New Position: Chief executive, A.Camacho Inc., Plant City. Previous Position: President, chief executive, Cambridge Food Group, Tampa
By Times staff writers
Published October 18, 2004
When Brett Milligan starts his new role today as chief executive of A.Camacho Inc., it will seem like familiar territory.
For several years, while president and chief executive of Cambridge Food Group, his company competed vigorously with A.Camacho for space on the olive and condiment aisles of Tampa Bay area supermarkets.
To prepare for his new position as head of the American subsidiary of A.Camacho Group of Seville, Spain, Milligan said he has been "doing nothing for the last three weeks but reading information on the company." He has worked 20 years in the food industry, focusing on the olive and condiment industry for 15 years, "so it's not like I'm starting something new."
At A.Camacho, Milligan will oversee a global enterprise, with an emphasis on North American markets as well as expansion into other markets. Milligan's responsibilities will require him to "maximize sales and grow revenue and service current and new customers, primarily private-label olives" for such clients as Publix and Winn-Dixie.
His new company also markets condiments in addition to olives - cocktail onions, peppers and capers, for example - that either are purchased from suppliers or packaged at the company's facility in Erlanger, Ky.
"We're also looking to expand our product breadth rather than just olive and olive oil,"he said, "but we'll still be in the same section in the grocery store."
A.Camacho is a leader in the Spanish green and ripe olive industry, marketing Spanish and Italian olive oils, jams and marmalades, as well as other specialty foods to customers throughout North America. The company operates in about 80 countries worldwide.
A native of the Chicago area, Milligan attended Oakland College in Detroit, majoring in criminal law. He said he planned to join the FBI. But when he was about a year from earning his degree and working full time, Milligan said he burned out on college.
He joined Mario Olive Co., based in Omaha, Neb., in 1984, but worked out of his home as a regional manager in Michigan. He left in 1993 to take a position as national sales manager for Lindsay Olive Co., in Lafayette, Calif., but again, he kept his home base, then in the Chicago area, commuting to California once or twice a month.
In fact, Milligan recalled, he did so much cross-country commuting that a commercial airline pilot once told him, "You fly more than I do."
After five years, Milligan joined Torbitt & Castleman as vice president of sales and marketing and moved to Sheboygan, Wis. "It was a turnaround operation - fix it and sell it - which we did," he said.
After the sale, Milligan moved to Tampa in 2000 to join the Cambridge Food Group as president and chief executive. The two-day drive from Wisconsin to Florida in January, "was a little bit different - a 100-degree (temperature) swing."
Now Milligan and his family live in Lithia.
Milligan said he enjoys the dry goods industry. In fact, it's a family tradition. "I grew up in the business (as) a youngster working in a grocery store in Chicago and a food manufacturing plant in the summer." His father owned a grocery business, and as for Milligan and his four brothers and sisters, "at one point, every one of us was in the food business."
"It's something I've spent my whole life around. It's something I'm comfortable with," he said. "It's what I know. It's not dynamic, in the sense of growth, but it's stable. It's somewhat recession-proof. People always eat, whether in restaurants or in their homes."
Milligan, 43, and his wife, Amy, have three daughters: Lindsay, 9; Abigail, 7; and Emma, 4. Yes, Lindsay was named for the olive company Milligan once worked for. He said he wanted to name their second daughter Olive, "but my wife put her foot down."
