Episode 1: Mondelez's Anna Reid on customer centricity and trust

Welcome to the first episode of Women Transforming Food, a new monthly podcast produced by G100 and Inside FMCG, exploring the stories of inspiring women transforming the food industry. 

In this episode, Inside FMCG’s Amie Larter and G100's Asia Pacific chair, Angeline Acharya speak to Anna Reid, director of customer service and logistics at global snack giant, Mondelez about creating a customer-centric business model. 

Transcript

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Amie Larter:

Welcome to Women Transforming Food, a monthly podcast brought to you by G100 and Inside FMCG, exploring the stories of inspiring women shaping the food industry. Today, I'm joined by my co -host, G100's Asia Pacific Chair, Angeline Achariya, and Anna Reid, Director of Customer Service and Logistics at Global Snack Giant, Mondelez.

Angeline Achariya:

I know your impressive career spans many major brands like Golden Circle, George Western Foods, Asahi Beverages, and most recently you were the Senior Program Manager for Innovation at Amazon. A common thread that I've noticed in all of these is in the roles is your passion for customer and operations. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Anna Reid:

Thanks Angeline, thanks to Amie, very excited to be here and I'm really looking forward to the discussions we've got for today.

Amie Larter:

Excellent, thank you. This is a first episode too, so very excited. No pressure But we'll get straight into it. So on this podcast we're really going to focus at women transforming food but also looking at it through the lens of a particular field and I think as Angelene mentioned you've been very focused through that customer and operations lens. I'm keen to jump into it and start with customers customer centricity It's obviously a buzzword term used across many industries. I know from our experience It's heavily used in retail and as and in FMCG as well and out what? definition of customer centricity resonates with you

Anna Reid:

Yeah, thanks Amie. Yep, definitely is a buzzword. But also it is actually a really important buzzword. I've heard lots of other similar terms out there, customer excellence, customer obsession, customer intimacy. Although each may have a slightly different variation in its terminology, they for me are all really centred on the simple definition of being able to energetically earn the customer's trust.

And as well as being able to keep it. So that customer trust is important, not just if you're a consumer facing business, retail business, but also if you're a non -consumer facing business. So for us at Mondelez, obviously we're a supplier into retailers. And if we're not harnessing and focusing on building that trust, it's really a key part of firstly the right to win as a supplier, but also if we do it well, it can also become a competitive advantage.

It's been a big journey that we've been working through at Mondelez and importantly we're calling it our customer at heart journey. We're focusing on three key areas as part of our journey. So firstly about how do we bring the voice of customer to life? So thinking about how do we listen to their customer regularly, getting their feedback and we do that through things like the advantage survey. We meet regularly with our key retail partners and other wider customers as well, getting their feedback from both the commercial and supply chain perspective.

And also working on how we look at co -create value together. So not just looking at what are the issues, but how do we look at opportunities as well? Secondly, really importantly is about responsiveness. So that's focusing on our, if issues do happen, how do we respond quickly to that? Making sure that we're driving reliability within our supply chain and trying to do each step of our process perfectly out to our customers. And then the third key part, in what I see is important from a customer centricity is really that focus on improvement. So do the basics brilliantly well, but also look at how do you continue to support and drive further improvement and digitization is I think a really key part of doing that as well.

Angeline Achariya:

And Anna, that's fantastic to hear, I think, you know, the three clear strategies that you seem to be applying at Mondelez. I was just curious, I guess, in the wake of the pandemic and the ongoing, you know, I call it the supply chain woes or the challenges, which, you know, we've all been facing in the industry. How do you see this customer centricity?

Evolving within the food industry? What's different now, you know, I guess if you compare it to pre -pandemic versus now, we're living in a, you know, in a post -world, if you will.

