Owner and Founder of Jeff Russell Consulting, Jeff, graduated from the University of Kansas in 1979 with a BS in Business Administration. He accepted a sales job with the Browning Manufacturing division of Emerson Electric completing a 6 month engineering school, training under an experienced territory sales manager, and eventually taking over a territory in NE, SD, and IA. 

Jeff left Browning in 1982 to work at La Siesta Foods, a small tortilla manufacturer his father had bought while Jeff was in college. He started as a supervisor (the 19th employee in the small company). He was responsible for cooking, grinding, and making tortillas for retail and restaurant sales. The company expanded into flour tortillas in late 1982 and Jeff oversaw construction and start up of the new process and line. He built new plants in frozen burrito manufacturing or expanded existing ones in the family business as the production leader until 1996 when Resers bought La Siesta from the Russell family. The company had grown to $25MM in sales with 375 employees. His father passed away during this time and he was part of a successful succession of the family business.

Jeff then went to work at Reser’s as a plant manager in 1996 running some of the plants sold to them. He was promoted from plant manager, to plant director, to general manager. By 2016 he was the VP of manufacturing and responsible for over $500MM of fresh potato product production in both retail and food service. In total, six plants in three states with employee counts up to 550 per plant. 

After 40 years in the manufacturing business, Jeff retired from Reser’s Fine Foods in August 2021. He then formed Jeff Russell Consulting in order to share his experience in business. From the growth as an entrepreneur, transition to corporate manufacturing, and successful growth with manufacturing scale, he has the knowledge to share with companies and individuals looking for an advantage.