In December 2008, William Toler arrived at Pierre Foods Inc. as its new CEO. A food industry veteran, Toler was hired to help the company get through the immediate crisis of facing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and then finding ways to make the company stronger moving forward.
“I was first attracted to the opportunity, because Pierre was a supplier to my last company and I knew that the products the company made were excellent and the team here was, largely, very good,” Toler says. “Obviously, there were some things that had caused them to go into bankruptcy, but they were pretty fixable.”
In a twist of fate, the four members of the new leadership team all ended up living in the same hotel when they moved to the Cincinnati area.
“The four of us were relocated here at the same time and we ended up living at the same hotel for a year,” Toler says. “So we found ourselves working out together in the mornings, working all day together then going to dinner and talking about the business from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. four or five days a week. It really helped to create core camaraderie among the senior team that still exists today. So the fact that we were all relocating here at the same time and ended up living in the same hotel really gave kind of a dawn-to-dusk platform to discuss the business and get to know each other at the same time.”
And with the company facing several challenges, the extra time was a plus.