Anna Reid:

Firstly, as I think all of us probably in some ways in our heads have probably tried to put a bit of the pandemic out of our heads, it definitely was itself a challenging time. I was, I guess, over that time able to work on both the supply side of things in food, but also from a retailer perspective as well over that time. And it was definitely pretty challenging. So I had challenges I was working through, such as figuring out how to get microwave popcorn bags, which are very unique and bespoke product into Australia when there was a global shortage, through to launching a brand new fulfilment centre with Amazon in Melbourne when Melbourne was in the middle of a peak of its lockdowns and obviously everyone moving to online ordering and sales. 

So definitely, COVID's created lots of challenges for us. But I think also if we look beyond COVID from a food and grocery supply chain, there's been many challenges that we've had since then, even though COVID itself might be a bit of a distant memory. I think there's still plenty of challenges that we have to face into. So there's been examples of natural disasters, fire, flooding, even most recently some of the challenges around the Red Sea and the Hootie attacks that have been happening. And even I think most recently about obviously the avian bird flu and egg shortages. 

I know, yeah, certainly the shelves on egg supplies have changed quite a lot over the last few weeks, but the pandemic has certainly for me has highlighted the importance of supply, a concept called supply chain resiliency. And it was something I came through as a term around that time, someone called Zawa Ribera, spoke really about a great definition that at the time that came across, but still actually is really important today. So Zawa spoke about the ability to be prepared for unexpected risk events, responding and being able to recover quickly to potential disruptions, but being able to return either to the original state. 

And the part that I really like about this definition is even being able to actually be even better to grow by moving to a new and more desirable state in order to increase customer service, market share and financial performance. So, that focus around supply chain resiliency is certainly something I see as key that yeah, food industry needs to be working on and focusing on. So in terms of key parts of it, I see it as sort of two key levers, I'll call it within that focus for supply chain resiliency. 

On one side you've got how do you detect something actually is happening? So how do you know that there's a supply chain disruption or an event's happening and whether that being an agronomy issue versus through to an international global supply chain disruption. But first thing, how do you actually detect that? At Mondalis, we've got some great tools that we're using to help us, something called Project 44.

That's a tool that allows us to be able to look at international shipping delays, issues that are happening from a global perspective. Through to more local, we're using something also called SmartLinks that allows us to be able to track and trace our deliveries locally here within Australia. The other side of those two dimensions I spoke about is how do you respond once you've detected an issue and looking to improve on that as well. So those types of responses is...

Firstly, having a coordinated approach. So how do you pre -plan around what might happen? But also, how do you make sure that there's really clear communication? So through to your internal key stakeholders, but also through to externals as well. So working through with key retail partners as an example. And I think importantly, every situation is a little bit different. So needing to be agile. Obviously, we've heard the term agile pivoting a lot through COVID. But really thinking about how do you be able to, once you've detected an issue, be able to respond quickly to it. So using that example of that software, I mentioned that we're using Project 44 to detect issues. We even had a recent example where freight was unable to go from Turkey to Israel with some of the disruptions that are happening in the Middle East. We were able to pick that up and reroute that shipment and containers pretty quickly. And that was done just during our normal operations and not having to trigger an extra process.

A lot of challenges that we've had from COVID and the pandemic, but I think it's also allowed us to start to look at how do we better detect issues, respond to them and create supply chain resilience, because we know that challenges that we had from the pandemic are just going to continue moving forward.

Angeline Achariya:

There's a lot in there to unpack and thank you so much for sharing all of that detail. I think the big thing that probably resonates with me there as well and I'm sure with lots of other people who listen to this is the ability to be able to use that foresight and kind of almost see what might be coming at us and how we respond as opposed to reacting which is probably one of the things we were maybe doing before because we didn't have as many of these things happen to us.

Amie Larter:

Okay, and so from a, I think from a reacting point of view, when we were talking about the podcast and coming into this conversation, Anna, you mentioned that when you started with Modeles, and how long have you been there now?

Anna Reid:

Just over six months now.

Amie Larter:

Six months, so you've been sort of instrumental in actualizing Mondelez's strong vision for customer centricity. So I think that was something that was there and you're sort of bringing it to life. Keen to understand, you know, can you elaborate on this process and the work that's being done and how you've done that?

