August 5, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Victoria Mars offers a rare inside look at what it takes to run a business of that scale while keeping it private. From succession and structure to values and culture, she explains how the family has kept its footing in a world where most companies of its size sold out long ago.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Mars Incorporated is
best known for making candy such as M and M's,
Milky Way and Skittles. The company also makes Ben's Original
rice and pet food, including Pedigree and Whiscus. Victoria Mars
is a fourth generation of the Mars family, whose great
(00:30):
grandfather Frank Mars, founded the company in nineteen eleven. Today,
the company has a net sales of fifty five billion
and employees over one hundred and fifty thousand associates in
seventy eight countries. This includes a significant presence in the
United States, with sixty thousand employees across thirty three factories.
(00:53):
It's one of the largest family businesses in the world.
Victoria began working for the family one summer as a
young girl, packing M and M boxes in the factory,
and in twenty seventeen she stepped down as chair of
the Mars Board of Directors. Here's Victoria with the story
of how the family legacy and their products have persevered.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Our brands speak for themselves. So my grandfather was very
passionate about it's not about the family, It's not about
who we are. It's about our products, and each of
our products should stand on its own And so if
I go way back in the beginning, you know, you
wouldn't even know that that a Snickers bar was made
by the same people who made em and Ms, or
that we were also in pet food and we had
(01:37):
Pedigree brand and the Whiskers brand. You wouldn't have known that,
nor would you have cared. So you know, it came
from a history of it was about our brands and
they need to stand on their own two feet, and
they spoke for who we were as a company. We
are a family business. We are a private family. So
we've been diversified as a company for a long time.
And my grandfather was a true entrepreneur. Think about true entrepreneurs.
(02:01):
It's people that do things by the seat of their pants,
have an idea and just go off and do it.
And that's really what he was about. So you know,
whether he was selling ties, or whether he was taking
the fifty thousand dollars and going starting our business and
taking it over to Europe, or whether he happened to
be wandering around the UK and so, huh. You know,
I see an awful lot of waste coming out of
these factories, and I put this waste, I can put
(02:24):
it in a can and make dog food. Is how
kind of the pet and food world opened up. So
for a very long time we were in the pet
food and what we've evolved to is now a pet care.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
One of the big advantages.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Of being a family owned business is that we can
think long term, so we can make decisions and hang
in there if you want to call it that, versus
quarterly having to say, oh, we can't invest in that
because our numbers aren't looking right and so constantly being
pulled back and forth by the stock market. We don't
(02:58):
have to deal with that. And if anything about Mars,
and one of the things I'm proud oft of is
that we are very much a principal based organization. We
have five principles that really are the family values. Though
they weren't written down until the eighties, these are the
values and principles that we've grown up with and so
they sound very simple. The quality, efficiency, responsibility, mutuality, and
(03:23):
freedom very simple in some ways, very easy to deal
with if you're doing each one individually. The real magic
that makes Mars tick and really makes us work, is
you have to you have to use all five at
the same time. You're not allowed to trade off and
say I'll focus only on quality and everything else. Now,
(03:44):
that's not going to work. It's it's the magic of
making them all work. And it's not just like nice
words up on the on the wall or a booklet
says here you go, not put it in your drawer.
You're actually expected to live them. So anybody that thinks
that a family business work world is simple and easy,
just imagine that, you know, you all have your family
(04:06):
over for Thanksgiving and you have a lovely time and
then you all say goodbye and you may not see
them for another year. Or you may imagine that you know,
in a family business, those are the people you have
to work with.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Those are the people you see.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Those are the people that you have to come to
alignment with. So it's very complex, and many family businesses
fail when they get to about the third or fourth generation.
And it's very much about size. I mean, so it
all depends on where you are in the evolution. But
you know, you start with one and that's easy, okay,
and make all the decisions and then by the time
(04:43):
you get to the sibling partnership, so then you've got
some brothers and sisters that are trying to work together,
and okay, you still have a small enough group that
they can talk to each other on a regular basis.
And then you start getting into the cousin groups. And
once you start getting into the cousins groups, of course
you had different parents, so you have different views and
(05:04):
different input that it even gets more complicated because as
you cousins begin to marry other people, of course they
come with all their views. So a family system, it's
very complex. And the advice that we've gotten no guarantees here,
but the advice that you really get is the sooner
you can do two things. One you need to create
(05:28):
family engagements. Now, you know, for my father and my
uncle and that generation, it was like, what's the problem.
