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BY SHERRI CRUZ
Richard Mazer has taken over as chief executive of Brea-based Ventura Foods LLC with a goal of making one of Orange County’s biggest private companies bigger.
Mazer said he is looking to double the size of what he calls a “big little company” in five or six years. Ventura Foods, which makes Hidden Valley salad dressing and other food products, counts yearly sales of $1.5 billion and employs 2,500 people, including some 200 in Brea.
“It might be an ambitious goal,” Mazer said. “But I think it’s possible.”
Along with salad dressing, Ventura makes oils, shortenings and other products for the food service industry, selling to wholesalers, larger chain restaurants and big retailers.
Customers include Burger King Corp., Wendy’s International Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sysco Corp.
Ventura competes with different companies by product. In oils, Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Minnesota’s Cargill Inc. are rivals. In dressings, Ventura faces off with Kraft Foods Inc. of Illinois and Ohio’s T. Marzetti Co. For margarine, it’s Europe’s Unilever PLC.
Irvine-based Golden State Foods Corp., another big private company here, also is a competitor in some areas.
“Their focus is McDonald’s,” Mazer said of Golden State, which is a major supplier to McDonald’s Corp.
Ventura has about 12 plants, including three in California. One is in Industry, where the company used to be based before moving to Brea in 2003. Two are in Los Angeles.
Ventura doesn’t do any production at its Brea headquarters.
About two-thirds of Ventura’s business is in food service, a segment that has grown faster than retail in recent years, according to Mazer.
Ventura sells big packages of products , 35 pounds of shortening and the like.
In tonnage, shortening is Ventura’s biggest selling product, Mazer said.
Ventura has about 70 percent of the market share for peanut oil, used to deep-fry turkeys, he said.
Thanksgiving turkeys help to make the fourth quarter Ventura’s busiest, according to Mazer.
Some of Ventura’s products are sold at stores, including Hidden Valley and LouAna cooking oils.
Ventura is a joint venture of Tokyo’s Mitsui
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