Hubert M. Tibbetts, who helped lead Thomas J. Lipton Inc. as it moved beyond the traditional cup of tea to iced tea in a can and other convenience foods, died June 2 while bicycling in Armonk, N.Y. He was 77 and lived in Greenwich, Conn.
The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Gunhild.
Mr. Tibbetts became president of Lipton, by then a Unilever company, in 1972 and was named chief executive in 1978; he retired in 1988.
During his tenure as chief executive, Lipton’s net profit more than tripled, said Carolyn Zachary, a spokeswoman for Unilever Bestfoods North America.
The profit came partly from new Lipton products such as instant soup, and convenience-format noodles, rice and pasta–ranging well beyond the tea the company sold when it opened its first factory in Hoboken, N.J., in 1919. These foods, and iced tea in a can, introduced in 1972, were created by teams led by Mr. Tibbetts for consumers who seemed to place increasing value on saving time.
The son of a druggist and a schoolteacher, Mr. Tibbetts was born in Hallowell, Maine. He attended Harvard University for a year before joining the Army Air Forces, serving with the Flying Tigers in China during World War II.
Returning to Harvard, he graduated in 1947, traveled and moved to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where he became a schoolteacher and a promoter of boxing matches, and started a peanut vending machine business.
After about six months, he returned to the United States and worked for corporations including Borden, Lever Brothers, Salada Foods and an advertising agency, Lennen & Newell. Several of those helped make up the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever.
In 1969, he joined Lipton as an executive vice president for marketing and started a search for new products.
In 1970, Mr. Tibbetts led a group that introduced a one-serving pouch with powdered flavoring called Cup-a-Soup. Besides iced tea in a can, teams he led introduced soup mixes in 1975 and 1976, flavored teas in 1977, noodle dishes in 1980, rice-and-sauce packets in 1984 and pasta-and-sauce packets in 1985.
Survivors include his wife and a daughter.
