Hormel Foods Elevates Two Retail Leaders to Vice President Roles

March 20, 2025

Scott Weisenbeck and Joe O’Connor worked their ways up from starting as sales representatives with the company years ago to their new roles as VPs in the Retail business segment.

Andy Hanacek

Hormel Foods Corp. announced that it has promoted two leaders in its Retail business segment.

Scott Weisenbeck will be vice president of marketing-Retail for the company, while Joe O’Connor will become the vice president of Emerging Brands-Retail.

Weisenbeck is expected to bring the expertise and ability to drive growth and innovation in the bacon category to a wider portfolio of Hormel brands, while O’Connor has been tapped to use his deep understanding of the premium consumer base to help lead emerging brands such as Applegate and Justin’s, the company said.

Weisenbeck has been with Hormel since 1992, having started as a sales representative with the company in the Denver, Colo., area. He worked his way up through territory and brand manager roles, leading to his appointment to be an associate brand manager for the company’s former Meat Products division in Austin, Minn., in 1997. In 2005, he was named group brand manager for Meat Products, and eventually moved up to director of integrated marketing and planning for the Hormel brand four years later. In 2013, he became the marketing director for Grocery Products and then was named assistant vice president of bacon in 2022.

O’Connor also started his career with Hormel as a sales representative — in Chicago in 2006. In 2012, he was a national category manager at the World Headquarters in Austin, and he moved on to become a customer business manager for metro chains and Puerto Rico in 2013. He was named director of sales in 2018, then joined Applegate as vice president of sales and marketing in 2020. He assumed his current role as president of Applegate and assistant vice president of Hormel Foods in 2022.

About the Author

Andy Hanacek | Senior Editor

Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.