Why do you need to do this? You know, can't
you just talk to each other? Why do you need
to have these meetings? Just pick up the phone and
talk to you. Well, it's easy. Your brother, you sat
next to each other, that's easy. Okay, we're not We're
spread all over the world, so we need to have
(05:48):
these meetings. You know, why do you need to do
this team building stuff? Why do you need to do
out hugging trees? You can imagine you know that routine
because we need to learn to communicate together, we need
to learn work differences. So you know, when I started
as working, there were no family employment policies. Now for
the next generation, there are family employment policies. Here are
(06:10):
the rules of the game of if you want to
be employed by the business. And the business has said
that having family members work in the business is better
than not having family members, even th they'll put up
with all the crap that goes with it, but they'd
rather have them than not have them. But we have
some policies that say, okay, here are going to be
the rules of the game, because what happened to families.
That's not fair. How come he got that and how
(06:32):
come she didn't get that? This is what you're dealing with.
So the more you can prepare yourself with policies and
systems that people may roll their eyes up, but you
need them because something will happen. There will be bad
things that happen, and you need to be able to
do the best job you can to manage managed through it.
So keeping the family engaged. Then the next part is
(06:54):
and people have talked about this and I'm come to
realize even more. The further you get away from the
original founder, the less emotional connection the family has to
the business. And so how do you keep that emotional connection? So,
you know, I knew my grandfather. I knew I. You know,
I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, so
I have that emotional connection. You know, my children knew
(07:16):
him first, very short with my older children knew him
for a short while. So the further you get away,
the lesser's connection. So how do you keep the connection
back to what is this business? What does it mean
to you? And so I talk about very much about
the importance of keeping our five principles going. Is not
just for the associates in the business, but that's the
(07:38):
emotional connection for the family. That's what makes us proud
of Mars. It's not about how big we are. It's
not about you know, how much money we make. It's
a piece of it. But what makes us really proud
is when you read things or you hear things, even
if you're not involved in the middle, about what we
do well, where are we having an impact? Where we
(08:00):
having a positive impact. So that's what creates that sense
of pride and connection. So keeping a link and a
knowledge base with family members even though they aren't employed
or maybe at a distance, is really absolutely critical to
keeping it going forward. So our view is and then
the other thing, the other piece that happens as you
(08:21):
go from one generation to the next is you've got
to start separating, clearly, separating responsibilities and decision making. So
when it was my father and my uncle and my aunt,
they were both the board and the owners and the
operations leaders. So it's all in the same place. Who cares.
As you get bigger, that separates out. So then we
(08:41):
need to make sure that everybody knows it. Just because
your family member doesn't mean you can go tell management
what they should or shouldn't be doing. You know, we
have the board, so if you're on the board, well
then what education do the family members need to be
qualified to be able to serve on the board. What
do they need to be qualified, you know, to work
in the BI business. So things become much more structured.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Education, education, education, communication, communication, communication, bringing people together. We've
done a great job I think with the fifth generation
we started them really early on just basic communication training,
team building training. Now these do go do we have
to do one more of these team exercises. You know,
how many times do you want me to put together
(09:23):
a little something or how many times do you want
me to climb over that wall? But I can now
see all that time we spent invested in them when
they were young teenagers too. Now you say that group
you know works together, They know how to communicate with
each other, They know how to deal when when.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
They disagree, they can disagree with respect and work their
way out of it. My generation, it's a whole different generations.
So we didn't have that training. So you have to
invest in the next generation. You have to. So our
goal is to stay remain a privately held business. I
can't guarantee it, but that is my passion. For your
publicly trading business, I would lose total interest. Then I
(10:02):
can't influence it in the way that I can influence
it now I can influence it to be the best company.
