For ten months now, the Spanish subsidiary of Nestlé, based in Esplugues de Llobregat, once again has a Barcelona executive at its helm. This is Jordi Llach, who took office on July 1, 2022, replacing Jacques Reber, who was the fourth foreign executive to lead the company since veteran Josep Arcas left the position in 2006 after a 40-year career at the Swiss food giant.
Llach, who until now had maintained a low profile, gave his first conference this Wednesday in the Catalan capital, invited by the business school Esade, where he shared a working breakfast with executives, professors, and students to whom he spoke about tornadoes. About tornadoes? Yes, Llach is not a meteorologist, but he uses this simile to motivate his team in a context marked by uncertainty and volatility. "Tornadoes are the continuous novelties that organizations have to face. To dodge them, we need agility, not to carry much weight, and to be very flexible," explained Llach, referring to the continuous setbacks that impact the business world, such as the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or rising inflation.
"Tornadoes will always be there, we don't know what the next one will be, and that's something I don't really care about; today it's difficult to foresee anything because the picture moves very fast. What we need is to be prepared and have a company that is focused ---you can't shoot at everything--- and committed to simplicity ---having clear priorities--- and flexibility," argued the executive.
For Llach, in moments like the present, people become more important than ever in companies. "We need resilient teams, capable of maintaining ambition, no matter what happens. What makes the difference is that capacity to adapt to continuous changes, which requires that, as a company, we have a strong purpose," he stated in Matins Esade. And what is that purpose? "The purpose is what keeps your spirits up, it's the reason you get up every day. In our case, Nestlé's purpose is to contribute to making a better planet, which involves not only the sustainability policies we promote but also ensuring better nutrition for people," he pointed out.
"We need resilient teams, capable of maintaining ambition, no matter what happens. What makes the difference is that capacity to adapt to continuous changes"According to the executive, knowing how to motivate and offer a purpose that generates excitement is basic to avoid the risk of having "tired teams" or teams not aligned with the corporation's objectives. That ability to generateengagementin the staff with a project of "sustainable and motivating growth" is one of his main concerns, especially at a time when "the war for talent is spectacular." "Let's see who tells something to the young people who work in the hubdigital that we have in Esplugues and who come to work in flip-flops and shorts... We have to adapt, because if not, they leave! The important thing is to offer them flexibility and I believe we are doing it quite successfully," argues the general director of Nestlé Spain.
Llach also asks to learn, for example, from startups, because their "obsession is to continuously improve to satisfy the consumer." "We need to focus on the consumer and our clients because, in a year like the current one, it is essential to grow, since inflation impacts all costs," he warned. Thus, in addition to "moving prices," to face this situation, Nestlé has focused on omnichannel, that is, on going to look for the client wherever necessary, and on maximizing efficiency to avoid transferring all the increase in costs to final sales prices.
In this sense, he explained that raising prices has been inevitable: "we had no other choice, because with such strong levels of inflation, margins completely disappeared." "Those who have not raised prices with the intention of gaining market share have had to backtrack," he stressed, after pointing out an anecdote that reflects the abnormality of the situation: "we have had to explain to the youngest people in the teams how prices were raised, because until now they had never had to raise prices!"
The executive confirmed another reality. "We thought that out-of-home consumption would fall, that's what everyone told us, but we have seen quite the opposite, people don't hold back, they go out, it's a consumption that continues to grow and we have seen records this Easter," he explained. On the contrary, household consumption is indeed decreasing, especially spending on fish and some higher-priced meats. "Now we see how there are people who go to the supermarket with a 50-euro bill and buy what that amount gives them, they don't spend more," he points out, a practice that has always been very common, for example, when going to refuel gasoline.
"We must prevent customers from switching to white labels, because it can be a definitive loss," he warned, after noting that it is "hammer time" or time to push to the maximum in the jargon of Formula 1 teams. "In times of tornadoes and situations of maximum volatility, I tell the team that it's hummer time, that is, time to put all efforts into the focus and priorities we have defined for the company. Doing so clearly helps motivation and results," he emphasized.
The architect of the Garden Gourmet brand launch
Born in Barcelona 59 years ago, Jordi Llach has followed a textbook career plan within the Swiss multinational. He joined the group in 1989, holding various responsibilities in the marketing and sales departments of the culinary area. Then, he lived several years in Switzerland and Italy, until he returned to Barcelona in 2013 to lead that entire business area. Two years later, he was promoted and was entrusted, for the first time, with responsibility for an entire country, as he was appointed country manager of Nestlé in Portugal. In 2018, he assumed European responsibilities, moving to Nestlé's world headquarters in Vevey (Switzerland), from where he directed the culinary business for all European subsidiaries. One of his main missions at this stage was the launch and development of the plant-based product brand Garden Gourmet, already present in all supermarket chains.
At Matins Esade, Llach acknowledged that the plant based product category is currently in decline as a result of companies that "have damaged the sector" by developing a type of products that had "scary labels," earning a reputation as ultra-processed foods. "There are customers who have abandoned the category, but I am convinced that plant-based alternatives will rise again, they are an unstoppable trend. We will all end up being flexitarians," he predicted. "What we manufacturers have to do ---he concluded--- is increase the variety of the offer, better communicate the benefits of plant protein foods, and constantly improve the product." Llach closely follows the evolution of the Barcelona-based company Heura, a competitor of Garden Gourmet: "They are doing very well; anything that contributes to increasing demand is positive."