Top: Bahlsen wants to develop


HERMANN’S into a small boutique consulting company, helping the food industry transform itself for the future


what kind of flavours were becoming cool,” she says. “We shared this complete natural love for this business


and I did not realise at the time how unique that was, it was just something I did with my father—we bonded over food, products, and brands.” But while jumping into the food industry was easy


for Bahlsen, with no formal training, she needed some help transitioning to being an entrepreneur. She still works regularly with two coaches—one organisational psychologist and one personal coach—to challenge her thinking and strategy. “I have been working in this job for four years now and


I discovered the biggest inhibitor to my own success was trying to copy my father—I was killing myself trying to emulate him. I am not like him, I am an introvert, and I find meetings with lots of people extremely stressful,” she says. “My biggest ‘Ah ha’ moment was realising that it is


totally okay and there are millions of different ways of being an entrepreneur and it is a mistake to think that to honour my father’s legacy I have to copy him.” And it is that epiphany that Bahlsen hopes will inspire


her in the future. In the next five years, she wants to shape HERMANN’S into a small boutique consulting company, helping the traditional food industry transition itself into being more dynamic.


ISSUE 75 | 2019


But perhaps the biggest role she has


to contend with is the futureproofing of Bahlsen Group. With Werner Michael retired from the operational business since 2018, and a non-family executive installed to run the company, Bahlsen has switched her immediate focus to working with her father to figure out the long-term strategy of the family business. As a next-generation disrupter pushing


for innovation to be at the heart of the Bahlsen business model, she has her work cut out for her. “Family businesses have the challenge


of being around for generations and the next generation feel an enormous pressure to protect what is there and are taught protecting it means leaving it exactly the way it is,” Bahlsen says. “But that is completely wrong—


developing and changing the business is the only way to preserve and honour it.” So what’s next for Bahlsen? With her


siblings not involved in the family business, will it be down to her to eventually take the helm? “Right now, I do not have an ambition to


run the family business operationally, but also, the decision of succession is not up to me,” she says. “I just want to do what I feel is


important and exciting, and I still have so much to learn. “So it is all to play for, as they say.”


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