The former chief administrative officer (CAO) of Kraft Heinz says it’s time to bring back the Heinz side of the iconic food company to Pittsburgh.
With an exclamation point, no less, in the headline on a Post-Gazette commentary, Ted Smyth says with plans to re-split Kraft Heinz into two publicly traded companies, “it’s time to attract a renewed Heinz company back to its roots in the City of Pittsburgh.”
“I believe it would be a very positive development both for Heinz and for Southwestern Pennsylvania to bring the faster-growing $15 billion sauces company to Pittsburgh, where Kraft Heinz still has research and management facilities,” says Smyth, who left the company in 2019.
“One reason,” he proffers, is “Heinz’s historic reputation as the ‘pure food company’ in a society, and market, in which so many seek to live healthier lives.”
- We’ll savor some of the sauce of this proposal. But not in the recipe that Smyth proposes.
Deep into his entreaty, Smyth notes that considering Gov. Josh Shapiro recently announced a major achievement in attracting Amazon’s $20 billion investment to Pennsylvania, “Ideally, the governor would lead a group of state and local leaders to create a public/private partnership to secure the future of Heinz here in its hometown, serving as a template for future investment.”
Ah, there’s the nub of the rub – taxpayers should yet again be turned into venture capitalists in an attempt to turn around Heinz’s business fortunes, fortunes the combined companies themselves pretty much have wrecked since the 2005 merger with Kraft, is that it?
Lest we remind the tax-paying public that not only has the Kraft-Heinz merger been a bust but that news of the split has been a bust as well, tanking the company’s stock.
So, taxpayers should help move a newly independent Heinz headquarters back to Pittsburgh? Sorry. No. We may have been born at night but it wasn’t last night.
Former Heinz CAO Smyth insists that “attracting a bigger and faster growing Heinz sauces company to Pittsburgh would be a major addition to the region, serving both its industrial development and providing new and well-paying jobs. Heinz should come home.”
“The key to future growth in this region is to renew the old and invent the new,” Smyth says. “Heinz is a perfect company to do both.”
That remains to be seen, of course. But seen or not, taxpayers have no business being tapped to correct what turns out to have been a very serious strategic business mistake in 2005.
If Heinz wants to come “home,” more power to it. But it alone should pay for the move and all associated costs. Taxpayers should have no sauce in this deal.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
