Shameless exploitation has never been more fun nor done more good for more people than when done by Newman’s Own—the first green food company to use all-natural ingredients, and still the most successful.
It was 1982 when Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner made their foray into local gourmet shops with bottles of their homemade salad dressing. The venture was intended to be a lark, a way to poke fun at the traditional way the market operates. Hurdling obstacle after obstacle, they created the first company to mass-market all-natural products, eliminating the chemicals, gums, and preservatives that existed in food at the time. This picaresque saga is the inspiring story of how the two friends parlayed the joke into a multimillion-dollar company that gives all its profits to the less fortunate without spending money on galas, mailings, and other expensive outreaches. It also serves as a textbook for foundations and charitable organizations looking to do the most good they can with what they have.
Told in alternating voices, Newman and Hotchner have written a zany tale that is a business model for entrepreneurs, an inspirational book, and just plain delightful reading.
In Pursuit of the Common Good
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About the Author
PAUL NEWMAN, cofounder of Newman's Own and The Hole in the Wall Gang, is a major motion picture actor. A. E. HOTCHNER, cofounder of Newman's Own and The Hole in the Wall Gang, is the author of international bestseller Papa Hemingway and such memoirs as Looking for Miracles and King of the Hill, which was adapted into an award-winning film by Steven Soderbergh. He lives in Westport, Connecticut.
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Chapter 1
It is December 1980, a week before Christmas, Westport, Connecticut, a blanket of snow on the ground, wood smoke from fireplaces redolent in the air, tree lights festooning the houses, a pervasive Yuletide lilt, but we are laboring in the subterranean space beneath Paul's converted barn, an area that had once been a stable for farm horses. There is a bucket filled with ice-blanketed Budweisers and an array of bottles of olive oil, vinegar, mustard, condiments, and so forth. There is also an empty tub and a collection of old bottles dating back to Revolutionary times by their appearance, bottles of various shapes and sizes that had been somewhat sanitized for this occasion.
Paul Newman, known to his friends as ol' PL or Calezzo de Wesso (Bonehead), had asked his buddy A. E. Hotchner (Hotch), sometimes called Sawtooth, to help him with a Christmas project that he was assembling in this basement, which wasn't a basement in the usual sense. There were crusty stones, a dirt floor, crumbling cement, and overhead timbers covered with active cobwebs. Also three long since vacated horse stalls, but the unmistakable aroma of horses remained. There were desiccated manure fragments here and there, and there was evidence that certain field animals were still occupying the premises. A very picturesque place in which to mix salad dressing.
The project was to mix up a batch of PL's salad dressing in the washtub and fill all those old wine bottles using the assembled funnels and corks and labels, and on Christmas Eve our collective families would go around the neighborhood singing carols and distributing these gift bottles of PL's dressing.
PL was very proud of his salad dressing, and this was the apotheosis of his salad days. Over the years, even in four-star restaurants, PL had been rejecting the house dressings and concocting his own. Captains, maitre d's, and sometimes the restaurant owner would scurry around to assemble Paul's ingredients while neighboring diners gawked in disbelief. When we first ate at Elaine's, one of New York's popular restaurants, several waiters and Elaine herself gathered round as Paul blended and tasted the brew he made from the ingredients brought to him from the kitchen. This scene had been repeated in such varied eateries as a Greek diner, at a wedding party, in an outdoor restaurant, on the island of Eleuthera, and in snazzy restaurants from coast to coast. When his kids went off to school, Paul would fill a couple of bottles of dressing for them to take along. On one occasion, when the restaurant mistakenly served the salad with its own dressing, Paul took the salad to the men's room, washed off the dressing, dried it with paper towels, and, after returning to the table, anointed it with his own, which he concocted with ingredients brought to him from the kitchen.
At that time, almost all dressings, especially the mass-market ones, contained sugar, artificial coloring, chemical preservatives, gums, and God knows what. So Paul really started to make his own dressing not just as a taste preference, but also as a defense against those insufferable artificial additives.
