It has been 38 years since Cliff Whitehead began his journey in our industry, joining the sales team of Flowers Foods' Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bakery back in 1982. Now, the company’s Vice President of Sales for its Vending Channel retires today, July 24.
Whitehead began to work with building the Flowers Foods, Inc’s cake vending business in 1989. According to a press release, he was part of the team that introduced Flowers’ brand into the vending channel nationwide in 1994.
Flowers Foods, Inc. is the producer of popular brand names such as Nature’s Own, Dave’s Killer Bread, Wonder, Tastykake, and other bakery foods.
Whitefield has held a number of roles over the decades while he served for Flowers, including Director of Marketing for former subsidiary Jack's Cookie Co. and Brand Manager within Flowers' marketing team.
“Cliff has been an asset to our team and it’s due to his efforts that Mrs. Freshley’s is today the top-selling pastry brand in the vend channel,” Brad Alexander, Chief Operating Officer, commented. “We greatly appreciate his many contributions to our cake and foodservice business and wish him all the best in the future.”
Among the accolades of his career are having served on the National Automatic Merchandising Association Board of Directors and on the Georgia Automatic Merchandising Association Board of Governors, as well as having multi-sided knowledge of the business from briefly joining Flowers' foodservice team before returning to take the reigns of his current department in 2002. His will be a tough pair of shoes to fill, but we look forward to learning who will be up to the task.
Congratulations to Mr. Whitehead on this new chapter!
