Kraft Heinz has named veteran Chicago-based executive Steve Cahillane as CEO beginning Jan. 1, taking the reins of the packaged food giant as it prepares to split into two companies.

Cahillane most recently served as chairman and CEO of Kellanova, the Chicago-based snack foods spinoff from cereal-maker Kellogg, which was acquired by Mars in a $36 billion deal that closed last week.

The announcement Tuesday comes at a pivotal time for Kraft Heinz, and brings in a longtime food industry leader who successfully guided Kellogg through its 2023 spinoff, an experience that will likely come in handy in his new role.

“I’ll take over the entirety of the business and focus on delivering a 2026 operating plan, while at the same time executing the split of the companies, very similar to what I just did at Kellogg,” Cahillane said Tuesday.

Cahillane left Kellanova when the Mars deal closed Thursday. He told the Tribune he is “taking the rest of the year off” before joining Kraft Heinz in January. Current CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera will then step down and transition to an advisory role.

Formed by the 2015 megamerger of Chicago-based Kraft Foods and Pittsburgh-based Heinz, the company, which is co-headquartered in both cities, has struggled to manage its massive portfolio, downsizing amid declining revenues and writing off billions of dollars in valuation.

In September, Kraft Heinz announced a separation plan that will create two publicly traded companies: Global Taste Elevation and North American Grocery, both of which are expected to get new names before the spinoff is completed.

Global Taste Elevation will include brands such as Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese, with the majority of sales coming from sauces, spreads and seasonings. North American Grocery’s portfolio will include Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles and Lunchables.

When Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will stay with Global Taste Elevation and a new CEO will be named for North American Grocery.

Cahillane said he will spend the first two weeks as CEO studying the Kraft Heinz portfolios to determine if any tweaking is needed in the proposed split, with mostly Heinz products allocated to Global Taste Elevation and legacy Kraft brands under the North American Grocery banner.

While both portfolios represent billions in annual sales, Global Taste Elevation — the company Cahillane will helm after the split — has the faster-growing products in recent years.

As Kraft Heinz CEO, Cahillane said he will look to position the entire company for growth ahead of the split.

“The plan and the objective will be to get the entirety of the business growing,” Cahillane said. “That doesn’t mean that every brand can grow. I mean, no consumer goods company has every brand growing all the time, but you have to feed the winners and get the entirety of the company growing profitably.”

The Kraft Heinz split may follow some of the Kellogg blueprint.

Cahillane, 60, a Northwestern graduate and Harvard MBA whose resume includes top executive roles with The Nature’s Bounty and Coca-Cola, joined Michigan-based cereal giant Kellogg as chairman and CEO in 2017.

He engineered the spinoff of the Kellogg’s snacks business in 2023, taking the reins of the new company, Kellanova, and growing its portfolio of brands including Pringles, Cheez-It and Pop-Tarts before selling to Mars.

Meanwhile, the WK Kellogg cereal company was sold to Italian candy giant Ferrero for $3.1 billion in September.

Packaging the packaged food giant Kraft Heinz for sale is not necessarily the goal, Cahillane said.

“That’s not the plan, but as I remind people, and based on my past history, when you’re a public company, you’re for sale every day,” Cahillane said. “My goal is to return the business to organic growth and get the markets to appreciate that these iconic brands indeed have a bright future.”

Of particular interest in Chicago, is where the successor companies to Kraft Heinz call home.

Started as a horse-drawn cheese purveyor in 1903, Kraft has been a Chicago institution for more than a century, rolling out everything from Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Miracle Whip to Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Chicago has remained home through several corporate machinations, including the 2012 split that cleaved off the Mondelez snack foods business from the rest of Kraft.

The 2015 Kraft-Heinz merger made Chicago and Pittsburgh co-headquarters. Kraft Heinz said in September it “has no plans to change its current headquarter locations” after the split, with much of the corporate locus based at the Aon Center in Chicago.

While it has gone through several rounds of downsizing over the years, Kraft Heinz has 2,000 Chicago-area employees between its Aon Center headquarters and a Glenview research and development center, the company said.

Cahillane said Chicago will remain the de facto home base for Kraft Heinz and its successor companies.

“The intention would be the single home being Chicago,” Cahillane said. “When you look at the footprint of the people, it is most predominantly here in Chicago. There’s a much smaller footprint in Pittsburgh. So you can imagine that both those companies would be located in Chicago.”

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