Anna Reid:

Yeah, so definitely, yes, still on a journey and it's a collaborative journey as you've touched on there, Amie, and in the early days. But I think first key part of that journey that we've been on is in Mondelez we have a term called creating a Merlin vision. You've probably heard of Merlin, the TV show potentially. So Merlin obviously was a wizard. He had the vision with King Arthur and the knights all sitting at the round table.

Amie Larter:

Yeah.

Anna Reid:

And they were sort of coming together thinking about how do they overcome the enemy and they were able to come up with an idea that they were going to overpower the enemy and unite the kingdom together. They didn't actually know how they were going to do it, but they created a sense of curiosity and wonder and thought about how to create a vision of unconstrained thinking. So that sort of power of Merlin was a bit of what we've adapted in our approach. 

So firstly, we've had some really strong healthy debates about what customer centricity means for us and what is our vision to get there. We had a bit of a saying of a hashtag no miss cases as part of that Merlin vision of where we wanted to get to and creating that mental model as a team. And certainly, as we started that process of creating the mental model, we had lots of debates and discussions about where we could get to, what were the challenges on that. 

But that was that creating that lens and vision about how do we bring that customer focus into our key decision making each day was the first part of that journey. Another key thing that we've gone on the journey is having a clear measurable targets and making sure that they're also reflecting that voice of customer. And I think important for businesses now is to think about other targets both focus on reliability or of delivery or also on speed or maybe a combination of both. For us at Mondelez, it's about focusing on the service and we talk about a concept of shelf -back design. So a key part of it's our delivery into our customers, but also their delivery and outbound services into their stores, et cetera as well. So we've created some really clear targets that link into our vision.

We've created a bit of a pathway of how we can see that we can work on that journey of improvement. And then we've got some clear action plans that we're working on around that as well. So in that journey, we've set up a big strong focus daily of how do we drive the improvements and a structure around how we collaboratively meet together and look at how we went yesterday, what's our plans for the day ahead, just some simple things like that. We're also focusing on our supply chain resilience as mentioned before.

What are our processes that we can better detect issues and also how to respond and documenting those and bringing those to life. And then also our sales and operational planning processes, we've made some improvements to there as well. You may have heard a concept called the bullwhip in supply chains. So not necessarily a country rodeo terminology, but the fact is that you can have one issue, create a change in one spot, but it then ripples and goes through your supply chain like a bit like a bull whip Effective when someone's cracking a whip. 

So we've been particular focused to look at how we can alleviate Things that we've been happening in our supply chain that we're causing those bull whip effects as well So quite a bit been going but it all started with that mental model focus and creating that Merlin vision as mentioned in that journey

Amie Larter:

I love the Merlin vision by the way. Now a quick question on that. So for those that are looking to go through the process, like you've got the buy -in, you've got the measurement, and now it's gonna be an ongoing, I'm assuming it's not a destination, it's more of a journey because it's ongoing. What advice would you have for people that are undergoing that process now? Because it does feel like it's really important to start at that kind of buy -in phase. What advice would you have for people?

Anna Reid:

Yeah, great question. So the advice that I have is firstly, as mentioned, obviously, creating that clear vision upfront. But have a think about how you bring it to life with a bit of fun along the way. I guess as an example, some of the fun that we've decided to have is in getting our concept across to our sales team is that we had a bit of dress ups. We've added some fun into the processes in terms of some naming that we've put against different areas is of how we look at each of our processes and KPIs. 

