Person of the Year

Larry Young, CEO, Dr Pepper Snapple Group

For opening up Dr Pepper Snapple Group as a path to success for entrepreneurs through its Allied Brands group, and for his increased focus on fostering the growth of those brands through alignment, investment, and acquisition, Larry Young, the President and CEO of Dr Pepper Snapple Group, is BevNET’s Person of the Year.

Even before Mr. Young pulled out the checkbook and won the right to acquire fast-growing Bai, he had spent the past year gradually making equity investments that cemented relationships with many of the Allied Brands that the company distributes, including Body Armor, Core, and High Brew. Beyond that, established brands like Vita Coco and Fiji continue to grow as anchors of their own categories. That means that the growth of the companies in the Allied Brands portfolio is both testament to DPSG’s core competency as an effective distribution and partnership organization, and also a tribute to company leadership’s understanding of market dynamics and its ability to pick such a strong group of partners.

It makes sense that an operation like Dr Pepper Snapple Group would be the one to help create new distribution opportunities for entrepreneurs -- after all, the company itself is comprised of rebel brands like Snapple -- the New Age inspiration for many of the entrepreneurs in the audience -- as well as Dr Pepper, Seven-Up, and Nantucket Nectars, among so many others.

The changing consumer tastes represented by progressive entrepreneurial success stories like Vita Coco, Bai, Core, High Brew, Body Armor, Fiji, HyDrive, and more that fill out the ranks of Allied Brands portfolio are, in effect, an extension of that history. With Mr. Young consciously guiding the company he leads toward realizing that its history could also be its future, many of those brands have truly begun to bloom.