About
Mark Haas is a food scientist, process authority, operator and founder whose work spans food manufacturing, process validation, commercialization, regulatory strategy and compliance technology. His analysis focuses on the gap between what appears technically acceptable and what can actually be documented, executed and defended.
Current work
The Helmsman Group
Founder and CEO. Food science, process and packaging validation, commercialization and regulatory strategy.
RegulateCPG
Co-founder. Compliance infrastructure for food and consumer product companies.
Process authority
Listed in the AFDO Food Processing Authorities Directory with aseptic processing specialization.
Insights
Publisher. Ongoing analysis of food regulation, manufacturing and commercial exposure.
Experience
The through line is that the technical work and the commercial consequences have never been separate. Twenty years of that experience was spent inside manufacturing rather than advising it. Plant director of Kellogg's Eggo facility in San Jose, carrying the P&L of a highly automated frozen foods site. Head of operations for Kashi across fourteen contract manufacturing plants. Cost of goods across Annie's portfolio through a period of twenty percent annual growth. General manager of the Los Angeles metro business and West Coast manufacturing at Hain-Celestial.
In 2008 he founded Bridgetown Bakery in Portland and built it from nothing into an eighty-five million dollar bar and granola contract manufacturer, creating 160 jobs during the recession, designing a slab line that ran 700 bars a minute, and selling to private equity while the top line grew over three hundred percent. He later served as interim COO of Cup4Cup under chairman Thomas Keller.
That operating history is what makes the regulatory work different. Someone who has signed off on a scheduled process, run the line that has to deliver it, defended the records afterward and carried the P&L consequence reads a filing differently from someone who has only ever written one.
The capital projects record runs from repowering vessels for Trident Seafoods in Alaska to plant build-outs for Urban Remedy in Richmond, 88 Acres in Boston, a vinegar acetification plant in Petaluma and the aseptic beverage and carbonation pilot plant in Portland. He serves on the Food Northwest Education and Research Institute board as its Idaho delegate, engaging with the Idaho legislature on food related matters, and has been on that board since 2011. He is fluent in Spanish and German.
Technical infrastructure
Mark's work is supported by the Helmsman Pilot Plant, including a Sidel Aseptic Lab Unit that enables controlled development, processing and evaluation of shelf stable products before commercial scale production. Products, formulations and processing assumptions can be fully tested and evaluated without tying up a major commercial aseptic processor.
Explore the Helmsman Pilot Plant
Selected credentials
- Listing
- AFDO Food Processing Authorities Directory, aseptic processing specialization. A directory listing rather than an endorsement or credential. Verify
- Thermal processing
- Better Process Control School
- Preventive controls
- Preventive Controls Qualified Individual under FSMA
- Hazard analysis
- HACCP and Seafood HACCP
- Acidified foods
- Acidified foods school
- Facility
- Active food and beverage pilot plant with aseptic lab unit
- Operating
- Direct P&L accountability at Kellogg's, Hain-Celestial, Annie's and as founder of Bridgetown
- Education
- BS Chemical Oceanography, University of Washington. Supply chain operations, Broad School of Business, Michigan State
Philosophy
Technical correctness alone is not enough. A process must be scientifically sound, operationally executable, properly documented and capable of surviving regulatory, legal and commercial scrutiny.
Why I write
The most consequential food industry failures rarely begin with a dramatic technical event. They begin with an assumption, a classification, an undocumented decision or language that no one expected to be examined later.
Insights exists to look at those decisions before they become the issue.