Flowers Foods, Inc. (NYSE: FLO), producer of Nature's Own, Dave's Killer Bread, Wonder, Tastykake, and other bakery foods, has announced organizational structure changes designed to increase focus on brand growth, product innovation, and improving cake business operations.

The changes, effective July 17, 2020, include the following actions:

• The consolidation of the company's Fresh Packaged Bread business unit and Specialty/Snacking business unit into a single function responsible for all brands. Mark Courtney, previously president of the Fresh Packaged Bread BU, has been named chief brand officer and leads this function. In this newly created role, Courtney is responsible for managing all Flowers brands, as well as its revenue management, shopper marketing (in-store and online promotional) and brand partnership programs.

• The establishment of a stand-alone innovation function under the direction of Debo Mukherjee, chief marketing officer.

• The appointment of David Roach, most recently president of the Snacking/Specialty BU, to the newly created position of president of Cake Operations, where he will focus exclusively on improving that area of the business.

• The repositioning of the company's foodservice business from the Snacking/Specialty BU to the Sales function, which will continue to be led by Keith Wheeler, chief sales officer.

In commenting on the announcement, Ryals McMullian, Flowers Foods' president and chief executive officer, said, "These changes, alongside a revised portfolio strategy, are designed to unleash the full potential of our brands and innovation efforts and are the result of a thorough organizational review we conducted over the past two quarters as part of our portfolio optimization initiative. We believe that these changes are more consistent with our strategic priority to focus on our brands and that they will bring a more structured approach to innovation. This will enable us to build on the strengths of our brands and bring our customers and consumers more new and exciting products."

McMullian continued, "Our new structure now unites all brand teams under Mark's leadership and enables greater collaboration and better resource allocation among our brand portfolio. Debo will guide the development of an innovation capability to bring new and exciting offerings to our consumers that go beyond line extensions. This new innovation function will also partner more closely with our corporate development group to seek out acquisition and investment opportunities that fit within our overall portfolio strategy. Importantly, while we have already addressed some operational inefficiencies within our cake bakeries, we expect that David's full attention to this area should drive quicker progress and capture significant opportunities to improve the profitability of that business."