That evening the basement operation seemed to go on forever. We had never tried to mix a vat of salad dressing, let alone pound a 1925 syrup cork into an 1895 vinegar bottle, especially after a few beers. Sometimes the mallet would smack the cork, and sometimes it nailed our thumbs. Paul carefully measured amounts of olive oil and vinegar, for he had no feel yet for dealing with a quantity like this, which, he decided, required six boxes of black pepper.
He was almost crazed as he stirred the dressing with the wooden paddle. There's a river that runs alongside his house, and the paddle most certainly came from his canoe. It was his notion that the olive oil and vinegar had a sort of hygienic effect so that one didn't have to wash anything thoroughly. That aside, he was highly critical of Hotch's paddle technique. The motion, he insisted, had to have an even, smooth rhythm that would not create frothing. But Hotch couldn't get the hang of it. "You've got to go with the paddle," Paul said. "Don't pull it straight toward you, waffle it, gyrate it, go with the paddle." Hotch said he was going with the paddle, but, having had four beers, if he went with the paddle too much, he was going to fall facedown in the tub. Paul said as long as it wasn't butt first, not to worry about it.
Occasionally, during the hours we labored, somebody would show up--Caroline, the housekeeper, or Joanne or one of Paul's kids. But they had the good sense to stop at the door. The smell of vintage horse piss and mold had now commingled with the aroma of Budweiser and the salad dressing ingredients, a combination that did not exactly beckon. So they stood near the door and announced that dinner was ready, or Aunt Margaret was here, or the police wanted to invalidate Paul's driver's license, but Paul said we still had work to do, whereupon everyone seemed to scatter in a hurry. No one dared venture into that place. It was forbidding, or sanctified, maybe.
The precise number of giveaway bottles were lined up on the dirt floor like a battalion of infantry soldiers, but there was still a quantity of dressing left in the tub. That's when it occurred to Paul that we could bottle the rest, hustle them into some upscale local food stores, make a buck, and go fishing. But Hotch, a refugee from law school, put on the brakes: "It's against the law," he shouted. "Look at this place! The bugs can't even stay alive here! If somebody croaks from ingesting this stuff, you'll be in court, with no liability insurance. You could wind up without your basement and everything above it. There are certain rules and regulations to be followed--hygienic, first and foremost, proper labeling, government stuff!"
With his barn at stake, Paul agreed that they'd have to take out insurance, create a proper label, and get a bona fide bottler and see if it would sell.
And that is how our baby got started--not in a manger, but in a tub--not a wise man in sight--a fading movie star and a cantankerous writer, but that was it.
Chapter 2
It is 1982, and we are sitting in the conference room of the largest marketing company in America. A long, burnished table is presided over by its president, with five of his department heads in attendance, all experts in how to market new products in the United States. Very imposing. On the table in front of us we have a bottle, once filled with Chianti, now containing an olive oil and vinegar salad dressing, which is the object of this meeting.
"You gentlemen have come to the right place," the president tells us. "We launch new products for some of the biggest brands in America--Libby's, Heinz, Del Monte, Campbell's, Kraft--so we can give you an exponential trajectory on the welter of details that have to be accomplished to launch your salad dressing.
"It's essential to know in advance how the public will react to your product. So we would dispatch people across the country to gather together focus groups of varied ethnicity, financial strata, age groups, sexual preference, fast-food habits, footwear use or nonuse, deodorants, the whole load. We would go around the country, asking folks in shopping malls and such places how they like the bottle, the name, the taste--we'd have them sample it on lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, sausage. Then the price--you have to set a price for us--questions like that, and then in maybe seven or eight sections of the country we'd correlate the results and study them to let you know how to adjust all those things to maximize your introductory impact."
"What would that cost?" we ask.
"Depending on the focus depth, somewhere between three hundred and four hundred thousand dollars. Now once you're ready to roll out the product, you'll have to learn how to attend to distribution, promotion and advertising, public relations--our experience is with the big guys--Heinz, Kraft, etc., and they figure to spend a million dollars to launch a new product--that's the general rule the first year. We'll teach you how to muscle into the big stores--you'll have to make deals, especially with outfits like A&P and Kroger's--discounts, two-for-ones, free stuff, just to get your bottle on the shelf--and then how to avoid winding up on the bottom shelf, down below the packed rows of Krafts and Wishbones, which have all the eye-level spaces. The odds on new products are about the same as roulette. Even the biggest companies have had expensive failures--Campbell's refrigerated soups, Gerber's 'adult' food line, Nabisco's giant-size Oreo cookies. And then there's the history of celebrity products--which Karen will tell you about."
