UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

A Data-Driven Road to Better Public Health

By Elise Anderson

It was a far cry from what Arash Nasibi (’14) had envisioned as an MBA student. A former computer scientist with a focus on management consulting, Nasibi took a sharp left turn shortly after enrolling in a core strategy class with professor Phillip Leslie, and just kept driving.

Nasibi became interested in Leslie’s perspective on business strategy, which suggests that MBAs seek opportunities that exist in often overlooked “sleepy niche markets.” When he learned that Leslie was recruiting research assistants for work he was doing on restaurant inspection data, Nasibi was intrigued. “It struck me as one of those peculiar markets that he had discussed in class — enough to pique my curiosity and learn more,” Nasibi says.

Nestlé’s Chris Johnson Explains How Local Tastes Drive Worldwide Consumption

By Paul Feinberg

Food and drink companies have an unusually intimate relationship with the consumer. After all, they’re asking you to put something they make into your body and trust that no harm will result.

“Ultimately, the value of Nestlé, or of other companies, is based on trust,” Nestlé Executive Vice President Chris Johnson (’88) told a UCLA Anderson audience Monday. Johnson, who heads the company’s business excellence division, joined UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian in a conversation that was part of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

Johnson has spent his entire career with Nestlé, and the past 26 years overseas. During that time, he’s experienced numerous changes and roles at the world’s largest food company. He assumed his current position as head of the new business excellence arm in October 2014 and his job is to help the company better leverage its huge scale and strengths.

From Custom to Customizable: When Family Businesses Evolve with L&L's Elisia Flores

Eddie and daughter Elisia Flores at the first L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.

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By Paul Feinberg

Like the sun and the beaches, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue (aka L&L Drive Inn in Hawaii) was part of Elisia Flores’ (’14) Hawaiian upbringing. Her father, Eddie, and a partner bought the business and began selling franchises before she was born, and Flores did not grow up dreaming of going into the family business. She left the islands to earn a finance degree at USC, then worked a series of finance positions with GE. Ready for a change, Flores applied to UCLA Anderson’s full-time MBA program. When GE asked her to stay on, Flores enrolled in Anderson’s EMBA program, graduating with honors.

She is now vice president and CFO of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, which features hundreds of franchises (plus two corporate-owned Hawaiian locations) around the world. Their menu features Hawaii’s comfort food greatest hits: barbecue chicken, loco moco, fried Spam, rice and mac salad. Elisia and her father recently visited her alma mater for a Price Center-sponsored entrepreneur’s “fireside chat” held in the Anderson Venture Accelerator.

They make an entertaining pair, with Eddie focused on a concept that grows the business by adding franchises while Elisia ― equally intent on building the business ― takes a more circumspect, data-driven approach. “The move to an entrepreneurial company blew my mind,” she said. “We don’t have budgets?” Countered her father, “Why do we need budgets if we are making money?”

After the event, Elisia, whose mother and sister also work for L&L, sat down with a representative of the UCLA Anderson blog for a quick chat. (This interview has been shortened and modified for clarity.)

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Q: What are your main responsibilities with L&L?

My title is CFO, so all the finance aspect is under me, but beyond that I am also spending a lot of my time helping our marketing team as well as (implementing) strategy. So, the two topics that really sparked my interest at Anderson, I get to work on and lead.

Q: It was interesting to hear that the company allows franchisees a lot of latitude to customize their business as they see fit — in contrast to chains that focus on conformity. How does that work?

We provide national, regional and local marketing. The [franchise owners] can do things within in their store and within their budget. But we pool our money at a corporate level and can do radio and TV. We are not like a typical franchise company, we are not doing as much marketing as McDonalds or Burger King is; but instead we are focused on building community, on how we can get the community to come into the store and the marketing efforts that help that.

Lynda Resnick Pursued a Second Career in Service to Others

Spirited, trim and energetic, Lynda Resnick could give the impression that success has come easily to her.

But in a keynote address to UCLA Anderson’s 6th annual Velocity Women’s Leadership Summit, Resnick, co-owner and vice-chair of the Wonderful Company, demonstrated the resilience that has made her a powerful force in California agriculture and philanthropy.

Together with her husband Stewart, Resnick co-owns the $4 billion Wonderful Company, whose brands include FIJI Water, POM Wonderful, Teleflora and Halo mandarins. Lynda Resnick is in charge of the Los Angeles-based company’s global marketing and product development.

