During this unrehearsed, unedited interview, Restaurant Technologies Inc. (RTI) CEO Jeff Kiesel shares how his business overcame significant COVID-19-related challenges and along the way, improved its go-to-market strategy and how it takes care of its 10 largest clients. It also consolidated/simplified its IT systems and centralized administrative work. When COVID first affected RTI’s business, it furloughed 250 people. All but 7 have since returned to work (five retired), plus another 350 have been hired during 2021 and dozens more a month are expected to be added through December.

RTI delivers new and recovers used cooking oil for more than 30,000 restaurants as well as food service providers serving commercial and non-commercial customers. RTI is based in Mendota Heights, Minn., and operates though 40 depots located across most of the country. It also provides fry cook hood cleaning systems and services, a niche it began covering about four years ago.

About One Take: Minnesota CEOs discuss how they're navigating the latest challenges and opportunities facing their businesses, leadership teams and employees during one-on-one unrehearsed, unscripted and unedited interviews. CEOs are selected based upon the degree of interest they may provide to One Take's audience. One Take receives no compensation from those it interviews or their companies. The interviews are produced by award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as an executive consultant with Platinum Group, Minnesota's most experienced firm guiding business owners and leaders through acquisitions, divestitures, turnarounds, family business disputes, and crises.

Jaeger's company Ulteig recently acquired a Canadian business without visiting it due to Covide-19 travel restrictions. This after Ulteig grew 20 percent a year for five consecutive years and expanded from 300 to 700 employees. 

One of several fascinating takeaways from this One Take CEO Interview is how Jaeger maintains a healthy corporate culture regardless of where employees may now be working. He also plans to locate collaboration centers or small offices where the best talent can be found, rather than requiring talent to move to an existing Ulteig office. And he says, what his company achieved during the last 12 months proves, “you don’t need to set your strategy aside when the world around you changes dramatically.” 

Ulteig provides engineering services primarily in the life line sectors of power, renewables, transportation and water. It recently acquired NLS Engineering, a firm widely recognized as one of the most experienced integrators in the North American energy and water sectors.

About One Take CEO Interviews: In each episode, one CEO shares his or her take on leading through myriad challenges ranging from Covid-19 to attracting and retaining great talent. Each interview is recorded in one take with no edits. The interviews are produced by multi award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as strategic consultant at Platinum Group, Minnesota's most experienced firm helping business owners and leaders with extreme challenges ranging from rapid growth and acquisitions, to turnarounds and divestitures.

One year after her first One Take interview, Christine Lantinen returns to discuss how Maud Borup weathered the pandemic; how its attracting and retaining talent both in the Twin Cities and Le Center, Minn.; why it's looking to expand capacity yet again after just adding 70,000 square feet last year; whether employees are required to work at the corporate office; and more.

Lantinen is owner and CEO of Maud Borup, a candy and gourmet foods maker with nearly 40 million dollars in annual sales, which is up almost 50 percent from a year ago, and more than 200 employees, double from a year ago. The company sells to specialty and mass retailers such as Walmart and Target, and has licensing agreements to make food items for large global brands such as Hell's Kitchen. Maud Borup develops more than 150 products each year and each item can be customized to fit what each client would like. During 2020, the company cornered the U.S. market for hot cocoa bombs.

You can watch this interview on YouTube here.

About One Take CEO Interviews: In each episode, one CEO shares his or her take on leading through myriad challenges ranging from Covid-19 to attracting and retaining great talent. Each interview is recorded in one take with no edits. The interviews are produced by award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as consultant at Platinum Group, Minnesota's most experienced firm helping business owners and leaders with extreme challenges ranging from rapid growth and acquisitions, to turnarounds and divestitures.

Self Esteem Brands (SEB) recently completed its largest acquisition in history despite all the challenges and uncertainty brought on by COVID-19. One year after his first One Take interview, co-founder and CEO Chuck Runyon returns for a “Take Two” to share how and why the acquisition was able to happen. He also discusses how his company helped franchisees since the pandemic began (and looming cost increases once rent abatements or deferrals end); the introduction of a bill to provide financial relief to the gym and fitness industry (the Gyms Act); whether employees will be coming back to work full time at the company’s headquarters; and why the nation needs to focus more on physical and mental health. 