"Celebrity products fall into a category of their own," said Karen, a trim blonde in a tailored suit. "That doesn't refer to fictional characters like Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, and Sara Lee. Nor does it mean endorsers, like the sport stars that appear on Wheaties boxes. But when celebrities come out with their own products--Rocky Graziano's spaghetti sauce, Mickey Mantle's barbecue sauce, Nolan Ryan's All-Star Fruit Snacks, Gloria Vanderbilt's salad dressing, Reggie Jackson's candy bar, Carl Yastrzemski's Big Yaz Bread, Diane von Furstenberg's facial tissue, Bill Blass's chocolates, Polly Bergen's Turtle Oil, Marilyn Monroe's Merlot, Fess Parker's wine, James Darren's spaghetti sauce, Phyllis Diller's Philli Dilli Chili, Richard Simmons's Salad Spray, Tommy Lasorda's spaghetti sauce, Yves St. Laurent's cigarettes, Frank Sinatra's neckties--all examples of products these famous people promoted with unsatisfactory results. Take Graziano, for example. He was a popular prizefighter, middleweight champ, big fights with Tony Zale, and as an entertainment personality he appeared in a series of television shows and all kinds of television sitcoms and whatnot. Rocky promoted the hell out of his sauce, but after an initial surge, it simply d...
It is December 1980, a week before Christmas, Westport, Connecticut, a blanket of snow on the ground, wood smoke from fireplaces redolent in the air, tree lights festooning the houses, a pervasive Yuletide lilt, but we are laboring in the subterranean space beneath Paul's converted barn, an area that had once been a stable for farm horses. There is a bucket filled with ice-blanketed Budweisers and an array of bottles of olive oil, vinegar, mustard, condiments, and so forth. There is also an empty tub and a collection of old bottles dating back to Revolutionary times by their appearance, bottles of various shapes and sizes that had been somewhat sanitized for this occasion.
Paul Newman, known to his friends as ol' PL or Calezzo de Wesso (Bonehead), had asked his buddy A. E. Hotchner (Hotch), sometimes called Sawtooth, to help him with a Christmas project that he was assembling in this basement, which wasn't a basement in the usual sense. There were crusty stones, a dirt floor, crumbling cement, and overhead timbers covered with active cobwebs. Also three long since vacated horse stalls, but the unmistakable aroma of horses remained. There were desiccated manure fragments here and there, and there was evidence that certain field animals were still occupying the premises. A very picturesque place in which to mix salad dressing.
The project was to mix up a batch of PL's salad dressing in the washtub and fill all those old wine bottles using the assembled funnels and corks and labels, and on Christmas Eve our collective families would go around the neighborhood singing carols and distributing these gift bottles of PL's dressing.
PL was very proud of his salad dressing, and this was the apotheosis of his salad days. Over the years, even in four-star restaurants, PL had been rejecting the house dressings and concocting his own. Captains, maitre d's, and sometimes the restaurant owner would scurry around to assemble Paul's ingredients while neighboring diners gawked in disbelief. When we first ate at Elaine's, one of New York's popular restaurants, several waiters and Elaine herself gathered round as Paul blended and tasted the brew he made from the ingredients brought to him from the kitchen. This scene had been repeated in such varied eateries as a Greek diner, at a wedding party, in an outdoor restaurant, on the island of Eleuthera, and in snazzy restaurants from coast to coast. When his kids went off to school, Paul would fill a couple of bottles of dressing for them to take along. On one occasion, when the restaurant mistakenly served the salad with its own dressing, Paul took the salad to the men's room, washed off the dressing, dried it with paper towels, and, after returning to the table, anointed it with his own, which he concocted with ingredients brought to him from the kitchen.
