
Executive Roundtable
Dairy Field talks business with Yoplait’s top managers.
Dairy Field: Discuss your most recent products and how
they were developed.
Bob Waldron, president: We’ve had a lot of
new products go on the market recently. … We try to keep our core
products growing and add new products that will sustain the category.
We’ve got so many new products coming out the door from our teams now
— Chocolate Whips, Healthy Heart and some beverage lines, our Yoplait
Smoothies and Go-Gurt Smoothies.
Lisa Schroeder, VP of R&D: We know consumers
come to us for taste, health and convenience. So we’re looking at
ways to continue to build on the health story and the credentials of
yogurt. We took a look at some of the needs of the American public, and
Healthy Heart was a good idea for us. Plant sterols were a good way to
deliver that in a great-tasting product.
DF: How did you finally manage to conquer chocolate?
Schroeder: It speaks a lot to how we operate in
Yoplait. We are about the team and we work together. We were trying to find
ways to crack that code, because marketing and consumer insights always
said this would be a great thing to do. So we came together, had some new
insights and were successful, and we’re really excited about it.
It’s in its early days, but it’s off to a great start.
Waldron: Chocolate is a healthy product in and of
itself, too. What are people eating otherwise? They might be eating
less-healthy snacks to satisfy a craving, and now we’ve combined that
with yogurt, which is generally accepted as very healthy. We take an extra
health angle, we take a taste improvement to a historically
“sin” food — it’s all good.
DF: Given the technical obstacles, do you think
chocolate yogurt is something that won’t be knocked off by private
label?
Waldron: We tend not to think that way. There are
a lot of smart competitors out there that may figure this out over time.
But to be first with something that consumers really want, that’s
what we try to do. Private label plays an important role in the category,
as do good competitors. If we’re all innovating, that will raise all
ships. I am hoping the breakthrough we’ve made with this new recipe
will be something we’ll be able to leverage to continue the growth
with consumers and our retailers.
DF: Data presented at the recent Healthy Foods
Conference shows yogurt is among the top growth categories in healthy
foods, yet probiotics is dragging the ground in public awareness. What can
be done to help consumers make the connection?
Waldron: Americans know bacteria by antibiotics.
They don’t know it through the power of foods. Looking to the future,
yogurt will be in even better shape because there will be more
understanding of it. We’ve got to make sure we — as a
manufacturer and as an industry — lead the category that way for
greater growth and don’t take it for granted. … Our message has
been fundamentally about taste and health. And more recently, it’s
about health and convenience, and by the way, it tastes great, too.
That’s why [Nouriche] took off and was one of the best new products
in the last three years in the industry, given the fact it was a trifecta.
We stay on the messages of taste and health.
DF: How do things look from the sales side?
Adam Dill, director of category management: What
we love the most is the penetration rate only being 72 percent.
There’s so much opportunity, and as a salesperson you love selling
against that. You love that potential to be able to go and not even know
where the top of this is, and to be able to push and keep pushing.
DF: What’s the attitude toward innovation within
the large corporate structure of General Mills?
Kevin Schoen, VP of manufacturing: It’s one
of the most innovative cultures that you’ll find in the dairy
industry. They [General Mills] are very willing to try new things. Some of
them might be seen as taking on a bit more risk. But we try new things and
some of them work and some of them don’t, and they’re OK with
that. It’s a very safe place to come in and innovate.
Camille Gibson, VP of marketing: I think the
other big thing is our collaborative team approach. We leverage the
marketing people, sales, and research and development, and we focus on what
the consumers want, really try to understand what that is.
Waldron: What’s fairly unique, probably
with most other dairies or even companies within General Mills, is our tie
to an international framework, an affiliate structure, of Yoplait
franchises. There’s a great sharing of information. It’s kind
of an external perspective is constantly on — what’s happening
in Canada, Mexico, France, the U.K. — so we get to understand
what’s happening in yogurt around the world, not that it’s
always applicable to the U.S., but you’re constantly getting an
understanding of different things that are being tried.
DF: So, what does the future hold for Yoplait?
Waldron: A continued focus on growing the core items.
Core items for the retailer make up the majority of the space. We’re
focusing on new users, but getting the U.S. population to eat more yogurt
regularly is really what we see as the primary task. And then, adding on
those significant, sustainable new innovations that are going to drive
category growth.
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