John Inwright, Chairman of GS1 US Board of Governors and former President and CEO of Wendy’s Quality Supply Chain Cooperative: Authenticity is paramount. People want to be able to trust in the brands and products that they purchase. If a brand goes out and says, “This is what our product is about; these are the traits and the attributes of our brand,” they need to make sure they’re strongly demonstrating those attributes. Customers notice when brands do what they promised, and reward them—and if brands don’t, then consumers may hold them accountable.
Voice-Over: Hi, welcome to the Bailey Video Podcast, a podcast from Bailey Brand Consulting about brand creation and development. Today we're talking about supply chain's impact on brands, with John Inwright, Chairman of GS1 US Board of Governors and former President and CEO of Wendy’s Quality Supply Chain Cooperative—an independent, not-for-profit cooperative that is the third largest in the quick-service restaurant industry.
Chris Bailey, Bailey Brand Consulting President and CEO: Welcome, John, and thank you so much for joining us this morning. Today, we’re interested in your thoughts on how supply chain impacts consumers’ perception. Before we start, can you provide a little background on your career, from the beginning to today?
John Inwright: My career started from a very early age, in New Jersey restaurant operations. I stayed in restaurant ops until around 28 years old, then seized the opportunity to transition to the supply chain side. Moving my family from New Jersey to Louisville, Kentucky, I joined the Kentucky Fried Chicken supply chain co-op for 21 years. That co-op ultimately became Yum! Brands—KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.
After a significant fraud occurred inside US Foods, I joined as their chief supply chain offer to help restore integrity. Then, Wendy’s asked me to become a candidate for President and CEO of their first-ever supply chain co-op, owned by both the franchisees and the company. I joined Wendy’s in January 2010, serving there for 11 years as President and CEO until I retired from full-time work in January 2021.
Since then, I’ve served on multiple boards of directors, which keeps me busy! My original plan was to join maybe two or three boards, but now I’m on a total of ten—seven for-profits, and three not-for-profits.
Chris Bailey: You're popular! During your time with Wendy’s, can you give us an example of your work with the supply chain?
John Inwright: It comes back to Dave Thomas’ foundation for the brand—fresh, never frozen beef from North America as compared to competitors’ frozen products that came from other parts of the world. As a result, our product had a much shorter shelf life. Customers valued and understood that our tomatoes were grown in controlled, environmental agriculture—specifically glass vertical farms—which we continued to market as a selling point.
It meant that our product tasted better, with more consistent quality for the price, since it wasn’t subjected to either drought or excess rain, disease, etc.
Years ago, the marketing team developed the summer berry salad, which required enough blackberries to service that product. It was a two-and-a-half-year planning process because there simply weren’t enough blackberry farms in North and South America to supply what we needed in such a narrow window of time. It was a herculean effort of collaboration between the supply chain, operations and marketing teams to launch that product successfully as a limited-time-only, 10- to 12-week window. Ultimately, it received great feedback.
Limiting factors like that can happen anywhere—the toy world, the apparel world, everywhere—so having an effective supply chain makes a monumental difference.
Chris Bailey: How did Dave Thomas’ legacy as founder and trusted spokesperson impact the Wendy’s brand?
John Inwright: Dave Thomas worked with Colonel Sanders in the KFC system before he decided to build Better Burger, the never-frozen-burger company that would later rebrand as Wendy’s. Dave always focused on quality. Why did Wendy's serve square hamburgers? Because Wendy's didn't cut corners. That was the foundational heritage which made Dave so iconic in the restaurant industry, carrying through to today.
Chris Bailey: Does a well-functioning supply chain differentiate a business from its competition?
John Inwright: Absolutely. It's a point of competitive advantage for those that get it right. Looking at the major brands in the marketplace, there are clearly winners and losers in the supply chain.
Chris Bailey: After the pandemic, what are some brands that you think performed especially well? On the other hand, what hiccups did you observe in companies whose supply chains struggled?
John Inwright: Amazon clearly got it right—they were present and prepared to deliver on their promises. Walmart was a standout as well. It remains a leading retailer because they’ve determined how to memorably create both in-store and online presence. Some of the tech companies also got it right, such as Zoom, while others potentially overcompensated, such as Peloton, which did great in the beginning but had excess inventory once people started going outside again. The current environment is very dynamic.
Chris Bailey: I'm sure there are a lot of tractor trailers full of stuff that went unneeded.
John Inwright: Absolutely, and warehouses too.
Chris Bailey: The market has endured immense disruption in recent years. What are the long-term effects of something like the pandemic? Can brands come back after a big disruption, like lockdowns or a recall?