So making it something that everyone can get behind and align to. The other key thing is just think about how does it embed into your processes. So in our journey, a lot of what we were doing didn't necessarily need to be adding too much new in processes, but it was refining what we could do. We had one of the big bits of feedback we had as we went through the journey was how do we make this easier is not something that we're having to add all this extra reporting each day. So one of our team members took on the challenge to create a digital report to help us in our focus and thinking that maybe it might take a month or two months to get this report. Literally within two days, this team member who doesn't normally work in IT, came up with this report to really be able to help us. So taking that collaborative approach, looking at digitisation and definitely having fun along the way would be some key tips of how to bring it to life

Angeline Achariya:

Fabulous tips. I really love that fun along the way and I'm sure being the house of chocolate and candy and snacks makes them even more fun, right? And that was keen kind of just to explore, I guess, you know, having that really strong vision that you had. I am, you know, one firstly, congratulations on the upcoming launch of the National Distribution Facility that's coming up in Truganina. I'm curious as to how you've gone through the shared vision, how did you work through the design of the facility? What were some of the really important things to help you enhance that customer responsiveness that you've shared around earlier in the few questions as well?

Anna Reid:

Yeah, so firstly, the new facility is a pretty impressive building. We're just starting to do testing in the facility and I'm looking forward to it ramping up over the months ahead. It's a pretty big site. It's about 47 ,000 square metres in total. A purpose -built temperature -controlled building that we're building. And total investment will be about $112 million over 10 years going into that building. And really impressively that

Every Cadbury Dairy Milk Block, Pascoe Lolly, Natural Confectionary Company product or biscuits around Obie Finest, Olenus will be moving through that new National DC. I came across some pretty cool facts recently after 450 million Easter eggs per year will go through that site as well. That's a lot of Easter eggs. But key part of for Mondelez moving to a National DC approach has been about minimising touches. 

So we had a number of warehouses and using that stat about Easter eggs is obviously Easter is very seasonal. So warehousing requirements are quite seasonal as well. So we would have a lot of historically offsite warehouses that we flex up and down over the seasonal period. But with that customer lens and focus, every time you touch and move something offsite to bring it back in, there's a chance for something to go wrong or creates extra complexity into it for us to be responsive to our customers as well. 

So we work through what is the best way for us to be able to deliver to our customers and that was this investment in a national DC. We're investing significantly in digitisation for the site. So we've got putting in a automated storage and retrieval system. So best way to think about that is a 36 metre high building which has up to about 13 pallets high in the building and a big crane system automatically putting the pallets in and out. So that section of the warehouse will hold about 56 ,000 pallets. And in total, the warehouse will hold up to about 85 ,000 pallets for the first phase of the building and site. But mentioned obviously about the touching of pallets, et cetera. So by having everything in that one site actually will help us to decrease truck movements. So by 210 ,000, if I remember correctly.

Truck movements per year, we're expecting to decrease as we go into this new national facility. But yeah, through having that less complexity focus on digitization, we see that as a key part of being able to streamline our processes in that customer focus and customer centricity model. We're also focusing quite a bit in sustainability out of that site as well, towards our goals within Wunderlese of net carbon zero. So we have 1 megawatt of solar panels going on the roof, 100 % LED lighting being used in it, recycled rainwater, and we're also working towards a five -star green rating, five green, green star rating for the site as well through the Green Building Council of Australia as well.

Angeline Achariya:

Wow, there's a lot in there and I'm sure your customers are probably delighted in hearing this investment. What's been the initial feedback that you've received from your customers?

Anna Reid:

We've been having lots of regular catch -ups and discussions with our customers on the new facility. I think really important in that customer centricity view is having a key transition phase where we're working in collaboration with our customers. So making sure as we go from our current facilities, multiple facilities into this one facility that we're minimising any disruption.

Lots of customer discussions that we've had to date. They're very excited about this investment that we're making. They're also incredibly excited to get out there for a tour and visit around the facility as well. We've shared lots of photos and progress updates and certainly see it as a key investment that we're making that in total will be helping across both for us but also for the end consumers of our products as well.

Amie:

Yeah, it does sound really cool. I want to come visit too.

Anna Reid:

Thank you. Walls of chocolate and lollies. It's pretty cool. Hahaha!

Amie Larter:

Okay, so the new distribution, the national distribution facility is no doubt a significant step towards efficiency and sustainability. But these benefits may not be readily apparent to consumers and something that I'm interested to explore with you Anna. With consumers increasingly gravitating towards brands that demonstrate sustainable practices, what other initiatives is Mondelez undertaking to make its sustainability commitment more visible?

