AI in Foodservice: Away-from-home Strategies and Trend Forecasts

Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome. So happy to have you today. My name is Amit Ashkenazi. I’m the vice president of sales at Tastewise, based in New York City. [00:07:00] With me I’m truly honored to have with me a great partner and a great friend, the great Renato Gueraldi, who is going to introduce himself really quickly but really teaching us what partnership is all about so we can learn a little bit from his expertise today. Renato, can you quickly introduce yourself?

Yes, as Amit mentioned, Renato Gueraldi here. I’m the head of Business Development for the Away From Home in the US. I’ve been with [inaudible 00:07:26] for the last seven years. It’s a pleasure and honor to be part of this summit here. Thanks for the invitation, for you, Amit, and for the whole Tastewise team. Thank you.

Amazing, amazing. Happy to have you. And Renato, if anybody has a chance to talk to this amazing person and actually have interesting context of the Israel Innovation System as well. So you bring a lot of other innovation to our area as well.

So today we’re here to talk about Away from Home. Away from Home is a business as a market. Some call it “food service”, some call it “Away from Home”. It’s been emerging [inaudible 00:07:57] definitely in the right of [inaudible 00:07:58] as [00:08:00] more and more organizations understand this is like an incredible growth channel. The work on it, though, is drastically changing throughout the years, in terms of the data that’s being leveraged in terms of the US cases and essentially in the objectives in the focus organizations work.

At the very beginning of our shot, Renato, I want to hear from you about that shift [inaudible 00:08:19], right? Yes. So you’re a part of the Away from Home, you’re leading the business development team. How has that landscape changed for the past three years, right, your vision, your goals, the focus of the organization, as we said, how has the Away from Home become an essential part of the strategy for [inaudible 00:08:33]?

That’s awesome. That’s a great question. Let me take one step back and provide some [inaudible 00:08:39] where we come from and then I’m going to address your question. So three years and a half ago, we used to be called “food service”, as you just referred. And back then the mindset the whole goal was different. We like to say that back in the days we used to sell widgets. We’re very transactional-based. [00:09:00] We sell like these boxes of ketchup, of condiments, and collect the money, and that’s the transaction. We realized that we’re missing great opportunity. We realized that we’re missing the value.

So we decided to shift from food service to Away from Home. We decided to shift from selling widgets to drive taste, flavor, and experience. And why was that? And I answer your question here. We realized in a good industry the trends it starts in the restaurant. And we strongly believe and we strongly adopt a long [inaudible 00:09:39] back in the days.

We thought that the innovation was happening, it was a trigger on retail. And we said, “No,” and we had like different business models, [inaudible 00:09:52] and we searched different benchmarks out there too that shows us that innovation it starts in the restaurant. [00:10:00] So we decide to adopt this new mindset, this new strategy of embracing this product of behavior. Instead of following the trend, we want to lead the trend. So fast forward three years, we’ve been trying to crack that one. That’s not something that we’re really proud of, and anyone at Away from Home will tell you that’s how it goes to drive taste, flavor, and experience, whatever people eat. Did that answer your question?

Right, yes, incredible background, I will say. And from personal experience, this Away from Home team is super unique in terms of even the speed. Sometimes I feel like I’m working with a startup myself. Coming from Tastewise, the team is highly adapting. So you’re talking about a very significant shift in the mindset, right?

Instead of trends — Exactly. Start in retail, trends will actually start in Away from Home. Yes. And it’s Away from home — correct me if I’m wrong, it’s not necessarily the [inaudible 00:10:56]. No. Get some results. No. [00:11:00] It’s — you heard me and you heard our team talking about the famous [inaudible 00:11:05] business case that we thought that that was like, “Oh, that was a good trend,” because we tailor our customer marketing managers said, “Hey, I’ve got a great trend,” and we decide to follow the trend. After weeks of studying research, investment on data, et cetera, we decided to launch. No surprise, the outcome was totally failure.

