Harry Balzer has staked his career on something he himself doesn’t take very seriously.
He’s not a foodie.
“I just eat to live,” he said, unreeling his 6-foot-4-inch frame into a kitchen chair in his North Barrington home. “It’s never been about the food for me. It’s about the information.”
Now, information: That, Balzer takes very seriously. He is a vice president at NPD, the Rosemont company that provides statistical information on how people behave.
In Balzer’s case, those statistics, delivered to clients worldwide, reflect how–and what and why–Americans eat.
“There are 300 million of us in this country now,” Balzer said. “The thing to remember–the thing I tried to teach my kids–is that we’re always more alike than we are different.”
His clients include food manufacturers, retailers, stock analysts and restaurant chains. His interpretation of the data he has studied over the last 28 years can make fortunes for companies who listen, and cost fortunes to companies who don’t.
Newspapers, magazines, television and radio reporters turn to Balzer when they need interesting factual tidbits to illustrate a point or track a trend. In fact, if there is anything you want to know about how America eats–anything at all–Balzer’s the guy to call.
Balzer just can’t help himself: The stuff just spills out. For example: “Did you know that Hispanics are twice as likely as non-Hispanics to use spices or seasonings in their kitchens?” he asked. “But as they acculturate, get more comfortable here in the States, they start to use fewer spices and seasonings. They start to cook like we do!”
Balzer continued: “We found that Hispanics and non-Hispanics both prefer garlic as a favorite seasoning. But Hispanics use it three times more often than non-Hispanics do.”
But Balzer was just getting started. “Want some more? How about this? We eat more restaurant meals today [32 a person, every year] than we did in 1985 [19 per person], but we’re less likely to eat those meals in the restaurant,” he said. “We take them home instead.”
Balzer, so lean and trim, chuckles. “Here’s another. Everybody you talk to is on a diet, right? Shouldn’t we be getting skinny? Well, we’re not. We’re not getting thinner. Instead, we’re shifting our ideals of beauty. Now we think heavier people are more attractive.
“And coffee? We drink more coffee now, right? No, we don’t,” Balzer said. “What no one’s looking at is that there are fewer of those mom-and-pop corner cafes than there used to be, but more Starbucks. Actually, coffee consumption has remained about the same.”
You could look it up
Those facts also appeared in NPD’s 20th “Eating Patterns in America,” the annual report that Balzer has overseen for the two decades since it began. The first “Eating Patterns” was 134 pages; the 2005 version had 470 pages. Compiling the data for “Eating Patterns”–and drawing conclusions about what the data signify–consumes a quarter of Balzer’s year. (He spends most of the nine other months on the road visiting clients who will buy the report.)
It is, NPD says, the only report of its kind. Some industry observers regard the report as a key strategic weapon. For Balzer, it’s not only serious, it’s also the source of endless “gee whiz!” moments.
“His information helps inform strategy and product development,” said Gayle Fuguitt, vice president of consumer insights at General Mills in Minneapolis, one of Balzer’s customers.
“Harry has had the luxury of working with the same data set for most of his career,” Fuguitt said. “He can tell stories about how things have changed over a longtime horizon. Understanding macro trends like that will help us grow our brands, like Cheerios.”
Simple beginnings
The 55-year-old Balzer was born in Pittsburgh. His truck-driving father, also named Harry, was active in his Teamsters Union local. Mother Martha stayed at home with the five kids. Harry was the eldest.
After earning a degree in business and marketing at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Balzer came to work for Lake Forest-based Brunswick Corp. in 1973. He married Maureen Lupone, another Pittsburgher he had met at Duquesne. In 1978, Balzer joined NPD, then called National Purchase Diary and then based in Schaumburg. Given the title of “client service analyst,” Balzer was the company’s fourth hire.
Bob Siegel, of Siegel Resource Group in Chicago, was Balzer’s supervisor in those days. Now he’s a consultant to the food-service industry, working mostly with restaurant operators ranging from single restaurants to large chains. But he has remained close to his former protege.
“I’ve known Harry for nearly 30 years,” Siegel said. “He’s outgoing and gregarious, and he wants to share. He does not forget people, and is always willing to give someone else a hand.”
Tod Johnson, NPD’s chairman and CEO, sums up Balzer in four words:
“One of a kind,” Johnson said, affection for Balzer warming his voice. “He knows as much about food, and how people eat, and their general behavior as anyone in the country knows. But what he adds that is so special is that no one else can take that information and express it so clearly.”