Anna Reid:

Yeah, great question there. Firstly, I heard recently, actually in a podcast I was listening to over the last couple of weeks was just about the impact that food and beverage makes from a global greenhouse perspective. So I think overall industry makes about 60 % of the greenhouse gases globally from industry and of that about 25 -26 % if you look across the total supply chain for food and beverage, including land use, of cropping of product, of cropping and growing things to manufacturing, supply chain and retail. 

So certainly within food and beverage and retail, we've got a big role to play around sustainability. So specifically within Mondelez, I'm really proud of the great work that we're doing in sustainability in Mondelez and we continue to communicate out what we're doing within our journey as well. So part of our focus on sustainability links into our purpose around empowering people to snack right.

So Snacking Right is not just obviously about providing the fuel that you need each day and what you're eating, but it's also about mindful portions, what we're doing from a packaging perspective and around our sustainability journeys as well. So that links into areas, in particular areas around our cocoa. So obviously cocoa is the heart of our business and those walls of chocolate that I mentioned, that we source 100 % sustainable cocoa for our chocolate.

That we make here in Australia, both in Melbourne and Tasmania. And we're investing in our signature program called Cocoa Life, which partners with farmers to support around sustainability. We're doing some awesome work in packaging. We have recently launched that we're using 50 % recycled packaging across our Cadbury blocks, bars and pieces ranges. So we're sourcing over a thousand tonnes of post -consumer recycled plastic through our partners of Amcor. And we're also working over time to how to bring that

Anna Reid:

sourcing that plastic into Australia as well. So we've invested with Amcor on a really exciting initiative with a company called Lycela. Lycela are focusing around being a first in the Australian market about taking soft plastics and using an advanced recycling process that they've created to be able to then turn that into plastics that we can then use as 100 % recycled plastics into our products.

We're also doing some pretty cool things around other stuff in packaging. So recently our Easter eggs, which for those that I guess maybe do the Easter egg hunt. Obviously it's a bit of an annual ritual, certainly within my family, our families and friends' households. Typically over time we've had those in a plastic crate format. In that sustainability journey, really proud that we recently moved that from rigid plastic into corrugate. So through that we've saved about 132 ,000 kilos of plastic, which is pretty impressive in that journey. So lots definitely happening in sustainability and lots of other things as well. They're just probably a couple off the top of the head.

Angeline Achariya:

And one of the things that I was fascinated hearing you talk about is you recently purchased a family farm and you were sharing with me many examples, you know, just hearing you kind of talk about sustainability at Mondelez and then many examples of how you're actually being sustainable in your farm using regenerative agriculture, which is, you know, a huge movement that we see sort of really happening and getting a lot of, I guess, voice around the world on this.

I was curious in terms of how has this hands -on experience, what you're doing on the weekends or in the evenings on the farm, how does that translate and help you in your efforts to promote sustainable practices in your role at Mondelez?

Anna Reid:

Thanks Angeline. I've definitely had a passion for food from an early age. I grew up originally on a farm until I was about 10 years old. Myself and my husband during COVID, we actually spent quite a bit of time talking about how we'd love to buy a farm one day. And it was also learning a lot about regenerative farming and growing veggies at home using regenerative practices. And was certainly something that we talked about, but actually over the last year we've been able to bring that into reality.

So just over a year ago we purchased a 100 acre farm near Millawa in the base of the Victorian High Country and a beautiful part of Victoria. We're running 35 cattle there. We've got some beehives and over time looking to expand that further. It's a great passion that we've both put in but it's also been a really great learning journey that we've been going on.

Part of it, a big focus on soil and soil health. So I just recently learnt a really fun fact that there's actually a natural antidepressant I didn't know it in soil. It's called micro bacterium vaccae. And I think that's probably maybe one of the things as well where I love getting my hands dirty and being out there in soil. But in that learning journey of owning a farm and myself and my husband taking on regenerative practices I've gone and learnt things like driving a tractor, learning about composting and mulching. There's been a lot of tests to learn and sometimes fails in that, but also some good successes as well. So that focus on testing and learning and sustainability and regenerative agriculture has been something that I think also applies back into what we do sustainably within Mondelez as well. So it's that test and learn focus.