At that time, almost all dressings, especially the mass-market ones, contained sugar, artificial coloring, chemical preservatives, gums, and God knows what. So Paul really started to make his own dressing not just as a taste preference, but also as a defense against those insufferable artificial additives.
That evening the basement operation seemed to go on forever. We had never tried to mix a vat of salad dressing, let alone pound a 1925 syrup cork into an 1895 vinegar bottle, especially after a few beers. Sometimes the mallet would smack the cork, and sometimes it nailed our thumbs. Paul carefully measured amounts of olive oil and vinegar, for he had no feel yet for dealing with a quantity like this, which, he decided, required six boxes of black pepper.
He was almost crazed as he stirred the dressing with the wooden paddle. There's a river that runs alongside his house, and the paddle most certainly came from his canoe. It was his notion that the olive oil and vinegar had a sort of hygienic effect so that one didn't have to wash anything thoroughly. That aside, he was highly critical of Hotch's paddle technique. The motion, he insisted, had to have an even, smooth rhythm that would not create frothing. But Hotch couldn't get the hang of it. "You've got to go with the paddle," Paul said. "Don't pull it straight toward you, waffle it, gyrate it, go with the paddle." Hotch said he was going with the paddle, but, having had four beers, if he went with the paddle too much, he was going to fall facedown in the tub. Paul said as long as it wasn't butt first, not to worry about it.
Occasionally, during the hours we labored, somebody would show up--Caroline, the housekeeper, or Joanne or one of Paul's kids. But they had the good sense to stop at the door. The smell of vintage horse piss and mold had now commingled with the aroma of Budweiser and the salad dressing ingredients, a combination that did not exactly beckon. So they stood near the door and announced that dinner was ready, or Aunt Margaret was here, or the police wanted to invalidate Paul's driver's license, but Paul said we still had work to do, whereupon everyone seemed to scatter in a hurry. No one dared venture into that place. It was forbidding, or sanctified, maybe.
The precise number of giveaway bottles were lined up on the dirt floor like a battalion of infantry soldiers, but there was still a quantity of dressing left in the tub. That's when it occurred to Paul that we could bottle the rest, hustle them into some upscale local food stores, make a buck, and go fishing. But Hotch, a refugee from law school, put on the brakes: "It's against the law," he shouted. "Look at this place! The bugs can't even stay alive here! If somebody croaks from ingesting this stuff, you'll be in court, with no liability insurance. You could wind up without your basement and everything above it. There are certain rules and regulations to be followed--hygienic, first and foremost, proper labeling, government stuff!"
With his barn at stake, Paul agreed that they'd have to take out insurance, create a proper label, and get a bona fide bottler and see if it would sell.
And that is how our baby got started--not in a manger, but in a tub--not a wise man in sight--a fading movie star and a cantankerous writer, but that was it.
Chapter 2
It is 1982, and we are sitting in the conference room of the largest marketing company in America. A long, burnished table is presided over by its president, with five of his department heads in attendance, all experts in how to market new products in the United States. Very imposing. On the table in front of us we have a bottle, once filled with Chianti, now containing an olive oil and vinegar salad dressing, which is the object of this meeting.
"You gentlemen have come to the right place," the president tells us. "We launch new products for some of the biggest brands in America--Libby's, Heinz, Del Monte, Campbell's, Kraft--so we can give you an exponential trajectory on the welter of details that have to be accomplished to launch your salad dressing.
"It's essential to know in advance how the public will react to your product. So we would dispatch people across the country to gather together focus groups of varied ethnicity, financial strata, age groups, sexual preference, fast-food habits, footwear use or nonuse, deodorants, the whole load. We would go around the country, asking folks in shopping malls and such places how they like the bottle, the name, the taste--we'd have them sample it on lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, sausage. Then the price--you have to set a price for us--questions like that, and then in maybe seven or eight sections of the country we'd correlate the results and study them to let you know how to adjust all those things to maximize your introductory impact."
"What would that cost?" we ask.