SEB is a global collection of health improvement and fitness-related companies including Anytime Fitness, The Bar Method, Base Camp, Wax the City and as of this June, Stronger U, a digital, personalized nutrition-based health coaching services brand. SEB was founded in 2002 and for several consecutive years ranked as the world’s fastest growing franchise. Today it serves millions of people in 40 countries.

About One Take CEO Interviews: In each episode, one CEO shares his or her take on leading through myriad challenges ranging from Covid-19 to attracting and retaining great talent. Each interview is recorded in one take with no edits, and runs 10 to 20 minutes in duration. They are produced by Dale Kurschner at the executive consulting firm Platinum Group.

Nick is CEO of Ignify Technologies, an early stage fintech company whose SPARK loan origination platform facilitated 50,000 SBA loans worth $7 billion in two weeks last year. Those loans in turn helped save 500,000 jobs. During this One Take CEO Interview presented by Platinum Group, he explains how the company quickly scaled up to meet demand, how it plans to grow and how it does so well attracting and retaining talent—something its top three leaders spend 30-40 percent of their time doing. Ignify is a public benefit corporation, spun out from Minneapolis-based Community Reinvestment Fund USA in 2020.

About One Take CEO Interviews: In each episode, one CEO shares his or her take on leading through myriad challenges ranging from Covid-19 to attracting and retaining great talent. Each interview is recorded in one take with no edits, and runs 10 to 20 minutes in duration.  

In this One Take CEO Interview presented by Platinum Group, Leslie Holman, owner and CEO of Pinnacle Performance Group, discusses how her firm helps fill the gap that can often exist between front line employees and senior leadership, and how COVID-19 has helped narrow this gap.

In companies of all sizes, she says, “there is that common thread that success is bred through employees at all levels, and it's often that front line employee who has not been heard or listened to, or often sadly, not respected enough when it comes to how critically important they are in the success of the organization.”

Holman explains ways to identify such gaps and more importantly, how to translate or explain those findings to senior leadership. She also addresses other topics including how the healthy work/life balance and culture at her company helped it weather all of the challenges that have come up since the COVID-19 first flared up in March 2020.

About One Take CEO Interviews: These are frank, unedited, unscripted "one-take" discussions facing business owners and CEOs today from business leaders, for business leaders. In Season 1 (May 2020 to April 2021), 26 Minnesota CEOs shared their take on how best to lead during the Covid-19 pandemic and its unprecedented impact on their operations, and the economy. In Season 2 (April 2021 to Dec. 31, 2021), CEOs share how they're leading as the pandemic winds down, and how they plan to operate thereafter.  

One Take CEO Interviews are produced by award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as a strategic communication, crisis response and reputation management consultant with Platinum Group, Minnesota's most experienced firm helping business owners and leaders with extreme challenges ranging from rapid growth and acquisitions, to turnarounds and divestitures.

Guests are interviewed solely on the merit of the content they may provide; no funding or financial consideration is provided by the individuals and organizations featured on One Take CEO Interviews.

Owatonna, Minn.-based Bushel Boy is well known in Minnesota for first perfecting indoor grown, vine-ripened tomatoes available in local grocery stores year-round 41 years ago. Competition has increased rapidly in recent years, leading the company to both expand production and explore other crops to produce indoors, beginning with strawberries.

Chuck Tryon was hired as Bushel Boy’s president last October to expand upon these efforts. In this One Take CEO Interview (watch here), he explains how he plans to do this, and how he addressed COVID-19-related challenges including potential delays on the company’s $35 million, 50-acre expansion project in Mason City, Iowa. Key to Bushel Boy’s future success, he says, will be doing better at finding and retaining talent. (Tryon’s interview is also available as a podcast on seven audio platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.)

Bushel Boy employs about 100 people in Owatonna and 50 in Mason City, where the recent expansion is expected to increase production by 50 percent and allow the company to maintain a more consistent crop of tomatoes during the year. Bushel Boy also recently completed a 4.5-acre research and development greenhouse in Owatonna. While strawberries are being tested today, other crops to be experimented with for possible indoor growing include cucumbers and peppers.

