Catalina Snacks has split its commercial and operational leadership as Catalina Crunch scales past 30,000 retail doors — a structural move that signals the brand is no longer running on founder-era organizational wiring. Former COO Lauri Luker steps into the newly defined role of President and Chief Customer Officer, while Dan Robin joins as Chief Operating Officer overseeing supply chain, procurement, and plant operations. Both report to CEO Doug Behrens.
The Structural Logic
The dual appointment reflects a pattern common among better-for-you brands hitting critical retail density: when distribution expands fast, a single operations leader can no longer effectively own both buyer relationships and factory-floor performance. By elevating Luker to a customer-facing President role, Catalina Snacks is signaling that retail partnership management — planogram negotiations, category reviews, promotional calendars — now warrants dedicated C-suite bandwidth. Robin, meanwhile, brings more than 25 years of supply chain and continuous improvement experience across food, packaging, and manufacturing, most recently as Chief Supply Chain Officer at Monarca Food Solutions, where he led a turnaround across a six-plant manufacturing network with measurable gains in profitability, quality, and safety. His prior roles at Hearthside Food Solutions and Peacock Foods add further weight to a resume built around lean transformation at scale.
What Retail Buyers Will Notice
For grocery buyers and category managers, the Luker appointment matters most. A President and Chief Customer Officer title carries more authority in a buyer meeting than COO ever did — it signals that deal-making and account strategy sit at the top of the org chart, not two levels down. Brands at this stage of growth frequently stall not on product quality but on commercial execution: inconsistent trade spend management, slow response to retailer resets, underdeveloped broker relationships. Dedicating a President-level leader to that layer is a recognized fix. On the operations side, Robin's background in high-volume contract manufacturing environments suggests Catalina Snacks may be preparing to add co-manufacturing capacity or tighten existing co-packer agreements — the kind of infrastructure work that becomes urgent when SKU counts expand and promotional volume spikes.
Scale Signals for Vendors and Operators
For suppliers, packaging vendors, and logistics partners already working with or pitching better-for-you snack brands, this leadership change is a procurement signal worth tracking. A new COO with a PMO mandate and a continuous improvement background typically means vendor scorecards, tighter lead-time requirements, and renewed focus on cost-per-unit benchmarks. Brands in adjacent better-for-you categories that have made similar structural moves — separating customer-facing from supply-chain leadership — have generally done so ahead of a fundraise, a major retail program expansion, or both. Operators building brand launch strategies in the natural and better-for-you snack segment should watch how Catalina Crunch's retail programming evolves under Luker's expanded mandate over the next two quarters.
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.
