How we interact with our stakeholders

To meet our goals and advance the transformation of the food system, What’s Cooking? relies on collaborations with stakeholders ranging from customers, suppliers, farmers, researchers and opinion leaders to consumers and shareholders. Strengthening our relationships with them is part of our daily responsibility to contribute to a more sustainable future and create value for all our stakeholders in everything we do.

General Counsel & Corporate Affairs Director

Farmers

We source our meat from local suppliers close to the plant, and we adhere to the same strategy for cereals, tomatoes, and other ingredients whenever we can. Through our suppliers, and guided by our sustainability principles, we gain insights into the farmers’ operations. We can verify compliance with workers’ rights, as well as promoting sustainable farming and production, and encouraging both plastic waste reduction and the use of recyclable packaging. Over the course of our 75-year history, we have established a long-term cooperation with our suppliers. We want to encourage them to look into animal welfare and sustainability as well as regenerative practices.

Suppliers

We source our meat from suppliers near our factory wherever possible and we pursue that same local sourcing strategy as much as possible for our grains, tomatoes and other ingredients. Recognising that our suppliers have a major role to play in our mission of delivering responsible food products, we are committed to promoting sustainable, inclusive growth with them by fostering long-term partnerships. Transparency, as well as a mindset of continuous improvement, are key in this mutual engagement.

Team

We believe in empowering our 3,000 people to fulfil our company’s purpose. Building on our values, we strive to create a culture where performance and sustainability go hand in hand, and where the best of our local and global presence come together seamlessly. To do so, we valorise our talents and their passions, ensuring that they are at the core of the progress we want to make every day.

Social dialogue with works councils is important for us. Together, we aim to establish an innovative approach to skills development, preparing our employees for today’s jobs and tomorrow’s.

Researchers

Research on strategic topics such as food safety, healthy food, sustainable packaging, and alternative proteins plays a central role in our growth strategy. Aided by science, we seek to improve our understanding of health and nutrition issues and to deploy this knowledge to further optimise our food products and purpose-driven product strategies.

Retailers

We are stepping up collaboration with our retailers and growing our distribution channels to reach more consumers and help them make healthy and sustainable food choices. We make products specifically for our retailers, and activate their brands and our own in-store and across multiple platforms, catering to local tastes, lifestyles and shopping preferences.

Shareholders

As an innovative food group, we are all for sustainable shared value creation, while caring for both people and planet. We are confident that, thanks to our commitment all our stakeholders as well as to the strong Strategy 2030 that we have come up with, we will again create more value for every shareholder, day after day.

Consumers

We listen and respond to the fast-changing expectations of consumers worldwide and minimize our environmental footprint in production. Thus, we cater to their preferences

General Counsel & Corporate Affairs Director

for tasty responsible food products that are convenient to eat.

Entrepreneurs

We are entrepreneurs ourselves. We partner with food-tech start-ups that share our vision of a sustainable future for food. We invest in promising companies that bring unique products and disruptive models to the market, accelerating their growth by giving them access to our expertise and resources.

Communities

Inspired by NGOs and civil society organizations, we infuse our mission with their key insights and best practices for building a better world. Besides donating to good causes and reducing our energy consumption, food waste and carbon footprint, we will increase our contribution to the development of communities, people and the environment.

Ann De Jaeger General Counsel & Corporate Affairs Director