"Depending on the focus depth, somewhere between three hundred and four hundred thousand dollars. Now once you're ready to roll out the product, you'll have to learn how to attend to distribution, promotion and advertising, public relations--our experience is with the big guys--Heinz, Kraft, etc., and they figure to spend a million dollars to launch a new product--that's the general rule the first year. We'll teach you how to muscle into the big stores--you'll have to make deals, especially with outfits like A&P and Kroger's--discounts, two-for-ones, free stuff, just to get your bottle on the shelf--and then how to avoid winding up on the bottom shelf, down below the packed rows of Krafts and Wishbones, which have all the eye-level spaces. The odds on new products are about the same as roulette. Even the biggest companies have had expensive failures--Campbell's refrigerated soups, Gerber's 'adult' food line, Nabisco's giant-size Oreo cookies. And then there's the history of celebrity products--which Karen will tell you about."
"Celebrity products fall into a category of their own," said Karen, a trim blonde in a tailored suit. "That doesn't refer to fictional characters like Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, and Sara Lee. Nor does it mean endorsers, like the sport stars that appear on Wheaties boxes. But when celebrities come out with their own products--Rocky Graziano's spaghetti sauce, Mickey Mantle's barbecue sauce, Nolan Ryan's All-Star Fruit Snacks, Gloria Vanderbilt's salad dressing, Reggie Jackson's candy bar, Carl Yastrzemski's Big Yaz Bread, Diane von Furstenberg's facial tissue, Bill Blass's chocolates, Polly Bergen's Turtle Oil, Marilyn Monroe's Merlot, Fess Parker's wine, James Darren's spaghetti sauce, Phyllis Diller's Philli Dilli Chili, Richard Simmons's Salad Spray, Tommy Lasorda's spaghetti sauce, Yves St. Laurent's cigarettes, Frank Sinatra's neckties--all examples of products these famous people promoted with unsatisfactory results. Take Graziano, for example. He was a popular prizefighter, middleweight champ, big fights with Tony Zale, and as an entertainment personality he appeared in a series of television shows and all kinds of television sitcoms and whatnot. Rocky promoted the hell out of his sauce, but after an initial surge, it simply d...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By ChiMick
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"In Pursuit of the Common Good" (subtitled: Twenty Five Years of Improving the World, One Bottle of Salad Dressing at a Time) is a non-fiction work written by the late Paul Newman and Aaron E. Hotchner (American author, most known IMHO for his novels about Ernest Hemmingway).
This book is about the founding of "Newmans Own" natural foods, how it all started with Newman not being sure what to do with leftovers of his personal salad dressing made in a batch intended as holiday gifts for friends, and why they decided to give 100 percent of the profit from "Newmans Own" to charity.
I feel that the first few chapters would be interesting for anyone planning to start a small business, especially one selling food products. The challenges and pitfalls that they overcame are very interesting- I had no idea that a well-known movie star would have to go through all of this just to start a business. I was also surprised that Newman was very involved in the formula for the salad dressing, and other products such as the salsa and pasta sauces.
As an example, the first "Newmans Own" maranara sauce was based on a recipe Newman wrote on the back of a paper bag and went through no less than 10 "pre production" iterations before it met with PLN's approval to produce.
The methods used by Newman and Hotchner to gather public opinion about their products are noteworthy also. Newman's Own saved many thousands of dollars by not listening to the so called "marketing experts" and using their own methods (saving an estimated $1,320,000 in pre-production research).
It's worth noting that prior to Newman's Own, large food producers such as Kraft, etc. felt it was impossible to offer "all natural" foods with fresh ingredients for sale to the general public. In this way all of Newman's Own products were pioneers in the area of natural foods containing no chemical preservatives.
Newman at first balked at the idea of having his face on the product labels but was encouraged to do so by Ellen Posey (wife of broadcaster and former F1, Indy and sports car racer Sam Posey). Ellen was also responsible for the distinctive design of the Newman's Own product labels.
It is a light and humorous read, and like the Newmans Own products, the proceeds from sale of the book go to "Hole in the Wall Camps" for crippled and terminally ill children.
Each section of the book has a few pages of reprinted letters from people commenting about Newmans Own products. One letter is addressed to "Mr Redford"; Hopefully Paul took that with good humor.
