Finlays Solutions has named Kristin Bird, president of food service at The Marzetti Company, and Trevor Bynum, former president and chief executive of Welch Foods, as Independent Non-Executive Directors on its advisory board — a structural move designed to sharpen strategic oversight as the Glenview, Illinois-based B2B beverage supplier pursues its next growth phase.
Bird and Bynum join Jennifer Aspen Mason, a founding Independent Non-Executive Director who serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at J.M. Huber Corporation. The three-person independent cohort sits within a broader board that includes senior figures from parent-company ecosystem John Swire & Sons and James Finlay Limited.
The Appointments
Bird brings more than 25 years of food service experience, having led The Marzetti Company's foodservice division since 2019. Her prior roles span Tyson Foods, Hillshire Brands, Sara Lee, Unilever, and ConAgra Foods, with a focus on channel strategy and go-to-market execution — capabilities directly relevant as Finlays Solutions works to deepen penetration with foodservice operators and chain accounts.
Bynum's tenure at Welch Foods is notable for a multi-year financial turnaround that delivered meaningful revenue growth and margin improvement at the grape cooperative. Earlier in his career he held senior commercial roles at Schwan's, WhiteWave Foods, and General Mills, providing Finlays Solutions with M&A integration expertise at a moment when the company is still absorbing its largest deal to date.
Post-Integration Context
Finlays Solutions completed the integration of Leahy-IFP in 2025, a transaction that doubled its North American manufacturing footprint and added high-pressure aseptic production lines alongside fruit-based beverage formats including high-growth Refreshers — a category seeing sustained velocity across both retail and foodservice channels. The combined platform now spans tea, coffee, botanicals, fruit-based beverages, and aseptic manufacturing under a single contract-manufacturing umbrella, a configuration that Darnell Ross, chief executive of Finlays Solutions, described as a competitive differentiator.
"Together with our full advisory board, they give us a broad range of perspectives as we capitalize on the unique advantages we've created by bringing tea, coffee, fruit-based beverages, botanicals and aseptic manufacturing under one roof," Ross said.
The advisory board was established in April 2026 and is chaired by Sean Pelling, Group Financial Director of John Swire & Sons. Its formation signals a more structured governance posture for a business that, while privately held within the Finlays group, competes for large, multi-year supply contracts with national food service operators and branded consumer-packaged-goods companies.
What It Means for the Sector
For B2B beverage contract manufacturers, board-level foodservice expertise has become a differentiator as national restaurant chains and institutional operators increasingly consolidate their ingredient and beverage supply bases. The appointments position Finlays Solutions to engage more credibly at the C-suite level with foodservice procurement teams evaluating aseptic beverage and RTD programs — a market segment growing alongside demand for premium cold beverages in foodservice and functional ingredient sourcing.
Bird's Marzetti background is particularly pointed: Marzetti is itself a foodservice-oriented subsidiary of Lancaster Colony, meaning Bird has operated inside the procurement and distribution logic that Finlays Solutions is trying to win. Bynum's Welch Foods experience adds cooperative and branded-beverage dynamics to a board that otherwise skews toward manufacturing and finance.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