Innovation is a must and includes a vigilant focus on producing the best quality product, Tryon says. While Bushel Boy was a leader in this niche 41 years ago, the square footage of indoor agriculture for tomatoes nationwide increased 45 percent between 2007 and 2017. Just within the last five years in Minnesota, indoor tomato square footage increased 43 percent, according to the Star Tribune.

Bushel Boy was acquired in 2018 by Shakopee, Minn.-based Rahr Corp., which is best known for its malting business.

ABOUT ONE TAKE CEO INTERVIEWS: CEOs share how they’re leading during the Covid-19 pandemic and other unprecedented challenges during these unscripted, unedited one-take interviews. Each is produced by award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as an executive consultant with Platinum Group, Minnesota’s most experienced firm at helping business owners with financial turnarounds, acquisitions or divestitures, family business issues and other complex challenges. No funding or other financial consideration is provided by companies interviewed, and interviews are selected solely upon the relevance of what may be discussed during an interview.

One of the most challenging aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic as it hit last year was how to still service heating and air conditioning systems in peoples’ homes. How could shelter in place, work from home and remote learning all remain safe with an outsider coming into the house? And how could a repair person be assured he or she wouldn’t catch Covid while in someone’s home?

There were only a few of the challenges needing to be addressed by Claire Ferrara, president and majority owner of Minneapolis-based Standard Heating and Air Conditioning, a fourth-generation family-owned business employing about 100 people. “We're in the heating and air conditioning business but we're really in the people business and it's very much about a person-to-person interaction,” she says.

Making matters even more challenging: Ferrara took over leading the business only one month earlier.

In this episode of One Take CEO Interviews sponsored by Platinum Group, she shares how she dealt with those and other challenges, both professionally and personally. Here are a few excerpts:

“One thing that got us through the whole year was the level of transparency and constant communications that we had. We started by convening employees from every department and said, ‘okay how do we make this work; what's going to make you feel safe?’ That was the first step, making people feel heard and part of the process. The other part was they knew I had their back. I made it very clear up front if anyone is ever uncomfortable or feels unsafe, just like if they did outside a pandemic, you do not have to go into a home or do whatever the task is in front of you.”

“The customer did go away for a while. If you had asked me the first couple of weeks of April [2020] I would have said, gosh by the end of the year, my business needs to be half the size it is today.” Everyone working from home, however, led to a surge in business and the challenges of meeting it both with staffing and with equipment and supplies.

“Leadership can feel thankless sometimes, but you have to find the good and the motivation in all the little moments and there have been so many, like the technician who suddenly pulls you aside and to say ‘‘hey, how are you doing?’ or to say ‘thank you for that.’”

During this One Take CEO Interview presented by Platinum Group, Co-Owner and President of M&N Structures Betsy Niemeier shares how she has dealt with all the challenges thrown her way recently, including Covid-19, another surge in steel prices, delays in vendor delivery time and political polarization in the workplace.

One Take CEO Interviews are produced by award-winning journalist Dale Kurschner, who today serves as a strategic analyst and advisor with Platinum Group, Minnesota's most experienced firm helping businesses facing extreme challenges ranging from rapid growth and acquisitions, to turnarounds, divestitures, ownership/leadership transitions and crises.

In each of these one-take interviews, a CEO shares how he or she is leading through the Covid-19 pandemic and other unprecedented issues that emerged in 2020 and early 2021. No script, no edits, just frank talk from CEOs for CEOs. 

Xcel Energy Chairman and CEO Ben Fowke talks about a wide range of issues during this interview including how the utility is investing so much in carbon-free energy production while keeping rates comparable or lower than its peers. With about half of his workforce working remotely, Fowke shares what he’s doing to keep morale up and accelerate innovation even when people cannot collaborate together. He also discusses how the company is addressing racial issues elevated by George Floyd’s death, the sense amongst many that downtown Minneapolis is no longer a safe place to work, and his greatest challenge this year.