Once it's publicly traded, it kind of loses its appeal
to me.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And you've been listening to Victoria Mars of the Maris family,
the fourth generation. She talked about that connection between herself
and her grandfather, who she called a true entrepreneur, but
noted that the further you get from the founder, how
do you keep that emotional connection? And that's why the
Five Principles keep that family brand together, that family name together,
(10:39):
the family products together. The story of the Maris family
is told by Victoria Mars here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Mars Incorporated is
best known for making candy such as M and M's,
Milky Way and Skittles. The company also makes Ben's Original
rice and pet food, including Pedigree and Whiscus. Victoria Mars
is a fourth generation of the Mars family, whose great
(00:30):
grandfather Frank Mars, founded the company in nineteen eleven. Today,
the company has a net sales of fifty five billion
and employees over one hundred and fifty thousand associates in
seventy eight countries. This includes a significant presence in the
United States, with sixty thousand employees across thirty three factories.
(00:53):
It's one of the largest family businesses in the world.
Victoria began working for the family one summer as a
young girl, packing M and M boxes in the factory,
and in twenty seventeen she stepped down as chair of
the Mars Board of Directors. Here's Victoria with the story
of how the family legacy and their products have persevered.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Our brands speak for themselves. So my grandfather was very
passionate about it's not about the family, It's not about
who we are. It's about our products, and each of
our products should stand on its own And so if
I go way back in the beginning, you know, you
wouldn't even know that that a Snickers bar was made
by the same people who made em and Ms, or
that we were also in pet food and we had
(01:37):
Pedigree brand and the Whiskers brand. You wouldn't have known that,
nor would you have cared. So you know, it came
from a history of it was about our brands and
they need to stand on their own two feet, and
they spoke for who we were as a company. We
are a family business. We are a private family. So
we've been diversified as a company for a long time.
And my grandfather was a true entrepreneur. Think about true entrepreneurs.
(02:01):
It's people that do things by the seat of their pants,
have an idea and just go off and do it.
And that's really what he was about. So you know,
whether he was selling ties, or whether he was taking
the fifty thousand dollars and going starting our business and
taking it over to Europe, or whether he happened to
be wandering around the UK and so, huh. You know,
I see an awful lot of waste coming out of
these factories, and I put this waste, I can put
(02:24):
it in a can and make dog food. Is how
kind of the pet and food world opened up. So
for a very long time we were in the pet
food and what we've evolved to is now a pet care.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
One of the big advantages.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Of being a family owned business is that we can
think long term, so we can make decisions and hang
in there if you want to call it that, versus
quarterly having to say, oh, we can't invest in that
because our numbers aren't looking right and so constantly being
pulled back and forth by the stock market. We don't
(02:58):
have to deal with that. And if anything about Mars,
and one of the things I'm proud oft of is
that we are very much a principal based organization. We
have five principles that really are the family values. Though
they weren't written down until the eighties, these are the
values and principles that we've grown up with and so
they sound very simple. The quality, efficiency, responsibility, mutuality, and
(03:23):
freedom very simple in some ways, very easy to deal
with if you're doing each one individually. The real magic
that makes Mars tick and really makes us work, is
you have to you have to use all five at
the same time. You're not allowed to trade off and
say I'll focus only on quality and everything else. Now,
(03:44):
that's not going to work. It's it's the magic of
making them all work. And it's not just like nice
words up on the on the wall or a booklet
says here you go, not put it in your drawer.
You're actually expected to live them. So anybody that thinks
that a family business work world is simple and easy,
just imagine that, you know, you all have your family
(04:06):
over for Thanksgiving and you have a lovely time and
then you all say goodbye and you may not see
them for another year. Or you may imagine that you know,
in a family business, those are the people you have
to work with.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Those are the people you see.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Those are the people that you have to come to
alignment with. So it's very complex, and many family businesses
fail when they get to about the third or fourth generation.
And it's very much about size. I mean, so it
all depends on where you are in the evolution. But
you know, you start with one and that's easy, okay,
and make all the decisions and then by the time
(04:43):
you get to the sibling partnership, so then you've got
some brothers and sisters that are trying to work together,
and okay, you still have a small enough group that
they can talk to each other on a regular basis.
And then you start getting into the cousin groups. And
once you start getting into the cousins groups, of course
you had different parents, so you have different views and
(05:04):
different input that it even gets more complicated because as
you cousins begin to marry other people, of course they
come with all their views. So a family system, it's
very complex. And the advice that we've gotten no guarantees here,
but the advice that you really get is the sooner
you can do two things. One you need to create
(05:28):
family engagements. Now, you know, for my father and my
uncle and that generation, it was like, what's the problem.
