Selling the family business taught me how to lead it

My mom and aunt both spent more than 40 years running Frieda’s BB #:388120. Our founder, and my grandmother, Dr. Frieda Rapaport Caplan, was at the office every day until she was 94 years old.

If you’ve ever worked in a family business, you know the pressures of pride, legacy and responsibility.

That generational weight felt even heavier when I had just returned from maternity leave and got the big question:

“Do you want to buy the business?”

I knew I wanted to run the company, but I didn’t feel passionate about being a sole owner.

That distinction turned out to be a key moment of personal growth for me, and a new beginning for Frieda’s.

Selling the family business is increasingly common in the fresh produce industry. Ready or not, the next generation of our industry is wrestling with this big decision. While I can’t tell you whether you should sell, here are a few things that came about, for me and the business, after the paperwork was signed:

Know when you’re ready.

There’s a moment I keep coming back to during the year we decided to sell the company:

I’m in a top-to-top customer meeting at their national headquarters, where our CEO, my mom Karen, would normally be running the meeting…but she isn’t. I didn’t have the big guns in the room. Or more correctly, I did. The guns were me. From that point on, I realized I was ready to get those calls, and I got them, not my mom.

When I realized our owners were no longer the key to growing the business, I knew we could take on outside investment. Frieda’s could scale and succeed on its own.

Financials and market conditions are important, but families need to be ready, too. My mom and aunt were ready. I’m as impressed by that as anything else they’ve ever done for the Frieda’s brand. They were humble enough to say someone else could take it further.

I was ready, too. I didn’t want to stress out over payroll or insurance plans. I wanted to focus on growing Frieda’s, not owning it by myself.

Know that the culture will change.

Every family business I talk to is worried about its culture. They don’t want it to change, and I get that. Family businesses often have great cultures, and it’s a major point of pride. Working for a family-owned business is a unique experience for any employee as much as it is for family members.

Don’t waste energy on preserving something that was always going to evolve. New investment is kind of like a new hire. You’re looking for a culture fit, not because you want to freeze the culture, but because you want it to improve. New team members embrace the company’s culture, but they also help it evolve. The same goes for your new partners. If they share your values and your approach to people, your culture will be in good hands.

When you bring two companies together, a new culture forms. You get the best of each, and ideally, the culture will better fit what your company is becoming.

Know what to let go.

We did a rebrand shortly before the acquisition. For decades before that, our logo was inspired by my grandmother’s signature, but we let that go. When it was time to rebrand, Frieda’s brand identity was bigger than any one of us. We kept the purple in our brand colors, and the new logo kept Frieda’s personality and heart.

Other principles are in your company’s DNA. It’s fine to listen to ideas but always advocate for the things that truly make your company unique. When Legacy Farms BB #:167426 acquired Frieda’s, we quickly began conversations about whether to sell commodity items with Frieda’s branding, like squash, asparagus and green beans.

In the end, we were aligned that Frieda’s identity as a specialty produce leader was too important, and we’ve stayed true to our go-to-market strategy of the being the best-selling specialty brand that inspires new food experiences.

Know that your new partner believes in you.

Listen to what your acquiring partner has to say about your commodities or your customer relationships, but also, listen to your gut. What made Legacy Farms the right choice wasn’t the highest offer. It was that the CEO, Dan Madsen, believed in my vision. He saw my value, and our team’s value, in addition to the company’s assets. They brought us in and did right by Frieda’s.

Early after the acquisition, Dan observed that the safety net of a family business was gone. He was right, and it was liberating. With this knowledge, I learned to advocate for myself, and I learned to lead people through uncertainty.

I liked working for my family, but I realized that I also like not working for my family!

Know that this isn’t the end – for you or your business.

It is going to be hard when you don’t work for your family anymore. But, there’s a preconceived notion that nobody else will understand or value the business in the same way. Nobody else will care as much. I’ve had the complete opposite experience, and I’ve been able to make better business decisions as a result.

When your mom is your boss and she calls you after work, it is hard to separate the business leader from the parent. Now when she calls, she’s just my mom. I have more balance than I ever did. Learning from Dan is different than learning from my mom. It’s a clear and clean business mentorship. And as a result, it’s been easier for me to discover my own leadership style and personal brand. I’m more confident than ever.

For the family members who stay in the business after a sale: give yourself grace. Your decisions carry more weight now. Your presence on the team will have more credibility, too. Trust the process, yourself and the potential in your company. It’s gotten you this far. It could even be the unlock for you, like it was for me.

Selling wasn’t the end of Frieda’s story. It was a new beginning, and it brought new, expanded chapters. That’s good, because after more than 60 years, people are hungry for more from Frieda’s Branded Produce.

About Frieda’s Inc. Frieda’s Branded Produce has inspired new food experiences for friends, families, and food lovers everywhere since 1962. From kiwifruit and dragon fruit to Stokes Purple sweet potatoes and habanero peppers, Frieda’s has introduced more than two hundred unique fruits and vegetables to the U.S. marketplace. Founded by produce industry trailblazer Dr. Frieda Rapoport Caplan, the subject of the 2015 documentary “Fear No Fruit,” the female-founded company is a subsidiary of Legacy Farms LLC, based in Anaheim, California. Find Frieda’s on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok @FriedasProduce and Friedas.com. Inspire. Taste. Love.