John Inwright: I think every brand can bounce back from anything. One of my favorite brands is Coca-Cola. Despite the disastrous launch of New Coke, they came back stronger than ever. They pivoted, grew their brands, and moved into new drink categories. Any brand can recover—but not all of them do. It depends on how they respond to consumer behavior and feedback. If they get defensive instead of owning their mistakes, it’s harder to recover and show their customers that they mean what they say.
Chris Bailey: For many consumers, higher prices can be another challenge. How does a well-loved brand maintain momentum when prices skyrocket?
John Inwright: Consumers are definitely reacting to rising costs. Customer counts in restaurants are dropping; so is the average check. There’s a shift from casual dining back to quick-service restaurants.
Similarly, consumers have stopped buying their go-to brands due to price hikes, with private label brands having dramatic share growth instead. On the other hand, Bed Bath & Beyond just filed for bankruptcy because (among other reasons) their customers valued the core brand and were less willing to spend on private labels. Real supply chain challenges compounded the issue, but the branding absolutely mattered because consumers have less disposable income to spend.
Chris Bailey: In that environment, brands want to tell an impactful, authentic story about their product. How does the supply chain contribute to that?
John Inwright: Authenticity is paramount. People want to be able to trust in the brands and products that they purchase. If a brand goes out and says, “This is what our product is about; these are the traits and the attributes of our brand,” they need to make sure they’re strongly demonstrating those attributes. The supply chain team is key to representing what a product does and means, fulfilling what I call "the consumer promise." If an event causes distrust or questioning whether the brand keeps their word, it can severely damage the brand’s reputation.
Chris Bailey: That leads to brand concerns about transport, currency and ethical practices. How do those issues play into the way a supply chain operates?
John Inwright: Consumers and world organizations today are paying much more attention to the environment, especially the oceans—alarmingly, there’s more plastic in the ocean now than there are fish. When supply chains are especially complex, ethical concerns, such as forced labor in some parts of the world, can go painfully unnoticed because they’re six or seven levels down the supply chain, practically invisible.
My recommendation for any major corporation is to truly understand where their stuff is coming from—not just your first- or second- or tertiary-level suppliers, but further down the chain. Is your product causing deforestation in Brazil? Is it reliant on forced labor in another part of the world? If so, CEOs should start tasking their supply chains to understand that consumers value sustainability. How is the brand going to improve that, starting with sources of things like paper and resin? How do they recycle, reuse or, in fact, avoid using some of the world’s most limited resources. It’s becoming critically important because consumers pay attention to these things daily.
Chris Bailey: For instance, my daughter is a new mother and does a lot of her shopping at a co-op exchange, where you take your own packaging or containers to be more considerate of the planet.
John Inwright: It's clearly a trend, not a fad—it’s essential. We’re consuming the Earth's resources—with 7 billion people, moving toward 9 billion people—at a faster rate than ever, and we need to be thinking diligently about that because it matters to modern consumers.
This begs the question, what are the tradeoffs? Are we better off buying reusable fabric bags that pile up in our households? What’s the recycling plan relative to the fabric? For solar panels, what happens after the 20-year lifespan—does it get recycled and redistributed, or does it sit in a landfill? We think electric vehicles are better for the environment than burning petroleum, but what happens to all those batteries being created for the electric vehicle market? How do we recycle or recover them?
Supply chains for that don’t exist today; they still need to be built. It's becoming a dialog in the C-suite of every boardroom, in every publicly traded company across the world, every day, because it’s critically important. Customers notice when brands do what they promised, and reward them—and if brands don’t, then consumers may hold them accountable.
Chris Bailey: The volume on these conversations about sustainability and the circular economy is only getting louder. It’s becoming an undeniable movement.
John Inwright: Every single day, I pay more attention to questions about my products, like, “How was it produced? Was it produced humanely? Was it produced from goods that I can trust? Are these the ingredients that they say are in it? Are there any potential contaminants that I don't know about? Do I trust the region of the world from which it came?” Consumers are beginning to ask those same questions, but at the end of the day, they vote with their pocketbooks. With limited disposable income, sometimes what matters is what they can afford.
Chris Bailey: Well, John, you've been an amazing guest and very generous with your time. Is there anything else you want to share with us?
John Inwright: I want to thank you for inviting me. Bringing these podcasts to life with others is fantastic. I've been very blessed in my own career, having seen a lot of changes, and I love that I can continue to advise and give back to others, helping them think about these complex issues and conundrums that we all face. I’m still on a lifelong learning journey. I may be an “influencer,” but I’m also being influenced every day by young and emerging talent, so I'm honored and humbled that you thought I had something valuable to say.
Chris Bailey: We appreciate the sentiment, and I know you have plenty of good wisdom left to share—thank you.
