Baldor names VP for strategy and sustainability

Baldor Specialty Foods has promoted Thomas McQuillan to vice president, strategy, culture and sustainability. McQuillan, who came to Baldor in 2015, previously served as the company’s director of food service sales and sustainability. In that role, Baldor said, McQuillan led the company to its record sales in 2018 and pioneered the company’s industry-changing SparCs (scraps spelled backward) program, a first of its kind initiative that dramatically reduced the amount of food trim and waste the company had been sending to landfill.

“Strategic planning plays a critical role in every aspect of our business,” said CEO TJ Murphy. “And the Baldor SparCs program fundamentally redefined how we, and the industry, look at food waste.”

An MBA graduate from St. John’s University in New York, McQuillan has over 25 years’ experience including as Baldor puts it, “turning around small and mid-sized businesses and launching new programs that significantly improve their operational efficiencies.”

“Food waste is just a single component of Baldor’s overall business environment,” McQuillan said. “In this new role, I’ll be able to help the company enact other impactful initiatives that change the way everyone here addresses their business challenges.”

McQuillan has developed a model for hosting zero-waste group dinners – recently helping a Greenwich, Connecticut non-profit throw a large fundraising gala which was entirely waste-free.

“It starts with looking at a challenge from a totally different angle,” McQuillan said. “And then getting others to adopt that perception, too. That’s when the magic happens and you can bring about real change.”

McQuillan, who Baldor said is one of the foremost authorities on eliminating food waste in the country, has presented on food sustainability at Harvard, NYU, Stanford and the White House. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife, two children and dog Ginger.