Innovating every day for consumers and our customers

Balanced and tasty food keeps us all going. That is what makes working in the food sector so fantastic. Every day, we prepare delicious and nutritious products with plenty of variety for everyone. We serve a huge number of consumers, of all ages and backgrounds, whose wishes and needs change from day to day as the world is evolving at record speed.

At What’s Cooking? we know it’s vital to keep our finger on the pulse. We monitor trends daily, together with our internal and external stakeholders. We take a close look at the market and listen carefully to our consumers. What interests them? What do they want and need? It goes without saying that we constantly reflect on our own operations as well.

Relevance

As a large producer, we take our responsibility. We want to become more sustainable every day in everything we do. Our New Business Development department takes a proactive look at what’s happening in the market, how eating habits change and, above all, how we can become and remain relevant to consumers through innovation.

Strategic innovation

Our innovation strategy is twofold. We continuously work on new products, while welcoming innovations from outside our company as well.

New products

Our R&D and NPD experts create new products in multidisciplinary teams, because these types of projects naturally transcend our product categories. It gives me great pleasure to see with how much passion and enthusiasm they all try to make a difference – and how they succeed in doing so together, time and time again.

The themes that concern R&D and NPD most today also concern society. Think of the shift to alternative proteins, the sustainability of our raw materials, the fight against food waste, ...

Innovations from the outside

But we also look beyond our own organisation. Perhaps our greatest source of inspiration in that regard are startups and scale-ups – young companies that have the power to respond rapidly to new trends and to enter the market in a very agile manner. They often succeed in what is also our aim: to be relevant to as many consumers as possible.

In 2022, we announced our first investment in startup Davai, which we want to help grow faster at home and abroad.

Finally, we have joined forces with Maybritt and Ruslan, two young and passionate entrepreneurs who enrich our plant-based offering with their dumplings. By growing with them, we make conscious food shopping easier for today’s consumer, and we hope to become even more sustainable in everything we do.

Every day is a new opportunity to learn.

Greet Van Laecke New Business Development Director

What’s Cooking? Annual report 2022