Andy Gehl
As the President and Owner of Contract Comestibles, Andy regularly mentors food startups on opportunities for growth. Contract Comestibles, with headquarters in East Troy, Wisconsin is an FDA and USDA–Organic certified manufacturer of sauces, salad dressings, and beverages. The facility is uniquely designed to scale with entrepreneurs as their products mature.
Prior to focusing on entrepreneurial food, he was President of Gehl Foods in Germantown, WI. Over 10 years, he led dramatic growth in their branded cheese sauce business, reaching sales of $200 million with less than 250 employees at the time of his departure in 2011.
He received his BA in Computer Science from Boston College before switching focus and schools to Industrial Engineering at Marquette University. Despite leaving Marquette early to help out at the family business, Andy continues to rely heavily on his engineering background to improve efficiency and organization throughout the food system. He received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
To keep in touch with ongoing trends in food, he remains on the Advisory Board of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is a prior Board Member of Food and Beverage Wisconsin, the Organic Processing Institute, and a continuing contributor to the Faye Gehl Conservation Foundation and Gehl Farmland LLC.