Why? We did own the trend, we launched the trend and whatever was like the mature curve, we didn’t like embrace the trend when it was on the early stage and addressing what we just described about the mindset. Yes, we’re very intentional about the mindset. Why? We strongly believe that people plus culture will lead to culture. So in any business that we do, we have two different paths to follow. If you want to execute the business, it’s one path, that’s one [inaudible 00:11:58]. If you want to change [00:12:00] the business, that’s something that we want to do it.

If you want to disrupt the business, you need a different mindset, because you need a different culture, a different approach. And that’s something very hard to do it. It’s the most difficult thing in your life, break old habits. So you [inaudible 00:12:15] it right. And you’ve been a witness since day one with us on our evolution. Yes, some would say culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? Exactly; exactly. So we want to change the — Yes. Culture or the way you stated, the people plus culture equals culture, or like it takes it — then that — and I love that approach. So again — Right. Just to recap for our audience that a very essential shift, right, in terms of the innovation, the processes and the resources. the trends will not start in the retail and they’re actually start — going to be Away from Home.

And in the Away from Home space it’s not going to be a big change. We actually have to look elsewhere. We have to look at — We’ve got to look independence, we’ve got to look different markets, we’ve got to look to different channels. We’ve got to also take into consideration what is the [00:13:00] need for the customers. We keep seeing now the personalization. We keep saying like we both know there’s like a ton of people will try a new taste, a new food away from home. So we’ve got to stay close. That’s how we capture the early stage of like a new trend. It’s very easy to say, very hard to do it.

So we’ve got to shift our tunnel vision to more like a way broad perspective. And that’s how we end up like team up because we realize that, one, we have a new mindset trying to drive new culture; two, we don’t have the components. So who’s out there and just doing a great job. So that’s when everything starts with our [inaudible 00:13:49]. That’s a great segue. Thank you for doing my job also here, Renato. That’s great. Okay. My pleasure. So we have this amazing shift in prep times, right? We have a very, very [00:14:00] aggressive goals of growth. And to your point, Sriracha is an example like all it takes to change something is to actually lose something and then it drives the action.

You have a whole new mindset, a whole new objective of the business. How does [inaudible 00:14:14] what’s coming? What if this was held as a vendor but also overall changing the mindset, and how does that help you I guess forecasting; right, because you mentioned you want to be a trend leader versus a trend follower. So it means a lot of — Yes. Changes in the business, right? Yes. How does the work with Tastewise has been contributing, but more than that, how does it allow you to be a forecaster [inaudible 00:14:35]? How is that being translated, and then what other impact does it have to the business? So it’s not [inaudible 00:14:43], it’s research.

But if you ask out there, “Hey, what is the competence that we must crack today if you want to be ahead of the business, ahead of the competition?” And everything lead to four competence, the form — the famous four As; so analysis, which refers [00:15:00] to data, artificial intelligence, adapt the supply chain, and automation, robotics, okay? So we realize that we don’t have any of those. And we realize that Tastewise has two, two, two of those, the data and the artificial intelligence.

You used the word “vendor” whenever you refer to Tastewise. We don’t see Tastewise as a vendor; we see Tastewise as a partner. It’s different; since day one, okay? And I think we’ve been going on for almost two years, our partnership. And I can name it. We had, what, nine different pilots. You — we’ve been together in so many different meetings, live meetings, events. We complement each other. Why is that important, why I’m bringing that up, because if you don’t have that relationship, if you don’t have the partnership — forget about being forecaster, forget about being the leader.

[00:16:00] Why; because we’re trying to crack something that we don’t know, and we’ve got to build the trust, we’ve got to build the relationship. The partnership will come before the outcome, okay? So remember that we realize — I’ll give you one example, we realize that we don’t know. Okay, step one, who knows, [inaudible 00:16:22] twice we team up. Third step is like who is out there is doing a great job. And you know you’ve been in [inaudible 00:16:27] with us.

