HOCHMAN WORKED ALONGSIDE NUMEROUS PEOPLE AT PROCTER & GAMBLE WHO WOULD GO ON TO BE TOP EXECUTIVES ELSEWHERE. | PHOTO BY TERRI GLANGER
other, too. Not just serve the guests. “They like that. They call it ‘shift happens,’ and ‘let’s play a restaurant.’ The idea that, your restaurant’s busy, you get slammed, and then you make it out, and you’ve delighted a lot of guests, and you’ve done it as a team. That’s the ideal for a Chilihead. I told the general managers: I think my mom was a Chilihead, even though she’s never worked at Chili’s. It really dawned on me, why I like working at this company so much. As silly as the name is, I’m a Chilihead.” Hochman cut his teeth at two companies that have served as training grounds for future restaurant executives: Yum Brands and Procter & Gamble. He took an entry-level position as a cost forecaster in the Baltimore office of Procter & Gamble, which makes products like Tide, Dawn and Mr. Clean. That’s where he met Ann, who was a marketing intern at the time. Marketing is a big deal at the company, and marketing interns typically outrank entry- level finance people. Ann was working on a prom promotion for a cosmetics brand. Hochman’s job was to provide the financial analysis. She expected it to take weeks. He got it done immediately. “I looked like a rock star,” she said. “He’s really efficient.” Ann knew immediately he would be
successful. “It was always obvious to me he was the smartest guy in the room,” Ann said. There appears to be some disagreement, however, as to Hochman’s work as a cost forecaster. “I was terrible,” he said. But another executive with Procter & Gamble, Todd Magazine, saw Hochman’s potential, brought him over to marketing and took him under his wing. That would be a key moment for Hochman, because sponsorship from a marketing leader is how Procter & Gamble employees could make their way over to that department. That was where Hochman worked on the rebranding of Old Spice deodorant in 2010. The brand at the time was known mostly for older men. But the company overhauled its identity, starting with a series of video ads repositioning the deodorant for a younger generation. The campaign, from Wieden + Kennedy, would be a huge success and drove sales for the brand. Wieden would go on to do the KFC Colonel campaign. “It’s not that different from the KFC transformation,” said Esi Eggleston Bracey, who worked with Hochman at Procter & Gamble and is now the chief growth and marketing officer with Unilever. “How do you take outdated Old Spice and make it relevant again?” Hochman worked alongside numerous
people at Procter & Gamble who would go on to be top executives elsewhere, including Bracey, George Felix, Sonic President Jim Taylor, Arby’s President David Graves, Shake Shack CEO Rob Lynch and Brian Niccol from Starbucks. Niccol left Procter & Gamble to take a job with Taco Bell and told Hochman about a job at the chain’s international division. Hochman ended up interviewing with David Novak about a job overseeing marketing at one of Yum’s U.S. chains. Novak asked him whether he’d prefer working at Taco Bell or KFC. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t think I want to do Taco Bell because they’re doing so well and all you could do was mess it up,’” Hochman said. “I don’t love just being given a playbook and running it. The KFC brand seems like it should be doing a lot better. It’s got the Colonel. It’s got fried chicken. Everybody’s grown up on it.” That’s how Hochman ended up at Yum Brands, itself an executive incubator. Some 30 people who worked under Novak have gone onto become CEO of other companies. The company taught Hochman a lot, particularly about people culture. Yum had a strong culture of recognition under Novak, who would recognize top employees with a rubber chicken. Executives throughout the company did something similar, including Hochman, who would give out pictures of top
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