human nature, which is his North Star. Early in his role as a leader at Acosta, he decided to make this a “human experience.” He prioritized the people on his team, asking, “How are people going to react to the changes we must endure?” And then he sought practical solutions. Human beings will be human, so what do humans need to thrive and be happy? Taylor realized that his team would succeed working virtually if he could give them the tools they needed. He worked through his fear and uncertainty, on a personal level and from a business/career perspective, to use this opportunity to build a team that will never forget what they’ve been through together.   

Purpose and productivity are essential to a successful business, yet many companies don’t connect team happiness and their bottom line. Why don’t others connect people to profits? Leaders are responsible for business results. “But,” says Taylor Crown, “my way of getting the best business results is through people and managing expectations.” You’re responsible for your career and outcome at any company. One life lesson Taylor shared is “You’re the CEO of your career, but you can’t do it alone.” Strong leaders recognize the delicate balance between business success and human engagement, supporting their teams as they work towards success. These factors can’t be exclusive. It’s when these factors are tied together that we can achieve the business outcomes that benefit all.  

Keep things to threes: Level-5 leadership, servant leadership, how do you make it work? 1.) You have to love people & let them know you care for them. 2.) Understand human needs 3.) Take 100% Responsibility by modeling self-leadership. Taylor Crown exhibits all three traits in our healthy checklist.  

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Founded in 2010 by Ed Doherty, One Degree Coaching, LLC, a leadership and business consultancy specializing in improving the quality of work-life for their clients. Through organizational planning, team building, role-based assessment, strategic planning and leadership development One Degree helps business leaders build sales, profits and brand loyalty. Employing a coaching platform that ensures sustainable results, One Degree works with business leaders to develop cohesive, high-performing businesses.

www.onedegreecoaching.com

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