So let’s talk with chefs. Let’s talk with big customers, not like North America. What is the biggest one in — global; let’s go with — and we talk — and we had [inaudible 00:16:37] in Pittsburgh. Whenever we try to show data and artificial intelligence [inaudible 00:16:43] the opinion to build something together to start like — to start building the reputation of leading of — instead of like, “Hey, what is the next one,” you know what I mean? What else do I have here? [00:17:00] We are very intentional, I mean, about changing, about the mindset, and about who we wanted to team up.

So again, that’s the combination to lead, to start changing the outcome, to start changing the approach. So I think partnership will come as step one to drive the strategy. Again, incredible; incredible. I will say it’s amazing to hear how the — again, the objective of the business translates into the day-to-day. Like [inaudible 00:17:35], the artificial intelligence in the data it’s always there to support something great. It supports the organizational shift and supports the culture.

Maybe to give an example for the audience of an amazing project you guys did, it’s about the sauce jobs [phonetic], right — Yes. Where it’s actually identified trending locations that will carry the trend. If we went into Sriracha too late, how does that look when we try to enter a trend early at the infancy? Can you share a few words about that [00:18:00] activity? Yes, so we leverage in your tool, your data to identify what are like the popular, the social influencers; what is like the new generations looking for? And we match — start doing a combination.

And now the [inaudible 00:18:21] was the execution of that project. We’re also developing in Pittsburgh R&D facility, something that we call the “soft spot”. Think about like the top 100 like most popular sauces. And we developed that, said, “Hey, we want things to see, want to hear, but like how we bring to our kitchen and we produce,” and we did that. And based on all this whole initiative, the end of the project was like we did what we just refer the sauce job execution last year around this time, summertime, and we dropped six sauces across a few different states in [00:19:00] North America, and the feedback was extremely positive.

Remember, new sauce, new ingredient, new taste, taste on what we capture on different geographics, different segments of the population, and based on the social feedback. We put all the — engineer all the pieces together and we deliver this beautiful puzzle. Amazing. So it’s what people eat; what is the next one that will eat? But more than that, where will they eat it, right? Exactly. So which locations are going to be the ones to carry the trend moving forward, and then we can ongoing plan. This is already the data being used to transform your tech or to manifest it, I shall say, to track [overlapping] —

Yes, let’s recap — like sorry to interrupt, I mean, but let’s recap pretty quickly when we have them together in the past three years.

We start with sales, we start with go-to-market, and then menu, remember, and then third-party, insights, [00:20:00] digital, culinary. And after a while, we felt comfortable to say, “Hey, here is the path,” exactly what you said. He’s like not only, “What are you eating, where are you eating, what that represents for you, what that make you feel?” Put all that together, we have a very strong package.

And we’re very proud of that — Yes. According to you guys. And probably — yes; and probably the only way to stay relevant today is [inaudible 00:20:25], right; like that’s why you need the AI, that’s why you need the speed. So you talked about the partnership, and I will tell you guys Renato teases me that — he gives me a lot of swag for Kraft Heinz, and yet I give him not enough. So I’m working on it, but we’re going on. [Laughter] But this was when we actually presented some of the areas of Kraft Heinz.

Let’s say we have a lot of people in the audience they are looking to partner now. And there’s all of the new technologies, right? Yes. New technologies. Everybody’s wondering, “How do I adopt it,” [inaudible 00:20:52] — Yes. Whatever that is. Whatever. If I’m a big CPG [inaudible 00:20:57] or an operator, and I want to enter this space, I want to choose a partner, to [00:21:00] your point. But that’s critical for your success. From your perspective, what will be your few tips, a few guidance of, “You’re about to choose that, here is what you should be looking at,” what is — what really should you do within the organization, the internal homework? And then as you’re looking to find that partner to adopt a whole new technology set of culture — Yes. What are the things that are critical to look at?

