The Leaders: Lessons from Danone Canada's Frédéric Guichard
How did you get your start in the food business?
I’m a French guy. I was born in the south of France and I also have some Italian origins—so born and raised within a Mediterranean culture. My mom helped me understand the comfort and pleasure that food can bring, but also the importance of balanced nutrition and to always eat in a responsible way—that has always stuck with me.
What is your leadership story?
As far back as I remember I always wanted to travel the world and to see new cultures, discover new places. [After graduating from university] I thought I should go work abroad, and we had this opportunity in France to do that—the government [as part of a work program] encourages graduates to work for French companies abroad, so I had an opportunity to come to Montreal and work at Pernod Ricard, the spirits company. At the time, it wasn’t such a big company in Canada; this was before the acquisition of Seagram’s, and I [with three others] was recruited to build the marketing department.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay in Canada, which was my initial wish, so [when the program was over] I decided to go back to France and join a multinational company because I still wanted to work abroad. I joined Danone, which was a company on my radar. I started in marketing and went from job to job, brand to brand—there was always a good opportunity, always a good reason not to go abroad again, so I stayed 15 years at Danone, in France, working on different categories. Then came the amazing opportunity to lead the Evian brand and business. The brand is phenomenal and the ability to innovate, to do breakthrough things on this brand was awesome. [After some time] I felt I was at the end of my marketing career because I thought what else could I do that would give me that thrill? I had interesting conversations with my managers about my potential and they gave me the idea to move into a general management role. They launched me on that path, which was the export business of Evian and the French mineral waters [such as Volvic and Badoit].
And then I had some more classic assignments as general manager in different countries. I went to Poland where I headed the waters division. Then Danone changed the organization completely. We merged all our categories into one entity in each of our countries; that was a huge transformation for the company. I had the pleasure of building a multi-country business unit [Central and Eastern Europe], merging five business units into one. So that’s part of my story—creating those transformations and creating new entities. That was the first time I picked the team from scratch; I was going out and scouting people—it was like The A-Team—choosing who was going to be part of the adventure and lead the transformation. That was awesome. I did that for three years, based in Prague. Then I joined Canada.
You joined Danone Canada in June 2024. How was your first year?
It’s been hectic and surprising. I came here with strong ambition. I had my 90-day plan; I was ready to rumble. Four days into the role, we had a major crisis [a listeria outbreak] on one of our categories. That was a massive challenge for the whole company—the first of its kind. We had to handle it with a lot of care; we had to protect our consumers, our people, our partners. It was a challenge and it helped me to understand the strength of the team here much, much quicker.
READ: Danone invests $9M in Quebec plant to develop sustainable packaging
You’ve worked in several different markets. How have these experiences shaped you as a leader?
It has made me more humble than I used to be, if I’m honest, because anywhere you land you realize you have so much to learn about everything. Every market is different and you don’t know how people are going to react to your leadership style. When you’re the boss, everybody is watching you—what you’re doing and how you behave and you can make mistakes, and I made mistakes! So, it humbled me. I’m never entering a room today assured that I know what to do and understand everything. I think this has also helped me collaborate more strongly.
What is your process for making tough decisions, especially in times of uncertainty?
I try to consult, a lot, with people who have different perspectives—with challengers, people who don’t think like you. That’s very important. And get an assessment of the situation that is as correct as possible, as complete as possible, as fast as possible. And then my job is to simplify this, turn it into a simple direction. When navigating through uncertainty, you’re never fully right ... but you have to be assertive and consistent in what you do, and you have to be clear about what you’re doing.
As a leader, how do you continue to grow and be inspired?
I don’t read a lot of leadership books or go to seminars—that’s not my way of learning. I learn from watching other people, getting inspiration from them. We meet a lot of people in industry meetings and have conversations. You get to understand the [issues] they have and how they react to them and that’s always a strong source of inspiration for me. I also learn from my team; you learn a lot by observing what they do. I strongly believe that you are only as good as your team.
What qualities do you look for in emerging leaders?
I love to build very diverse teams, people with different competencies who have different points of view because that’s a really strong source of innovation, of creativity, of the ability to solve problems. That’s a starting point. I’m also looking for strong ambition, not an ambition to have the best career, not in that sense. I’m looking for people who want to have an impact in what they do. I think that’s the basis of everything. And then I’m looking for accountability. I like it when people are accountable and transparent—when they talk about their successes, but also their difficulties, their failures. And when they can tell you, ‘look, here I didn’t do it right, but I know I can do better next time.’ That’s the kind of attitude that really creates progress within an organization, because it spreads. I really believe in contagious accountability and I reward it.
READ: 2025 Star Women in Grocery Award Winner Marie-Eve Girard
Is there one piece of advice you received in your career that you’re glad you ignored?
Something people told me—which I didn’t follow and I’m happy I didn’t—is that if you want to grow in a company, like a multinational, you have to be political. You have to pay attention to what people are saying to you and what they think about you, et cetera. I never cared about this, and what I learned along the way as I grew in this organization is that you can do your job and lead in the way you want. If you are someone who wants to be very approachable and transparent and courageous, that’s super fine. You don’t need to follow what others are doing. I always stayed myself despite people in the beginning telling me not to because I was too vocal, challenging the status quo. I was told to ‘be careful,’ ‘people are not going to like you.’ And I thought, who cares? I want to change the company for the good; if I’m not speaking up, nothing is going to happen. So, I did my job with courage all my career and it worked because people reward you for that. People follow you for that. People want to work with you because you are that kind of leader. So, I recommend to young people today to be themselves. If they are not comfortable being themselves in a company, they’d better leave. It means they’re not where they should be, and that’s okay.
FAST FOUR
- YOUR FIRST JOB? Helping with the production of a local newspaper–on the night shift.
- BEST AND WORST HABITS? Best: Taking a step back and smiling at things—being positive. WORST: Talking too much.
- HOW DO YOU TURN OFF WORK? Very easily. I go home at night and just do it [turn it off]. It’s something that’s very easy for me because I believe there is much more to life than work.
FUN FACT ABOUT YOU? Before starting my career, I had applied twice to become an intern at Danone—with persistence, third time was a charm!
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer's Sept./Oct. 2025 issue.
