Why the Hatchet Men of 3G Spent $10 Million on a Better Oscar Mayer Wiener

A year ago, Kraft Heinz Co. had a hot dog problem. Not only was it selling fewer Oscar Mayer wieners, not only was it losing sales to rivals, but the U.S. market was conspicuously contracting. Jokes about mystery meat are a given in the hot dog business, but this was different. Americans had actually grown uneasy about eating hot dogs and giving them to their kids.

This was unacceptable to Bernardo Hees, the boisterous Brazilian who had been chief executive of Kraft Heinz for barely a year, since ketchup king H.J. Heinz Co. and mac-and-cheese icon Kraft Foods Inc. merged in a $55 billion deal in July 2015. So Hees (pronounced “hess”) ordered a recast of Oscar Mayer’s signature product. The company would pour millions of dollars into getting the reformulated dogs ready for Memorial Day 2017, the unofficial summer kickoff.