Brendan Foley took the helm of McCormick in September 2023, becoming the 11th CEO in the global flavor company’s 135-year history at a time of significant industry challenges—consumer fatigue after multiple years of inflation had begun to pressure pricing power while elevated input costs lingered post-Covid. An experienced consumer products executive who honed his leadership approach at General Mills and H.J. Heinz, Foley quickly made moves to strengthen McCormick and position the company for top-line growth.

Foley joined a Consumer Goods Forum’s Future Leadership Program session led by Richard Webster, Bain’s Global Head of Consumer Products, to reflect on themes shaping the CEO agenda of top consumer goods companies in 2025. The discussion covered imperatives from Bain’s 2025 Consumer Products report that have also been hallmarks of Foley’s leadership, such as focusing on raw consumer needs and doubling down on competitive advantage while radically simplifying everything else.

Q: For those who may not be familiar, what is McCormick’s business model?

Foley: We are a flavors business at the core. We have a unique role within the industry, where we are both a consumer brand and a supplier to the industry. On the consumer side, our core is in herbs, spices, and seasonings, but we also have part of our flavor platform in condiments and sauces. On the business-to-business side, our Flavor Solutions segment serves restaurants and food manufacturers, supplying most of the top 10 global food manufacturers.

Q: A large part of McCormick’s success has been its ability to remain focused on the consumer. How has the company managed to do that despite cost and pricing pressures?

Foley: I joined McCormick 11 years ago, when the industry was focused on driving EBITDA and preserving margin through cost-cutting. Alan Wilson, who was the McCormick CEO at the time, and the Management Team, which included my predecessor, Lawrence Kurzius, chose not to follow that path. This reinforced a lesson I’ve learned many times throughout my career: It is not necessary to follow the rest of the industry—if they are zigging, you may need to zag.

While the industry was focused on zero-based budgeting, McCormick focused on top-line growth. We increased investment in the business to differentiate ourselves as a global flavor company because we knew there was growth and consumer need. We broadened the consumer flavor platform to get into condiments and sauces, and we reframed our industrial business, which was selling flavor and flavor technology, as Flavor Solutions. In doing this, we weren’t expanding into new platforms; we were leaning into our strategic and category advantages.

Q: When you became CEO, it was at a time when it became obvious that price-driven growth had its limits. What were your strategic priorities for generating volume growth?

Foley: Consumers were frustrated with prices, and in some cases, they were not going to accept further increases. They were going to start to shift their brand decisions. It was important to pivot quickly—I told my leadership team we couldn’t wait for the industry to get healthy.

We were able to tell where we were losing volume and where price elasticity was affecting us, and we acted to manage that. But the consumer was not going to go for higher price points without significant change in the products or benefits. So we increased advertising and promotion for all our top brands into the high single digits and significantly increased innovation compared to prior years, refocusing on our competitive advantages in the market: distinctive flavors and high-quality product.

In planning with our retailers, we earned their support by making clear we wanted to deliver volume growth for them too. With the benefit of healthy categories and aggressive marketing, we started to see a turnaround of volume performance in the second half of 2024.

Q: Today digital is at the top of CEO agendas. How is digital playing a critical role for McCormick?

Foley: When I became CEO, I had the opportunity to reset the plate on what we want the company to focus on. I set five strategic priorities, and No. 3 is accelerating digital transformation. I hired a chief information digital officer—reporting directly to me. We need to commit to execution because digital is incredibly important to our future. This is not an IT project; this is a business strategy project. We have pockets of greatness, like our use of machine learning in flavor development, that we can continue to build on.

Q: Many of our audience members are at the earliest stages of their career. What advice would you offer to yourself when you were in their stage of the journey?

Foley: I would just say that it’s okay to have a lot of variability and things that you didn’t plan for. Be humble, be self-aware, act with humility. These are important qualities for you and the people around you. And you need to surround yourself with smart people. Often you are not going to be the smartest person in the room. And that’s completely okay.

Embrace the moments of difficulty and challenge, or when you’ve gotten a hard assignment—that’s when you’re going to grow the most.

But above all, just have really great self-awareness. Know how you’re coming across. See things as they really are. Be open to divergent points of view. When you do that, you end up becoming smarter. And I think it also makes the experience more fulfilling.