specialty-food
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Frank Luciano and the Art of Playing Defense for Dinner
Before Frank Luciano helped make pimento cheese, pit barbecue and chef dinners travel, he learned to protect a goal. Goldbelly's chief business officer has built a career from the unglamorous arts of defense, packaging and making other people's specialties arrive intact.
Matt Beaton
Matt Beaton is CEO of Mike's Hot Honey, the Brooklyn-based chili-infused honey brand he built with college friend Mike Kurtz. He joined in 2015 when the company was pulling in $100,000 a year, and grew a one-SKU business into a roughly $40 million operation stocked in more than 30,000 retail stores and 3,000 restaurants. He came out of brand-management jobs at Wrigley and PUR Water and an MBA from Kellogg, and now runs the classic case study for what happens when you refuse to launch a second product.