In the food and beverage industry, it's the processes and ingredients that make the difference. A pinch of this and a dash of that and viola! You have a product that sells and sells.
You can patent that process. You can trademark the logos you put on the package. But it will all be for naught if someone else learns exactly what you're pinching and dashing.
That's why trade secrets — those exact lists of procedures, ingredients, formulas and such — are so important to food and drink makers. And it's why so many companies take dramatic actions, both inside and outside of courtrooms, to keep their secrets out of the hands of competitors.
Just a few days ago, Cargill filed a lawsuit against an ex-employee with intimate knowledge of the company's meat business who left to work for a competitor. But there are loads of other examples in the industry.
Here are our picks for the five most interesting company trade secrets worth keeping hush-hush. Take a look. But don't tell anyone!
Nooks and crannies
There are many English muffins out there. There are loads more if you count the actual crumpets that the English themselves eat. But there's only one brand that is famous for its "nooks and crannies."
Almost every Thomas' English Muffin has an interior that looks like some sort of wild, uneven moonscape. There are rises and falls, miniature cliffs, and valleys. These nooks and crannies, beside holding a remarkable ability to distribute and hold butter, gives consumers a characteristic tactile sensation as they chew.
No one outside of Thomas' knows for sure how those nooks and crannies are formed, and Thomas' works hard to keep it that way. Just ask Chris Botticella, a former executive with Bimbo Bakeries, which is Thomas' parent company. When Botticella took a job with rival Hostess, Bimbo filed a lawsuit alleging he had stolen the secrets behind the nooks and crannies.
The case ended with a court banning Botticella from working for Hostess.
Twinkies
Hostess found itself on the opposite side of a trade secret fight when food writer Steve Ettlinger published "Twinkie, Deconstructed," an expose novel of the snack treat.
The folks behind Twinkies didn't sue Ettlinger, but they certainly didn't cooperate with his effort to document just what it takes to make a Twinkie.
In the end, Ettlinger managed to reverse engineer most, but not all, of the Twinkie-making process (the "cream" remains a bit of a mystery). In hindsight, we wish he had done no such thing. Many Twinkie lovers are probably better off not knowing that Twinkies were at least partially made from petroleum and limestone.
Bush's Baked Beans
One of the stranger ad campaigns in the food industry involves a talking dog who wants to spill the beans about the trade secrets of Bush's Baked Beans.
It was a bizarre idea — the grandson of the company's founder would share the secrets only with his dog, who would then betray the family. But for some reasons, the ads promoting the brand's "delicate blend of spices" were a hit. Nearly 20 years after they first appeared, the defector dog who would sell the family's trade secrets is still a TV star.
Coca-Cola
If there's such a thing as a well-known trade secret, it's in Coke. Almost everyone in the world knows that Coke has a secret. And most everyone in the world knows that such secrets are worth money.
The soft-drink giant closely guards its procedures, ingredient mixes, processes and research. And no more so than in 2007, when Atlanta-based Coke worked with the FBI to capture three employees who allegedly conspired to steal trade secrets and sell them to rival Pepsi.
The feds arrested the three and charged them with stealing the secrets to America's soft drink on that most American of holidays, July 4.
Chartreuse
If there's a king among all the world's trade secrets, it is in the mystery that surrounds Chartreuse. The French liquor with the distinctive green color and sweet, pungent taste has been made under closely guarded circumstances since 1737.
The key to Chartreuse is in a secret combination of 132 herbal extracts. And the key to keeping that combination secret has been the Carthusian monks who make it, based upon a recipe they were given in 1605 by legendary French military leader François Annibal d'Estrées.
The monks have been exiled from France ... twice. And rival distillers and the French government have tried in vain to duplicate Chartreuse. But no one has succeeded.
And perhaps no one ever will. Because the secret to keeping Chartreuse's secret is that only two monks are allowed to know the recipe at any given time. And if you can't trust a monk (or two), who can you trust?
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