What started as a safer way to open a can became a multigenerational, century-long family business success.

This spring, a fourth-generation former CEO will offer insight into how Vitamix became a household name and evolved through decades of change.

Jodi Berg will be the featured success story speaker at the 2026 Prairie Family Business Association Annual Conference held April 22-23 at the Canopy by Hilton in downtown Sioux Falls.

“We’re thrilled to introduce our family businesses to Jodi and her family’s success story,” said Mason Van Essen, assistant director of the Prairie Family Business Association. “There are so many strong takeaway for other families in her message. This definitely will be an impactful session at the annual conference.”

Berg’s great-grandfather founded the business in Illinois in the years following World War I. By 1921, “all the products they had built or designed or created to support the military were coming back to the United States, and one of those was canned goods,” she said.

The problem was the cans could be opened only with a knife, risking contaminating what was in the can and hurting whoever was trying to open it.

“My great-grandfather saw the product and thought, ‘everyone needs one of these,’” Berg said.

Life had not been easy for William Grover Barnard, affectionately known as “Papa Barnard.” He’d lost his wife and third son in 1918 in the influenza pandemic, went broke in the depression of 1921 and had reached a point of desperation as he struggled to raise two sons on his own.

“He’d lost everything and was trying to figure things out, and he ended up starting a retail store selling bulk food and food prep tools, items he really felt would help people eat healthier. And if they felt better, it would help them physically and emotionally,” Berg said.

The company found early success selling the 25-cent Polly Can Opener, which gave people safer and easier access to healthy foods year-round.

Barnard understood that people needed to see the can opener work to be convinced to buy it, “and they would travel to all the shows and fairs where people would gather as a primary way of selling,” Berg said.

That led them to the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland in the 1930s, where the family fell in love with the growing city, “and they packed up their company and moved it, and we’ve been here ever since,” she said.

Her grandfather Bill Barnard convinced his father to move the company from downtown Cleveland to a rural suburb because he wanted to raise his family in the woods. With that, “they turned it into a direct mail and demonstration company because it was the middle of nowhere,” she said.

At the same time, the residential blender was developed and presented a way to grow the company’s product line.

“My great-grandfather said if every household had a blender, they could use it to eat healthier and have higher consumption of nutrients,” Berg said.

The family developed what became known as the Vitamix – and again tapped into their roots in product demonstration.

“My grandfather convinced my great-grandfather they should look at this new thing popping up in everyone’s homes called the television,” Berg said. “He walked into one of the first TV stations in the country in Cleveland with a wad of cash and asked to buy a half-hour of airtime. Halfway through, he gave a phone number where to call to order the Vitamix machine.”

It prompted a flood of calls to the rural family home.

“They sold more in one night than an entire year, and that’s how the infomercial was born,” Berg said.

The family then invested into product development to differentiate itself in a growing category.

“They set out to make a machine that processes healthy food faster and better than anything else out there,” she said.

In the coming decades, Vitamix would expand to serve commercial clients, bring manufacturing in-house and transition into its third generation.

Berg’s father was one of six children, and all became involved in the business in some way.

While she grew up in Pennsylvania separate from the family business, her father moved the family to Ohio when Berg was in high school so he could work full time at Vitamix, assisting with engineering.

“As soon as I had my driver’s license, I would answer customer service calls until they closed,” Berg said.

Watching the third generation attempt to navigate work and family, however, discouraged her from considering it as a career. The discord grew to a point that her uncle considered selling the business.

“I was working at the Ritz-Carlton focused on quality and customer service, and my brother had come back to the Cleveland area, and we both said that we didn’t want to work for the family business, but we also didn’t want the family business to go away,” Berg said. “This is so common. But we realized if someone in the fourth generation didn’t get involved, there was a possibility it would sell.”

The family connected with a resource at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, which had a department focused on family businesses. They met with an author and professor of a family business course.

“My uncle loved to learn, and so when he, my father and brother and I went, we realized that nothing we were going through was unique,” Berg said. “It happens to family businesses all the time. It just felt unique and scary to us without a means to get through it. Finding someone to help us walk through it was really what kept Vitamix in the family.”

It gives her special meaning to be able to share the story with other family businesses at events like the Prairie Family Business Association Annual Conference.

“I can speak from experience that when you have organizations like this, it truly does make a difference, “she said. “It absolutely saved us, and through that process I started to fall in love with Vitamix.”

She will share the story of her own journey as CEO, the transition plan that helped the family, how she helped transform the brand and how the company ultimately evolved into a nonfamily CEO today.

“I’ll talk about the importance of making purposeful decisions,” Berg said. “How do you make purposeful decisions for employees, owners and the company in a way that’s inclusive where everyone can feel part of the purpose? That’s really my passion when I talk to family businesses.”

Register now

It’s not too soon to sign up for the 2026 Prairie Family Business Association Annual Conference!

Visit here for event details and to register.