Johnson remembers when Balzer was hired. Over the years, he said from his office in Port Washington on New York’s Long Island, he has seen Balzer in action more than once.
“The best way I can convey his personality is this story,” Johnson said. “I was at a presentation that Harry was going to make. Someone came up to the company’s vice president of marketing, who I was talking to, and said he had to miss the meeting but would grab a hard copy of the report to catch up. ‘But you don’t understand!’ said the marketing VP. ‘Half of the importance is how Harry presents the information he presents!’
“There aren’t very many people who can make numbers and data entertaining,” Johnson said. “Harry takes complex information and makes it not only easy to understand but fun to understand. I love working with him because he always has new insights.”
How does he do it?
Every year, Balzer and NPD ask people to take part in regular surveys to gather data. “We’ll give books to 3,000 families at a time,” Balzer said. “They’ll have volunteered to take part in a more lengthy survey in some smaller survey earlier. So we’ll give them a book and ask them, for example, to write down everything they ate and drank for 14 days. Then we take back all the books and compare the data to previous compilations. Somewhere in my office, I have a bunch of books that surveyed what people ate and drank on Sept. 11, 2001. We haven’t done anything with them yet, but we’ve got them.”
It is, said Balzer, “the politics and the predictability of the masses” that interests NPD.
Once the data have been collected, “I go on vacation to ‘Harry’s Cabin,’ ” Balzer teases, indicating the screened porch off the kitchen. There he spends about three months synthesizing what the data mean and begins to write the narrative portion of the annual report. The narrative is divided into “trends,” “meal patterns,” “health” and other categories. Data tables fall behind the narrative. Clients pay “tens of thousands of dollars,” Balzer said, for the report.
Then Balzer sets off on a marathon of travel, during which he visits more than 70 clients and gives as many as 100 speeches a year. Many of the speeches are to clients, of course, but a lot are to industry groups, like the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association, or the American Meat Institute.
In his spare time, Balzer said, he’s a three-mile-a-day runner and a golfer. “I’m competitive against myself,” Balzer said, “not so much about other people.”
But mostly, Balzer thinks about you and me and the way we use food, said longtime friend Siegel.
“Harry’s a good example of a man or woman who gets described over the years as a person defined by what he does,” Siegel said. “You need someone who gets excited by numbers and can end up with a conclusion that makes some sense and can be helpful.”
That would be Harry Balzer.
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Something to chew on
Harry Balzer has a wealth of odd, surprising and unusual facts at his fingertips and in his head. He shared some from the 20th annual “Eating Patterns in America,” the report he compiles for The NPD Group.
If Mom doesn’t cook, who will?
On a typical night, 55 percent of all dinners are prepared by women, and that’s unchanged since 1998. Restaurants are second, accounting for 18 percent of all meals. Men take care of 11 percent of all dinners.
Do we really want fresh foods?
In 1985, 56 percent of all in-home meals included at least one fresh, prepared-from-scratch dish. Last year, that dropped to 46 percent, an all-time low.
Fascinating food facts
The No. 1 item the average American is most likely to have between meals is . . . .gum!
The fastest growing appliance used by Americans to prepare a meal is . . . the power window.
Last year, for 22 percent of all meals purchased at a restaurant, we did not even get out of our cars, a new high! (Would this trend have happened if we still had to hand-crank the windows in our cars?)
The No. 1 snack by children (under 6 years old) is . . .
…fruit! Don’t be surprised. Parents still control the intake of toddlers and babies. Once they have their 6th birthday, however, look out!
The No. 1 food ordered by women in restaurants is . . .
French fries! (And you thought it was salad!)
Home is still the main source of food!
It is true that nearly 50 percent of our food budget is spent on meals purchased outside the home, but 77 percent of all meals we eat still come from the home. Restaurant meals are three times the cost of making an in-home meal.
Good news on the health front: Recent trends suggest we will not blow up.
After a decade of a steady increase in the percentage of Americans with a body mass index over 25, that number has held steady for four years at 62 percent. Now we need to start losing weight.
We have found balance!
During the past five years, the number of meals made at home and the number of meals purchased at restaurants have been stable. This follows 50 years of Americans leaving the kitchen in favor of more restaurant meals.
Snacking is not really impulsive!
Nearly 70 percent of all snack foods are purchased more than 24 hours before they are consumed. If you buy it, you will eat it.
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Rjenkins@tribune.com
