(FORTUNE Magazine) – At management meetings Nestle executives munch candy bars, spoon yogurt, and bolt breakfast cereal. All are company products, of course, and arguments occasionally break out over the virtues of Crunch vs. Chunky. These boardroom taste tests typify the down-to-earth style of Helmut Maucher. The burly, plain-spoken Maucher, 59, is adding zest to the once stodgy Swiss company. Since he took charge as managing director in 1981, he has pared the bureaucracy 10% and put plenty of sweetener in the profits. By 1986 Nestle's earnings had nearly doubled, to $1.2 billion. The boss's motto is catching on with his chocolate soldiers: ''Let's have more pepper and less paper.'' He worked his way through the University of Frankfurt with a part-time job at Nestle. After graduation Maucher progressed through cost control and marketing before becoming president in 1975 of the company's West German subsidiary. He helped build it into one of the largest and most profitable Nestle divisions before moving to Vevey, Switzerland, and taking over as managing director. Maucher's first task was getting Nestle back to the basics of selling. ''Forecasts of the future are almost always wrong,'' he says, ''and setting targets doesn't help to sell a single case of Nescafe.'' He eliminated the voluminous annual ten-year business plans and pushed authority down from headquarters to managers of the subsidiaries. He required only that they send in a one-page monthly summary of their activities. Maucher spends about an hour flipping through these reports each month. Only if he spots signs of trouble, does he intervene. For Maucher, who unwinds by trying to whittle a 32 golf handicap, there's no business like food business. ''People rave about high tech and ignore food because it's stable, not cyclical,'' he says. ''But food is a growth industry.'' Just try to eat a computer.