Getting out there and sustainability is something that you're going to maybe make a good step change to start with, but then also what are the further learnings and journeys you take on that. I mentioned before about the work we've done in removing plastic out of our Easter egg or hunting Easter eggs and that was a learning journey that we've had within Mondelez. So when we put out the new packaging format in boxes, it was a big change for people that, that had that ritual of the plastic crate and looking for that in supermarkets. 

But when we moved it to a cardboard box, it certainly wasn't as easy for consumers to find that. So we've made some changes to that packaging format going into Easter for next year. And certainly as part of that test and learn, which, yeah, also been testing and learning myself around that regenerative agriculture and, yeah, very excited by having weekends at the farm and doing my bit around supporting regeneration of our soil and land health.

Angeline Achariya:

Wow. Can I call you then farmer Anna in a really great way, right? But I love how you've, you know, even just that stat you shared about soil and, you know, similarly, you know, soil has so much great stuff. I think sometimes we probably don't look after it enough, right? But that's great. I'm going to probably go around and play with my soil garden this week as well as a result.

I love that interconnectivity that you found between just what you're doing on the farm and that test and learn back in your role as well and just connecting that agriculture and food and I think that is such a big thing that we probably could do a lot more of in our country and our industry as well.

Amie Larter:

Yeah, and I think what I love about that is it's kind of leading by example. And I know, Anna, that you apply that to your leadership style as well. Given the breadth of your role across both supply and demand areas, keen to understand as a leader, how are you developing your teams?

Anna Reid:

From a team development perspective, I have quite a wide breadth of team that I'm very privileged to be involved in and leading. My teams range from the orders to cash team, which are responsible for accounts receivable, to demand planning, supply planning, project management for implementation of our new products and innovation, through to working closely with our customers for our customer logistics team, warehousing and logistics team through to the team overseeing the development and engineering of our new site at Warehouse Centre mentioned as well. So quite a broad depth of team working across many different areas. But the thing that really excites me is the great strengths across the team. So they've come from many different backgrounds, different experiences. And part of my role in leadership style is looking at how to maximise those strengths that everyone in the team has.

I think one of the great things that we have in Mondelez is having both demand and supply together within the one function at Mondelez. So often demand planning, as an example, might sit within sales or commercial team and supply planning will sit within the typical supply chain area. So the fact that we have them both together allows us to work really collaboratively both within the supply chain but also with our sales and commercial team, but how we can respond quickly together as a team. 

So that's an area we've been looking at is how do we continue to improve our day -to -day processes to be really responsive and agile, but also looking at how do we develop our long -term processes and systems and thinking in that way. So we're doing some great work around Lean and Six Sigma, just starting the journey on that. And then also mentioned earlier about, and I think Angeline, you touched on it about the fund that we have at at Mondelez as well. So we've just recently kicked off a customer service and logistics culture club where we're organising events, regular events, both across across states and within states, looking at how we have a bit of fun and bring that to what we do each day. And we're also working on capability building as well. So starting a journey around digital capability focus and how do we have skills amongst everyone to be able to support that digital journey.

Angeline Achariya:

I know you've been in manufacturing and we talked about the many great brands that you've worked in and I know you and I have served on a number of state government advisory roles as well and you know one of the big things I know that we have always often talked about whenever we catch up for coffee is you're bringing you know we need to bring more diversity and gender diversity in the manufacturing space where usually you might find you're the only woman or you know one of a handful and I know many organisations and individuals are working through this. At the G100 Mission Million that I chair here in Australia, one of our big focuses is to really empower more females across the whole food system. And, you know, I'm really passionate about this and I know you are as well. I was just curious in all of your experience and your time in the industry so far, how have you seen this evolve?