Let me start with a tip of like what not to do, okay? That’s fair. So whenever you have — you plan to — you’re trying to team up with whatever, whatever partner, and try to do something new. And again, something new, okay? What’s the worst thing that it can happen; a debate. Debate leads to bureaucracy. Debates lead to time consumption of like debate of like what’s your opinion, what’s my opinion? So my tip for you, if you see something — if you like — you have your partner, and I’m assuming you already have the mindset, you already have the decision to try something new. Don’t debate. Pilot, A, B, and then you go. [00:22:00]

Number two, be patient about how you transfer the knowledge. And I mean to you like you remember since day one like you — we’ve got to be very intentional about like transfer the knowledge across different units in an organization so you can satisfy the learn. So with those two in mind, remember it’s not about — you’re not going to get the homerun at once. Hopefully, you do it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. [Laughter] So it’s having the mindsets like, “Let’s pilot, let’s learn, correct, redo it.” So and that’s the first phase of pilot something new. And remember, after you said, “Hey, voila, I got it, that’s what I want to it,” then will come some crucial momentum on the innovation. That’s what we call it kind of like “scale up”.

And remember, it’s better to have a thousand people [00:23:00] taking one step at a time but in the same direction than one crazy guy running a thousand feet by himself. What I’m trying to tell you guys here, so let’s say you got your friend, your partner and you pilot, and then you’ve got a selling family; selling family. Remember, you need more people to join you so you can make like this small idea with a huge potential like a bigger deal with a massive potential. So it’s like could limit, don’t debate; pilot and make sure you bring people into the journey.

So that will differentiate anyone who is watching this now. Golden advice, really. So from our perspective, you’re touching upon the democratization, right — Yes. Yes. The democratizing what you do, sharing the best practices, whether it’s between regions, whether it’s between different departments, or even if you take the idea of what will they eat in the innovation and then all the way to the execution, what do we need to do, how do we measure that? The democratization of [00:24:00] the data flow is — if I hear you correctly, is the key success, a key success metric that you have to make sure you’re staying on top of.

It is good because if you think about the three pillars that we are going to make anyone succeed, the first pillar it’s about the technology, the capabilities, okay? That’s normally — Yes. We leverage to validate. The second one is about the function. And think about function as an architecture, organizational structure. That’s how the different areas we work together to support the capabilities and celebrate the capabilities.

The third one is about decision, normally sits on the senior level. So everything that we do here, like you’ve got to be able to collaborate, to embrace. You talk about culture, mindset. So always take in consideration that’s, one, you’re trying to solve a problem, so it’s a hypothesis. Two, you’ve got to pass the hypothesis. [00:25:00] And three, you’ve got to evolve the cycle, keep — [inaudible 00:25:05] The loop; yes. Again, I think the meeting we had from day one, the vision of Kraft Heinz just explained about the — where trends originate, all the way to the execution, you choose your partner.

But I have to say, Renato, some — but you have to be willing and be ready to adapt. Because the one thing we know — Yes. That things will change. Yes. So from our perspective I think also as it came as a startup or a smaller company to Kraft Heinz, being able to learn about each other’s needs, learn about each other’s capabilities, learn about the limitation the organization has, and then adapt your plan while you’re going up. Yes. Know what you know, be willing to look at the north star, and then going at it. And that’s another ending, right, and that’s what makes it fun. The AI and the technology allows us to move faster, but we are the one in charge to adapt. And that leads me to our maybe last question for today, let’s go to, I don’t know, 2030, right, or — Right.

Or here is the head; [00:26:00] like the one thing that we know for sure is that we don’t know everything, that — Yes, yes. Things will continue to change. How would the landscape look? In a few years ahead, Away from Home continues to grow, you continue to adopt and adapt. What do things look like? Yes. What do you think the future will bring? I’m going to date myself here, but like I grew up learning that’s like [inaudible 00:26:21] a plan, a tenuous plan; normally used to be A to B. Normally we’re, “Oh, yes, let’s — like, “I’m here today. I want to go there.” It all sounds like and the plan looks like a straight linear. It’s like eye-turning. No.

