DECEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 93SMALL GIANTSTIMOTHY ARCHIBALD FOR FORBES F
troducing new products to grocery stores. Two years later, he
joined Guittard, sharing an office with his father and brother,
and focused on expanding sales of consumer products, such as
the home-baking line.
And then in 1989, after his father, 76, and brother, 46, died
within six months of each other, his father of ALS and his
brother of a heart attack, Gary took over the company. The loss
was devastating personally, but he says he was ready: “I had a
vision; I felt pretty confident. I just focused on the things that
needed to be done and what came next. There wasn’t any kindof ‘aha’ moment or ‘Oh God’ or
‘Oh boy.’ There was just the fact
and reality that this is the way it
is.”
The family’s business had al-
ways been based on doing what
it takes to build relationships.
When sugar prices quadrupled in
the 1970s, Gary went to each of
his clients and asked them to re-
negotiate their contracts. The ex-
ercise taught him not only who
his friends were but also an im-
portant lesson: “Those that rene-
gotiated stayed in business. Most
of the ones that didn’t don’t exist
today.”
In the 1950s, when See’s want-
ed its chocolate delivered in liq-
uid form, Guittard began sending
tankers of melted chocolate di-
rectly to the company. This sum-
mer, after Guittard missed a de-
livery date, it took an $11,000 hit
to fly 2,000 pounds of chocolate
to the Honolulu Cookie Co. Mark
Spini, vice president of sales, who’s
been with Guittard for 31 years,
says, “We understand we’re deal-
ing with entrepreneurs growing
their businesses. We were once like that too.”
In the 1970s, a Palo Alto housewife named Debbi stopped
by regularly as she experimented with a chocolate chip cookie
recipe. Eventually, she launched Mrs. Fields Cookies. Around
the same time, a friend of Gary’s, working at a fledgling coffee
roaster in Seattle, called him seeking help to develop mocha for
hot chocolate; Starbucks remains a customer today. “When our
customers are successful, we are successful,” says Clark Guit-
tard, 45, Gary’s nephew and director of international sales. “We
grow with them.”Gary Guittard’s
business has built key
relationships, like one
with a certain Seattle
coffee chain.