Track record
37 years in meat, retail and food marketing
The receipts, role by role. Every figure below came off Kent’s own record — nothing is rounded up, and nothing is somebody else’s work.
37
Years in meat, retail and food marketing
1988 – 2025
$450M
Retail meat & seafood P&L managed
Kroger, 153 stores
3
Sides of the table
Retailer · Supplier · Technology
100K
Social audience built in food
Consumer affairs
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Associate Director, Value Chain & Consumer Affairs
- Worked directly with major food retailers, food service operators and protein producers to validate and improve their supply chains using DNA traceability technology.
- Secured new business across every segment on the strength of existing industry relationships and food sector knowledge.
- Ran all social, web and marketing functions for the value chain business, building a consumer audience of roughly 100,000.
- Used consumer analytics and social campaigns to grow the millennial segment in store and to answer growing demand for food transparency.
- Verified exact origin of both meat and seafood and confirmed approved species through the supply chain — the core defense against substitution and mislabeling.
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Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing (2012–2015)
- Led a 30-person sales team across Laura’s Lean Beef, Meyer Natural Angus, Dakota Grass Fed Beef and Local Harvest Beef in the U.S. and Canada.
- Managed the marketing department and a $2.7M budget, including all social, web and public relations agency work.
- Built a category management team using independent research and 84.51°/dunnhumby data, driving sales through fact-based selling.
- Grew sales by more than 1.5 million pounds year over year in both 2014 and 2015.
- Delivered record-high company profit margins in 2013 and 2014 — in a down cattle market.
- Developed a national service case program for Kroger, rolling out primals under their private label across all divisions.
- Launched new product lines under Laura’s Lean Beef including beef jerky and e-commerce.
- Built the local beef program for Wegmans stores, still the fastest-growing segment of that beef program.
- Converted the Laura’s Lean website to bilingual and developed bilingual package labels.
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Vice President, National Accounts — New Business Development
- Managed Kroger, Target, Safeway and DECA accounts, growing both natural and organic beef programs.
- Expanded Laura’s Lean Beef in all accounts for three consecutive years.
- Developed the first grass fed beef programs at Target and DECA, plus additional retail accounts nationwide.
- Landed multiple new accounts across the U.S. and Canada with Prime and Choice Angus programs.
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Director of Meat & Seafood
- Managed meat and seafood in 153 stores across five states under four banners, with annual sales over $450 million growing more than 8% every year.
- Exceeded the profit budget by $8 million in 2009.
- Managed and mentored 10 meat supervisors across the operating states.
- Built service case selling programs around high-end items — lamb, veal and ready-made — increasing sales 10% in the first year executed.
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Director of Perishables
- Owned all perishable departments in a new division rollout for Kroger — meat, deli and produce — with full P&L, pricing, staffing and procurement responsibility.
- Drove the highest single-store meat department sales in the Kroger enterprise, exceeding $300,000 per week in several locations.
- Led the entire Kroger enterprise in private label sales for the deli and meat departments.
- Appointed to the Kroger Latino Committee and built the Hispanic merchandising plan adopted by every Kroger division in the United States.
Kent joined The Kroger Company in 1988 and held store, district and division roles across the perishable departments before the director positions listed above.
Put it to work
Thirty-seven years of this, pointed at your problem
Bring the situation — a stalled account, an under-earning department, a claim you cannot prove. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to tell whether it is worth an engagement.