Pete Marino Brought His Entrepreneurial Muscle Memory to MillerCoors

By Margaret Bliss

How does one remain entrepreneurial while working in a large company? For UCLA Anderson alumnus Pete Marino (’02), CCO of MillerCoors and president of Tenth and Blake, MillerCoors’ craft and import division, the transition wasn’t all that difficult.

In a discussion with Senior Associate Dean Al Osborne at an event hosted by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Marino admitted he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. After a two-year stint with a consulting firm where he honed his business skills, Marino started his own communication firm, Dig Communications. It was his first client, MillerCoors, that helped his company grow to 60 people. Six years later, he sold Dig to Olson PR and stayed on as president before joining MillerCoors as vice president of communications.

The Iceman Comments

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National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. UCLA Anderson, in conjunction with the Anderson Latino Management Association and the UCLA campus, recognizes the significant contributions to society among our Latino and Hispanic students, alumni, staff and faculty. Visit Latino@Anderson to enjoy their stories.

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By Paul Feinberg

Roberto Sequeira (’07) is pretty used to it by now. While so many of his classmates spend their days dealing with the intricacies of high finance or consulting, he’s selling ice. Assured by a reporter that a forthcoming interview wouldn’t go into anything too deep, he just laughed: “Right,” Sequeira said. “It’s not too complicated.”

Did we say “ice”? Yes, we did.

Sequeira is founder and chief executive officer of Gläce Luxury Ice. The company bills itself as the world’s leading premium-drink ice brand; the product features a zero-taste ice cube that allows consumers to “maximize the beverage experience.” You probably didn’t know that traditional machine ice, typically made with local tap water, may contain impurities and carcinogens that result in lousy tasting ice. Gläce Ice, by contrast, is cleaner and better tasting. Still not sure? Let Sequeira explain:

Q: If I were to ask you for the elevator pitch for your business, what would you say?

Basically, we’re carving out the niche, the top spot in a $4 billion commoditized industry, and the value proposition is simple: While consumers have developed a sense of brand loyalty in just about every other consumer packaged good, ice remained, up until our arrival, an overlooked opportunity. People have preferences in bottled water, vodkas and scotches, but “on the rocks” remained a generic proposition until we came along.

No Guesswork, No Guilt: Goodbye Hangry, Hello officebites

UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research field study projects in lieu of a thesis. Anderson gives full-time students the Business Creation Option in which entrepreneurs launch companies while still in school. We’re highlighting stories of Class of 2017 mission-driven BCO projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from e-commerce to cleantech.

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By Anna Highberger (’17), Brian Leong (’17), Evan Milnor (’17) and Jesse Shapiro (’17)

Officebites takes the guesswork out of healthy snacking in the workplace.

Our subscription snack box contains nutritionally ideal snacks to help consumers become more mindful about what they eat at work. After consulting with nutritionists and dietitians, we’ve developed a menu of snacks with two times the protein and half the sugar of the vast majority of snacks on the market. They are portion-controlled at 135 calories each and are time-stamped for consumption two times a day.

We're proud to announce that officebites has been awarded the UCLA Anderson/Union Bank Most Outstanding Business Creation Award and a fellowship from YPO West Los Angeles, and we tied for second place in UCLA Anderson’s 2017 Knapp Venture Competition.

Officebites tied for second place and won $5,000 in the annual Knapp Venture Competition. Left to right: Jesse Shapiro, Brian Leong, Evan Milnor

Will Extracting Crab Meat in Ecuador also Extract a Price Premium? UCLA Anderson MBAs Propose a Sustainable Solution

With a local guide, Lizeth Chiprez interviewed restaurant proprietors at a fish market in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to gather data her team would use to understand the value chain around red crab and black clam processing and distribution

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. During Impact Week (April 17–21, 2017), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, we’re highlighting stories of AMRs supported by the Center for Global Management that took UCLA Anderson Class of 2017 teams overseas to collaborate with NGOs whose mission-driven work includes such global challenges as health care delivery, international labor standards and environmental conservation.

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By Lizeth Chiprez (’17), Grace Luo (’17), Nishant Ranjan (’17), Makibi Takagi (’17), Randy Lee (’17)

Conservation International, the client for our Applied Management Research field study project, is an international nonprofit focused on efforts to promote environmentally sustainable development. CI has established 1,200 protected land, marine and coastal areas across 78 countries. In Ecuador, the location of our project, CI has been focused on conservation of mangrove habitats since 2001.