There is a section in the back of the book with Paul Newman's favorite recipes, some of which were originally published in Good Housekeeping magazine, others were published in "The Hole in the Wall Gang Cookbook".
This book is about the founding of "Newmans Own" natural foods, how it all started with Newman not being sure what to do with leftovers of his personal salad dressing made in a batch intended as holiday gifts for friends, and why they decided to give 100 percent of the profit from "Newmans Own" to charity.
I feel that the first few chapters would be interesting for anyone planning to start a small business, especially one selling food products. The challenges and pitfalls that they overcame are very interesting- I had no idea that a well-known movie star would have to go through all of this just to start a business. I was also surprised that Newman was very involved in the formula for the salad dressing, and other products such as the salsa and pasta sauces.
As an example, the first "Newmans Own" maranara sauce was based on a recipe Newman wrote on the back of a paper bag and went through no less than 10 "pre production" iterations before it met with PLN's approval to produce.
The methods used by Newman and Hotchner to gather public opinion about their products are noteworthy also. Newman's Own saved many thousands of dollars by not listening to the so called "marketing experts" and using their own methods (saving an estimated $1,320,000 in pre-production research).
It's worth noting that prior to Newman's Own, large food producers such as Kraft, etc. felt it was impossible to offer "all natural" foods with fresh ingredients for sale to the general public. In this way all of Newman's Own products were pioneers in the area of natural foods containing no chemical preservatives.
Newman at first balked at the idea of having his face on the product labels but was encouraged to do so by Ellen Posey (wife of broadcaster and former F1, Indy and sports car racer Sam Posey). Ellen was also responsible for the distinctive design of the Newman's Own product labels.
It is a light and humorous read, and like the Newmans Own products, the proceeds from sale of the book go to "Hole in the Wall Camps" for crippled and terminally ill children.
Each section of the book has a few pages of reprinted letters from people commenting about Newmans Own products. One letter is addressed to "Mr Redford"; Hopefully Paul took that with good humor.
There is a section in the back of the book with Paul Newman's favorite recipes, some of which were originally published in Good Housekeeping magazine, others were published in "The Hole in the Wall Gang Cookbook".
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Ellen Pogos
Format:Paperback
I recommend this book as it's a great story and extraoridanarily inspiring. It shows the good in human nature and greatly counteracts all of the negatives that are repeatedly showered on u sby the media. I have always admired Paul Newman and he has left a wonderful legacy.
I will be giving this book as Christmas presents.
It should be required reading for every CEO across the globe.
I will be giving this book as Christmas presents.
It should be required reading for every CEO across the globe.
18 of 24 people found the following review helpful
By dr_bansal
Format:Paperback
May you rest in peace... you were the originator of social capitalism by shifting the paradigm to one of good products/services, word of mouth marketing, and a corporation's focus on the social good. Hats off!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
doing good things for the world is good business, YAY!
Paul and his buddy Hootch are irrepressibly confident and righteous in developing their line of organic tasty foods and getting them placed in the big stores against frightening... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Tim P. Andres
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book! Great Guy!!
This book really explains the details of how Newmans own was created. A lot of his story seemed almost like fate took over sometimes.
Published 4 months ago by B. McMahon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good lessons for any business
I loved this book about a food business that thrived in spite of obstacle after obstacle, and in spite of the founders' stubborn refusal to do things the 'right' way. Read more
Published 17 months ago by B. Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Newman IS the BEST
This is a very interesting book about Paul Newman & his Friend on how it all began with "One Bottle Of Salad Dressing At A Time" He writes with insight & humor in telling how his... Read more
Published on August 14, 2010 by Auntie Bug
4.0 out of 5 stars
Humorous Account of New Dimensions for Philanthropy
"Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Read more
Published on April 10, 2010 by Donald Mitchell
4.0 out of 5 stars
good read
this is a good read- i am a big paul newman fan so it was definitely a must for me and it was wonderful insight to his charity work
Published on December 2, 2009 by Reviewer
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Legacy of Paul Newman - wow
The hardback copy of this book is the same but has a different title,"Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good". Read more
Published on November 12, 2008 by Patricia Kramer
