Published: November 14, 2025
Five Questions with Philip Hurwitz
Philip Hurwitz
Vice President & General Manager, Nothum Food Processing Systems
How do you ensure quick ROI for your customers?
To address ROI, we approach customer satisfaction from two directions. First, we identify each customer’s pain points. What aspects of their current operations offer the biggest opportunities for improvement? Where can we help them enhance what they do and how they do it? Once we know the “what” and the “where,” we can show them how our solutions can make a significant impact on their operations. The proof comes through testing directly with them, showing them case studies that relate to their needs and visiting their plants to walk through what we can contribute.
At the same time, we show customers how our equipment optimizes yield and ingredient usage while it decreases maintenance and labor costs, which results in efficiency and cost effectiveness on the production floor. These factors contribute to a favorable ROI and demonstrate our commitment to customer progress and satisfaction.
How do you prioritize versatility in your equipment designs?
We pioneered versatility in our industry as the first equipment manufacturer to build a flexible breader that can produce a flat breaded or homestyle breaded product on a single machine. We still lead the industry in this equipment category. In keeping with that versatility, we take great pride in being able to produce our customers’ products without having to suggest multiple machines or specialty configurations to make it happen.
We approach our batter and frying equipment from this same perspective. These designs reflect the realities our customers face. Many of them cannot simply manufacture one product SKU every week, day or shift. In fact, they often face the need for multiple changeovers during a single shift. Our versatility helps them reduce downtime between product runs, which increases their efficiency and throughput.
What aspects of Nothum equipment would surprise prospective customers the most?
The biggest surprise may be the ways we balance advanced, sophisticated capabilities with easy maintenance and sanitation. At first glance, our equipment might look quite complex, but users quickly realize that we have provided a broad feature set in a robust machine with low maintenance costs.
Likewise, customers often underestimate the number of ways in which we can exceed their ROI or payback justification. They may expect a fast ROI based on limited criteria – yield, for example – and then discover that we have delivered higher quality and increased consistency as well, providing additional benefits beyond their initial expectations. Our greatest reward during new installations is a customer’s excitement when we exceed those expectations or project justifications.
How do you give customer input balanced consideration during new product development?
Our new equipment designs must balance customers’ current needs with future requirements and market trends. As we plan new development, we take advantage of customer input to help narrow our list to the models that make the best sense to produce. Ultimately, our customers know their processes and opportunities, and we do not want to develop solutions that don’t offer the kinds of value they expect.
Our biggest product development projects carry the longest timelines and require us to anticipate future needs. For these types of projects, customer feedback helps us ensure that we address customers’ primary desires, from reduced maintenance costs to simplified operations and increased yields. We will leverage their opinions to shape our direction as we evaluate current market trends and opportunities.
How do you best anticipate changing consumer tastes and position Nothum for growth?
Our equipment versatility makes our equipment ideal when our customers want to explore new products and adapt to consumer tastes. We stay in close contact with our customers and respond quickly when they indicate an interest in testing a new product. For example, as consumers gravitated to gluten-free products and alternative proteins in the past five to 10 years, we made sure our equipment was poised to excel in these areas. Although we attend food trade shows, watch for LTOs and read trade publications, nothing provides more insight into industry trends than listening to our customers. They know which products and ideas stand the best chances for growth.