Why do you need to do this? You know, can't
you just talk to each other? Why do you need
to have these meetings? Just pick up the phone and
talk to you. Well, it's easy. Your brother, you sat
next to each other, that's easy. Okay, we're not We're
spread all over the world, so we need to have
(05:48):
these meetings. You know, why do you need to do
this team building stuff? Why do you need to do
out hugging trees? You can imagine you know that routine
because we need to learn to communicate together, we need
to learn work differences. So you know, when I started
as working, there were no family employment policies. Now for
the next generation, there are family employment policies. Here are
(06:10):
the rules of the game of if you want to
be employed by the business. And the business has said
that having family members work in the business is better
than not having family members, even th they'll put up
with all the crap that goes with it, but they'd
rather have them than not have them. But we have
some policies that say, okay, here are going to be
the rules of the game, because what happened to families.
That's not fair. How come he got that and how
(06:32):
come she didn't get that? This is what you're dealing with.
So the more you can prepare yourself with policies and
systems that people may roll their eyes up, but you
need them because something will happen. There will be bad
things that happen, and you need to be able to
do the best job you can to manage managed through it.
So keeping the family engaged. Then the next part is
(06:54):
and people have talked about this and I'm come to
realize even more. The further you get away from the
original founder, the less emotional connection the family has to
the business. And so how do you keep that emotional connection? So,
you know, I knew my grandfather. I knew I. You know,
I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, so
I have that emotional connection. You know, my children knew
(07:16):
him first, very short with my older children knew him
for a short while. So the further you get away,
the lesser's connection. So how do you keep the connection
back to what is this business? What does it mean
to you? And so I talk about very much about
the importance of keeping our five principles going. Is not
just for the associates in the business, but that's the
(07:38):
emotional connection for the family. That's what makes us proud
of Mars. It's not about how big we are. It's
not about you know, how much money we make. It's
a piece of it. But what makes us really proud
is when you read things or you hear things, even
if you're not involved in the middle, about what we
do well, where are we having an impact? Where we
(08:00):
having a positive impact. So that's what creates that sense
of pride and connection. So keeping a link and a
knowledge base with family members even though they aren't employed
or maybe at a distance, is really absolutely critical to
keeping it going forward. So our view is and then
the other thing, the other piece that happens as you
(08:21):
go from one generation to the next is you've got
to start separating, clearly, separating responsibilities and decision making. So
when it was my father and my uncle and my aunt,
they were both the board and the owners and the
operations leaders. So it's all in the same place. Who cares.
As you get bigger, that separates out. So then we
(08:41):
need to make sure that everybody knows it. Just because
your family member doesn't mean you can go tell management
what they should or shouldn't be doing. You know, we
have the board, so if you're on the board, well
then what education do the family members need to be
qualified to be able to serve on the board. What
do they need to be qualified, you know, to work
in the BI business. So things become much more structured.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Education, education, education, communication, communication, communication, bringing people together. We've
done a great job I think with the fifth generation
we started them really early on just basic communication training,
team building training. Now these do go do we have
to do one more of these team exercises. You know,
how many times do you want me to put together
(09:23):
a little something or how many times do you want
me to climb over that wall? But I can now
see all that time we spent invested in them when
they were young teenagers too. Now you say that group
you know works together, They know how to communicate with
each other, They know how to deal when when.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
They disagree, they can disagree with respect and work their
way out of it. My generation, it's a whole different generations.
So we didn't have that training. So you have to
invest in the next generation. You have to. So our
goal is to stay remain a privately held business. I
can't guarantee it, but that is my passion. For your
publicly trading business, I would lose total interest. Then I
(10:02):
can't influence it in the way that I can influence
it now I can influence it to be the best company.
Once it's publicly traded, it kind of loses its appeal
to me.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And you've been listening to Victoria Mars of the Maris family,
the fourth generation. She talked about that connection between herself
and her grandfather, who she called a true entrepreneur, but
noted that the further you get from the founder, how
do you keep that emotional connection? And that's why the
Five Principles keep that family brand together, that family name together,
(10:39):
the family products together. The story of the Maris family
is told by Victoria Mars here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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