Leader Weekends: How to be a CEO (Kraft Heinz’s Rafael Oliveira)

Ed Sheeran has a tattoo of a Heinz ketchup on his arm. You can Google it, you see. I mean, it was not paid or asked by us at all. I mean, he did it on his own and it's a big tattoo, it's not like a tiny one.

I mean, it's something that you struggle again with creativity. How do you develop new packs, new price points, but at the same time allow us to continue investing in the business, in our brands, and in our people. So, it is a challenge. I mean, but again, that's what we are here for.

Well, the day has been good. I mean, always when I have the chance and I'm not traveling, I have the chance to come to the office, it's always good because then I see my team, I see the colleagues, I see everybody. I'm always in calls with different people around the globe. So it started with a call with our president for Asia in the morning, and then I had a call with my leadership team, which includes people from Asia, Australia, Latin America, Middle East. So spread out across the globe. And then had a couple of business reviews. But more importantly, walking around the office is what really gives me energy. So I love being here.

We are present in over 50 countries. Depends on how you look at it because there are some offices where we are sitting in a distributor office, so it's not really our office, but it's our people there. You have factories, they have an office inside a factory or not. But I mean, we have between 25 and 30 offices. Plus we have 43 factories that not including North America. So outside North America, we have 43 factories and between 25 and 30 offices.

But that's the beauty of it. I don't need to keep track of every single one myself. I just have a team that does it, you know? The beauty of it is to be able to organize a team that keeps track of all this, and then I manage to support them. So, the reality is, I love food. I love to understand the different types of food, the dynamics, the trends that are happening. But the reality is it would be humanly impossible to keep track of everything. So, the key of the job is actually to have a team that you trust and that you build like the best team that work together. And this team builds a team further, and so this power exponentially grows. And then these people in the local markets will understand the real trends, what's going on, and build on top of everything.

This challenge is happening across the globe. I remember I look after many different countries. We, with our team, and we are a company present in many different countries, and frankly, this challenge is happening everywhere. I mean, cost of ingredients, disruptions in supply chain, labor uncertainty is happening on different scales, but across the globe. And I mean, we are always trying to balance to do the best thing for our consumers on the long term. And so, what we can do to make our products accessible, and then still allow consumers to enjoy. I mean, it's something that you struggle again with creativity. I mean, creativity is not only on communication, but how do you develop new packs, new price points that allow consumers to enjoy the products, but at the same time allow us to continue investing in the business, in our brands, and in our people. So, it is a challenge. I mean, but again, that's what we are here for, you know, to continue to delight our consumers.

We are always looking to make things spicier. That's definitely true. But what you're probably coming from is we made an acquisition of a company called Just Spices at the end of 2021 in Germany, originally from Germany. We have a big focus on what we call taste elevation. Taste elevation is effectively everything that consumers use to elevate the taste of food, right? And then the most obvious thing you think about is sauces. Sauces are taste elevation products. Spices is the additional one. And then you could go from this to bouillons, to stocks, and other things that elevate the taste of food. That's the core of our company in terms of core competencies. That's where we have the knowledge, the R&D, the consumer trends understanding. We have the brands that operate the supply chain facilities. So that's what we really understand. We believe better than anyone across the globe.

Yeah, as you might know, Ed Sheeran has a tattoo of a Heinz ketchup on his arm. You can Google it, you see. I mean, it was not paid or asked by us at all. He did it on his own years ago for his love of ketchup, you know, Heinz ketchup. Three years ago we did a campaign with him actually using his creativity to do a campaign with Heinz ketchup, showing his love of Heinz ketchup. And we kept in touch since then. In a conversation our team had with him about a year ago, he mentioned that he had this idea for a hot sauce and a brand which is this bear, which is his nickname from childhood. And he had even the name already thought in mind. And he casually mentioned in a conversation with our team that he had this dream of doing a hot sauce. Our team caught this concept very quickly, came back to him with a proposal saying why don't we make this hot sauce for you. And he loved the idea. We started this partnership. So we are developing the product for him as sauces experts, but he is the real owner and the face of the brand. It has been going really well. We've launched already in the UK, in Germany, and we are launching as he makes concerts across the globe, and it will be available everywhere in the globe.