The fishermen who live in the areas near mangrove habitats are integral stakeholders in mangrove protection. However, many are struggling to make ends meets. Some of the fishermen have organized to create associations or formal cooperatives. To incentivize them to participate in conservation efforts, many of these associations have been granted a governmental concession that gives them exclusive rights to nearby mangrove resources, as long as they utilize them in a sustainable manner.

Black clams and red crabs at a fish market in Playas, Ecuador

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Our project’s goal was to find ways to improve profitability for members of associations that have been granted concessions, thereby creating an economic incentive for participation in conversation efforts. We are focused on associations in two fishing communities within the Gulf of Guayaquil, 6 de Julio and El Morro; and the value chains for two specific mangrove products, the red crab and black clam. Our team traveled to the Gulf of Guayaquil in Ecuador in December 2016 and January 2017 to conduct primary research.

These Quants Create Algorithms to Your Taste

UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research field study projects in lieu of a thesis. Anderson gives full-time students the Business Creation Option in which entrepreneurs launch companies while still in school. Team Connoisseur researched the restaurant landscape in L.A. to devise a delicious formula for picking local dining options that improves on standard rating sites.

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By Zodin Del Rosario (’17), Richard Fernandez (’17), Kimberly Kalb (’17), Christina Rath (’17) and Sean Ginley (’17)

The restaurant search process is broken. With so many restaurants in L.A., people feel overwhelmed, and current websites like Yelp prove untrustworthy and cumbersome for people to sort through.

Connoisseur is a mobile app designed to offer personalized restaurant recommendations based on your dining history.

To gather seed data for our algorithm, the Connoisseur team surveyed 82 respondents to rate all the restaurants they had visited in Santa Monica. We explored multiple methodologies for predicting restaurant scores, including a k-nearest neighbors algorithm (k-NN), in which users are plotted in vector space and the actual physical distance between users is measured. In a k-NN, users with similar restaurant ratings will be closer to each other. We looked to find the five nearest neighbors to any user. Taking the average ratings of these five nearest neighbors, we found the other restaurants that these similar users loved.

We were able to test the viability of this approach by removing some of the data and using the algorithm to predict the deleted scores. This method was most effective when users had rated at least 25 restaurants, meaning once we moved outside of Santa Monica we would need users to rate even more in order to give accurate predictions.

UCLA Anderson Taught this Alumnus You Can’t Be a Wallflower in B-School or Business

Jeffery Keys (’96) is president of Diversity Food Brands LLC, a consolidator, operator and licensor of food service brands with a primary focus on concessions common to airports, motorways, college campuses and hospitals. DFB is minority-owned and ACDBE-certified in multiple states. Keys was a founding partner of United Enterprise Fund LP, a private equity fund that promoted and financed minority business ownership of franchise restaurant companies. Keys led and managed a number of investments and provided both financial and operational expertise to UEF’s portfolio companies and other businesses. Prior to UEF, he was a vice president of credit at FMAC, a specialty franchise lender, where he participated in over $2 billion in franchise transactions.

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Read what other African-American alumni and students have to say about career and education in Black@Anderson's 5 Questions

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Interview by Diamon Lockett (FEMBA ’18)

Q: How did you get started in your industry and why are you passionate about what you do?

I started in restaurant operations when I was very young, working in fast food places like Pizza Hut before getting my undergraduate degree in economics. It was when I was taking economics courses that I developed an affinity for finance. I became a commercial banker for Wells Fargo after leaving Berkeley and I worked my way through until I came across a company that did specialized lending for franchising, which gave me the opportunity to continue to do finance but also revisit some of my experiences in restaurant operations. I worked with this specialty company that gave me tremendous exposure to a number of different brands and operating systems and to being a lender. It gave me access to detailed financial information, so I was able to understand at a very, very detailed level what the opportunities were, the different brands and franchises.

I stayed in the Los Angeles area for several years after my MBA. Then I was lured out to New York to begin a career in private equity, putting together a first-of-its-kind private equity fund that was going to focus on increasing minority participation in some of the major franchise chains and brands. That was definitely something I wanted to do; it was finance, operations, and it gave me the opportunity to increase visibility within minority ownership. I had learned, at the time, that it was going to be a great wealth-generating system in franchising. It combined a lot of things that I believed in and was very passionate about. So, I packed up and left for New York, and we invested almost $50 million in these franchise concepts. I was one of the founding partners of this private equity fund, called United Enterprise Funds. It’s small in comparison to the billion-dollar funds that you have today but, at the time, it was considered a medium-sized fund, and it was the first to specialize in that space, with or without the minority component. We just didn’t have a lot of private equity in the franchise restaurant space.