Anna Reid:

I think that the term you use there, evolve, is really, really applicable. It definitely has evolved over time. I think through probably my first experience I had as a leader, I was a young female leader. All of my direct reports were male. A lot of my peers and mentors, et cetera, were all male as well. We're through to today, really proud to be able to say that my customer service and logistics team that I work with, which often logistics where housing can be a bit of a male dominated industry that we're 59 % female within my team. And thank you.

Angeline Achariya:

Well done on that, that's never just an effort like that, right? So well done on getting that number.

Anna Reid (38:05.409)

A great focus that we've got within Mondelez. And even really cool in that is that the 58 % of our leadership roles are filled by females within the team as well, which is again, another something stat to be really, really proud of. So I think in that journey from, I guess, when I started my career of being very male dominated to now being able to work in a business that is doing some great work in diversity and supporting diversity. 

Some of the key things that I think have evolved over that time, firstly, the focus around mentoring and sponsorship. So I think the words of mentoring was probably not something too much that was mentioned when I was early in my career. And I sort of naturally found mentors throughout my career, but was less formal. Where today I think there's a lot of great programs that exist around mentoring. And I think also the work that G100 are doing around advocacy work, having female champions and female sponsors in food and abroad is amazing and fantastic. 

And I think also the difference between mentoring and sponsorship is also really important. So for me, a mentor is someone who's you can lean on who's walked in the same shoes as you beforehand. You can learn from their experiences and learn from what they've done. But also really importantly is the concept around a sponsor. And a sponsor's different to a mentor. It's someone who's got power in their role and their position. And they will use that to support you and your career journey. And I've been very fortunate to have some really great sponsors throughout my career. And I think that's something that continues to strengthen and to build, I think, as we get over time.

Angeline Achariya:

And of course, Anna, I'm going to have to ask you what more needs to be done in this space of diversity and gender diversity manufacturing?

Anna Reid:

Yeah, a really good question again. For me, it's probably a topical area around the concept of merit. So I think we need to think about merit of importantly when we are hiring and developing people that they have the skills and experience to be able to take on a role. But also important that we don't simplify it too much that we just look at merit. So we need to think about the diversity of experiences that people come in and potentially being eligible for a role and knowing that those experiences will be different across everyone. So a female leader who maybe made the decision to have a family and take time off, they're not going to have exactly the same experiences potentially to a male counterpart who hasn't made those decisions from a personal perspective. 

So important to think about both merit, but also to think about equality and what are the different opportunities people have had to get to where they are now as well. So as we continue to look at creating more opportunities in the future is not being biased by only what sits in front of you I guess as a first glance.

Angeline Achariya:

That's really sage advice. 

Amie Larter:

All right guys, I've got one more question. And as we look towards the future, I feel like consumer expectations, well, they're constantly evolving. I'm keen to understand what exciting trends or innovations do you see shaping the food industry in the coming years, particularly in terms of how they're going to enhance the customer experience?

Anna Reid:

Firstly, digital, digital and more digital. I think definitely adopting a digital focus is going to be key from a competitive advantage perspective. Using it away from a collaboration perspective of collaborating with key partners, be that suppliers to retailers, consumers. And how do you use that data? Exceptionally important. In Mondelez, we're investing significantly in our digital systems.

We're in the process of globally rolling out a brand new planning system that will implement a lot of AI functionality as part of that. Also, from a trend perspective in snacking, our five -year snacking study that we've done shows that portion size, beneficial ingredients and nutritional value are things that are top of mind for Australian snackers compared to five years ago. So people are mindfully consuming both in terms of what their shopping experiences are and thinking about what new experiences do they want to take and drive. So they're more savvy about what they're choosing. They're thinking about portion control in their indulgences, but also importantly about sustainability, as we've touched on earlier as well.

Amie Larter:

Excellent. Well, thank you Anna for joining us. It's the very first episode. It's very exciting. Thank you, Angeline. And if you have enjoyed this episode, feel free to subscribe wherever you are listening to your favourite podcasts.