 |
| Stewart and Lynda Resnick own this painting, Muse in a Theatrical Landscape, by Hermann Albert Bryce Duffy |
On an unexpectedly rainy October day in Los Angeles, Stewart Resnick looks out the window of a third-floor conference room and shrugs. It's midway through California's biggest-ever pistachio harvest and the rain is yet another reminder, should anyone need it, of how important water is to his business. He helps himself to a half a vegetable wrap and a bottle of Fiji Water—one of the four big consumer brands Resnick owns—and takes his place at the head of the table, where senior executives of his private company, Roll International, have gathered to discuss how to sell 300 million pounds of pistachios.
Resnick, 72, is short, trim, and tanned, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt. He and his wife and business partner, Lynda, are quintessential Beverly Hills billionaires, with a sumptuous mansion and a new $54 million pavilion named after them at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They diverge from the Beverly Hills norm, however, in this respect: The source of their wealth is one of the biggest farms in California's agricultural heartland—188 square miles of land, a holding four times the size of San Francisco—aptly named Paramount. There they grow oranges, almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates; their Pom Wonderful juice launched the pomegranate superfood craze.
Dave Szeflin, who manages Paramount's processing plant, throws a bag of raw pistachios on the table and sits down heavily. The plant has been operating 24 hours a day for the past 21 days.
"Well, the growers should be happy," says Resnick.
"The growers should be very happy," says Szeflin.
"They should be beyond happy—ecstatic," says Resnick.
Szeflin tells him a grower they both know stopped by the plant to say just that. "He said, 'The sound of money is when a harvester goes next to a tree in an orchard with 7,000 pounds of pistachios and shakes it. That sound, when the pistachios hit the catch frame, that's the sound of money.'"
Everyone in the room knows that sound.
"It's like a Vegas slot machine," says one executive.
"Record prices and record deals," says Szeflin.
"It's good for Stewart. He's got both," says another.
The giddy, money-really-does-grow-on-trees attitude in the conference room belies trouble. In the past few months the Resnicks have been hit with two major legal challenges that have exposed them to unflattering scrutiny. There is a floor at Roll headquarters just for the lawyers preparing to fight on behalf of the Resnicks, in courts of all kinds and for many years to come.
The first suit, filed by several environmental groups and water agencies, threatens a crucial element of Paramount's business: its sizable stake in an enormous underground water bank in the San Joaquin Valley. The second, brought by the Federal Trade Commission, accuses the Resnicks of making false health claims about Pom Wonderful.
Stewart calls the environmentalists' lawsuit "a nuisance" and the FTC's actions "foolish." But if the allegations are proven, they may affect businesses worth $2 billion. Already, they have begun to undermine an image of beneficence that Lynda, in particular, has worked hard to cultivate: The Resnicks are generous philanthropists and boast that Roll's products either "are good for you or make you feel good."
All of which may help explain why Stewart Resnick agreed to give Bloomberg Businessweek a rare look inside Roll International, which includes Fiji Water, the bottled water shipped from the remote South Pacific island; Teleflora, the flower delivery service; and Suterra, an environmentally sensitive pesticide. To hear Resnick tell it, though, he's not concerned about public perception. "If I think I'm right, I don't care what people say. It's their problem," he says. "Lynda can't take negativity. I told her, 'There's just one thing in life you have to understand, and then nothing will bother you: If you're successful, no good deed goes unpunished.' "
businessweek
No comments:
Post a Comment