If you’ve ever asked for a drizzle of dressing on your Subway footlong, chances are it’s from Ventura Foods—a $3 billion supplier of oils, sauces and dressings to many of the nation’s largest restaurant chains.
“We provide the flavor,” Chief Executive Chris Furman told the Business Journal.
From his corner office at Spectrum Terrace in Irvine, Furman is steering the 30-year-old company through a rebrand, a headquarters relocation and a renewed focus on flavor-driven products as it looks to enter its next phase of growth beyond restaurant chains.
Furman leads a company of 4,500 employees, including 155 in Irvine and Brea, and competes with locally based Golden State Foods, OC’s sixth-largest private company with $5 billion in annual revenue.
From Oil Company to Flavor Partner
Ventura Foods was formed in 1996 as a joint venture between CHS Inc., a U.S. agribusiness cooperative, and Mitsui & Co., a global trading and investment company, following the merger of Holsum Foods and Wilsey Foods.
“We started 30 years ago as an oil company,” Furman said.
Today, its reach extends far beyond cooking oils.
The company supplies oil, dressings, sauces, condiments, mayonnaise, margarine and butter blends, as well as dry seasonings and mixes to the nation’s top 100 restaurant chains, including McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King and Papa John’s. Its biggest client is Sysco, the largest U.S. food distributor with $81.4 billion in annual revenue.
“We’re a big player in their business,” Furman said of restaurant operators and distributors.
The Irvine-based supplier provides both branded and private-label products to Sysco, which distributes them to hundreds of foodservice operators nationwide—from restaurants and hotels to healthcare facilities and schools.
“We’re one of their top five suppliers,” Furman said. “We make Sysco-branded products. So, if you go into a restaurant—into the back of the house in the kitchen—and you see Sysco dressings? It’s manufactured by Ventura Foods.”
The company also develops custom products such as dressings and sauces for restaurant chains through its culinary and innovation teams.
At Subway, one of the world’s largest restaurant chains, Ventura supplies sandwich dressings that line the assembly counter. At Papa John’s, it produces the pizza chain’s creamy garlic sauce.
“We do a lot of mayo and sauce business with Burger King,” Furman added.
Flavor Categories are Fast-Growing
Today, Ventura Foods generates approximately three-quarters of its revenue from cooking oils, dressings, sauces, condiments and mayonnaise. The balance of its portfolio is composed of margarine, dry seasonings and dry mixes.
“The three categories of dressing, sauce and mayo are the ones that are growing the fastest,” Furman said.
That’s why Ventura is leaning into client collaboration to deliver flavor-driven products.
“A lot of our work is consultative. It’s solutions-based,” Furman said. “We don’t march in with a package or a product that we think meets their needs. We march in, and the first thing we do is listen and inquire.”
Ultimately, Ventura Foods aims to deliver value to its customers—an approach that’s become increasingly important as chains seek new menu items to drive foot traffic amid sluggish sales tied to persistent inflation.
To accelerate product development, the supplier recently formalized its innovation process called Vista to deepen collaboration with customers across its four Innovation Centers, including one in Brea, near its former headquarters. A team of nine chefs and about 30 product developers work directly with restaurant operators on new menu items, often months in advance.
“We’re really fired up as a company about this innovation process that we’re bringing to market, and we’re already seeing positive impact from it,” he said.
At the same time, Ventura Foods is increasingly helping customers cut costs by optimizing supply chains, a key concern as restaurant operators “are having a hard time growing their top line,” Furman said.
By working jointly with customers to trim costs, “they award you a little more business over time,” the CEO and president said.
Portfolio Shift Fuels Growth
Like many food suppliers, Ventura Foods had to adapt to shifting industry dynamics following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Currently, it is targeting growth in foodservice segments of supermarkets and convenience stores, such as delis and food courts, where “there’s a lot of channel blurring” as consumers shift between dining out and grab-and-go options, Furman said.
“We’re partnering with them in a bigger way,” he said.
Another shift is divesting retail brands such as Marie’s and Dean’s and reinvesting in companies that strengthen their position.
In 2024, the company acquired DYMA Brands, adding manufacturing capacity and expanding into adjacent categories like dry seasonings and mixes. The deal brought the company’s North American footprint to 16 manufacturing sites.
“In my role as CEO, we’ve executed three acquisitions and three strategic agreements that deepened the company’s capabilities in the custom dressings, sauces and mayonnaise categories and expanded its operations across Latin America and Asia Pacific,” Furman said.
The strategy appears to be working.
While overall restaurant traffic has been uneven, the company has posted “four of the strongest years financially in the company’s history,” Furman said.
Its edge, he says, lies in offering foodservice clients both national manufacturing scale and a service-driven approach.
“At the end of the day, I think what sets us apart is our ability to create a better customer experience, and that experience includes not just innovation, but service and partnering with them on understanding how they want to grow and what role we can play in that.”
PepsiCo Veteran at the Helm
Before joining Ventura Foods in 2009, Chris Furman spent 23 years at PepsiCo, where he held leadership roles across operations, sales and marketing, ultimately rising to general management positions. He led teams both domestically and internationally, including serving as president of Pepsi Spain.
In his final role, Furman was president of PepsiCo Foodservice, placing him among the company’s top 30 executives. Over the course of his PepsiCo career, Furman said he relocated a dozen times and became “hooked” on the food and beverage industry.
He moved to Orange County from the East Coast when he took the top job at Ventura Foods.
“Throughout my journey, one ambition stayed constant. I wanted to lead a company of my own. When Ventura Foods reached out, it immediately caught my attention,” Furman said, adding that Ventura’s joint-venture structure, culture and “untapped potential” for growth made the opportunity compelling.
“I saw a chance to apply everything I had learned over three decades to demonstrate my leadership in a new way, and to help guide a company through its next era of growth,” he said.
He’s overseen the company’s transformation from a largely U.S.-focused supplier into a global foodservice player that operates 16 manufacturing sites and serves customers in more than 70 countries.
When he’s not leading Ventura Foods, the 66-year-old executive serves on the boards of Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) and Pacific Life Insurance.
He also enjoys “the three Gs.” “Spending time with my seven grandchildren, getting out on the golf course and traveling the globe with my wife of 42 years, Monica.”
New Headquarters, New Look
As Ventura Foods turns 30 this year, company leaders thought it was time for a brand refresh.
Last year, the company relocated from its 129,000-square-foot corporate office in Brea to a 60,000-square-foot space at Spectrum Terrace, an Irvine Company-owned campus with a dining hall, a resort-style gym and an Olympic-length pool with cabanas.
The company’s 130 employees work on the third and fourth floors, sharing the same building as Apple. Other notable companies at the Laguna Canyon Road office park include Boot Barn, Amazon and The Coca-Cola Co. Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, one of OC’s fastest growing midsize public companies, is relocating to the campus this month.
“We wanted to be in the center of the county,” CEO and President Chris Furman, who lives in Dana Point, told the Business Journal.
Ventura’s move coincides with a refreshed brand identity, including a new logo designed to reflect both its innovative capabilities and its joint-venture roots. The new logo features two interlocking ladles that represent the strength of the company’s manufacturing and innovation capabilities and serve as a symbol of its joint-venture structure.
“We are proud to introduce a contemporary new logo that reflects our 30-year legacy in foodservice and our ambition for continued growth,” Furman said.
