Outgoing Hershey’s CEO transformed the business with salty snacks. But consumers need chocolate for their ‘emotional well-being’ more than ever, she says

– Sweet and salty. Michele Buck’s eight-year run as CEO of Hershey Co. ends today, but not before she transformed the company—by putting it well on its way to becoming a major player in salty snacks. The goal is for the chocolate icon, in its next chapter without Buck, to rely less on the confectionery products for which it is best known.

Diversifying Hershey through acquisitions was a top priority for Buck when she became CEO in 2017 after serving as chief operating officer. “Our full potential is to capture new consumers and as many snacking occasions as possible,” she told Fortune in a recent interview. “The consumer is looking for that breadth.” That’s not to say Hershey’s core chocolate-based items will ever be an afterthought. “Our consumers tell us that chocolate provides emotional well-being, and we’ve seen especially recently as stress levels register higher, that chocolate plays an even bigger role in their lives.” (Buck’s favorite Hershey product are the Reese’s mini peanut butter cups.)

On her watch, the snacks division, which includes Skinny Pop popcorn and Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels has reached about 10% of Hershey’s sales, which were $11.2 billion last year. She wishes snacks were a bigger part of the business by now but says Hershey had to really develop its M&A muscles first after some initial misfires. “Early on, our M&A capability was not where it needed to be and we stubbed our toe on a couple of small acquisitions,” she says.

Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg—Getty Images

One thing she is particularly proud of is having helped Hershey refine what makes a good acquisition (sales of $100 million at least, high margins, ease of integration). “We are builders of brands, we are not necessarily creators,” she says. She hopes successor Kirk Tanner, previously CEO of Wendy’s and like Buck a PepsiCo alum, continues Hershey’s push into snacks.

In addition to diversifying Hershey’s business, Buck has had to navigate two “black swan” events”: the COVID pandemic in 2020 and more recently, 50-year highs in cocoa prices that have eaten into profits, and dragged down shares, earning her some rare criticism from Wall Street.

What’s more, the “Make America Healthy Again” movement is also pressuring food manufacturers. But Buck says the industry has seen periods like this before and doesn’t see in MAHA anything Hershey can’t navigate. “I don’t see it as a hard right turn or like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

With her departure, the Fortune 500 loses one of only 55 women CEOs in its ranks. Buck says that she always felt support as a woman in the industry. “I didn’t feel different being a female CEO,” she says. “If I look throughout my career, I would say actually I have a lot of people who helped me because I was a woman.” And she has that hope for other rising women executives too.

Phil Wahba
phil.wahba@fortune.com

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PARTING WORDS

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