Nowadays it’s different. [inaudible 00:26:41], the variables we don’t control. What do we control? We control our verticals, our structure. And why I’m saying that is like by 2030 I — my focus about developing my structure is something that we call “leading [00:27:00] by design”. So we start off like I know that I want to go to — from A to B. I know that. But I also know it’s not going to be a straight line, it’s going to go like this. The world is changing like this nowadays. So what do we have to control? I’ve got to control my structure. So each vertical of own structure, it’s robust enough but also humble enough to adapt to whatever comes. Because by doing that, we’re going to get way faster from A to B, and we’re going to get way more established. We keep talking about change, we keep talking about technology, so I don’t control what is the next — whatever next is coming. But I control how can we react, how can we interpret, how can we embrace and leverage? Got it.

So the key is like for me is the famous concept of leading by design. Incredible. It’s almost like — so I don’t know what the next trend will bring, when, [00:28:00] or the way it will grow. But I know that when it will hit, I will be ready with being able to identify, I will be ready being — Exactly. Knowing how to act fast and how to execute on. Exactly. But where is the structure, the vision that you have will be adopted because the change will come. So your preparation is not necessarily about the what is that next [inaudible 00:28:18]? I don’t know. But I know that when it will hit, I know [overlapping] — Or — exactly. And I will know when to execute. Exactly. Yes.

Incredible. One last thing — Yes. Like maybe a subquestion on that; so again, the [inaudible 00:28:31] of the world, generative AI is also changing more specifically. Any other regards or any other tips on that specifically, or that’s a part of the greater vision of the world that’s changing and it’s simply one [inaudible 00:28:43] manifestations to it?

It’s reality. And I’m going to say, of course, is that I hear it from you so many times [laughter] like, “Artificial intelligence, it’s here for — to stay.” And I will keep hearing that, “Oh, people might have concerns that artificial [00:29:00] intelligence is going to take all the people’s jobs or replace it.” No. As a matter of fact, it’s going to be an enabler to accelerate the growth. It’s up to us now. I was just talking about how we react to a new trend. So the way we classify “react” is that we — it’s a reality. We’re going to embrace it. It’s here to stay. So our job it’s in effect for the partnership with Tastewise it’s like how fast can we learn?

We strongly believe that we, Kraft Heinz, are the biggest bottleneck for ourselves. So we’ve got to team up someone who knows, so we can accelerate our learning, so we can have like a greater journey. So we say that it’s here to stay. It’s a matter of like how we [inaudible 00:29:46] it. We know that my — some people, some example, might use for [inaudible 00:29:49] sight of the force, let’s put it that way, but that’s not our focus. Our focus is how can we produce, learn, and add value of this new reality, new [00:30:00] trend? For the audience to know, I’ve been to these kitchens. I’ve seen the Kraft Heinz chefs cook and a recipe generated —

Yes.

By AI; [overlapping] AI.

Exactly. It was incredible to see, an incredible session of the sauces of 2027 and beyond. And one of the inputs was recipes that were generated by AI. It’s only a matter of — to your point, AI is not replacing anybody. Yes. Yes. But somebody that uses AI might, in terms of expediting the work process. And we were in the same meeting, Amit, hearing from some experts in the industry and tasting firsthand the outcome of our exercise — Yes. And the feedback was incredible. So we have experts in the field telling us that’s what we’re doing is the right thing to do it. That’s the new future. Let’s put it that way. It’s a great life. It’s a great life we live in, very interesting times.

Renato, I appreciate so much your input and sharing your wisdom with us. It was my pleasure. [00:31:00] Really appreciate it for the audience. I hope you will — you learned and it was interesting for you guys. Feel free to reach out to myself, to Renato with any questions or follow-ups — Anytime. You may have. Let’s continue the work. And I will want to thank Renato and the Kraft/ Heinz’s team for being an amazing partner and for many more years to come. Thanks so much again for an invitation. Thanks for the partnership. I know the future looks great for us. So let’s keep discovering together. Cheers. Thank you so much, Renato. Cheers.