IFT First 2024: Kraft Heinz Ingredients showcases crunchy marshmallow indulgence
01 Aug 2024 | Kraft Heinz Ingredients
Kraft Heinz Ingredients has increased its production capacity of Marbits, its colorful dehydrated marshmallows that add an indulgent twist to applications like cereals and snack bars. Maureen Oskielunas, vice president of Kraft Heinz Ingredients, also explains how the company is honing manufacturing excellence to cut costs for customers while making interaction easier through a new online portal.
This is Missy.
Let's put ingredients first at IFT 2024.
I'm here with Maureen Oscar Luis, who's the head of Kraft's ingredients.
Welcome Maureen.
Thank you, Missy.
Glad to be here.
So what is Kraft's ingredients focusing on here today?
Sure, we're really excited to be at IFT this year showcasing all of our brands, as you can see behind me, but the biggest focus that we have this year is our Marbits.
So Marbits are dehydrated marshmallow bits, and you can put them in all different kinds of.
Applications we have different colors, shapes, sizes, and flavors.
You can put them in cereals, hot cocoa, chocolate desserts.
You can put them into cookie bars, trail mix.
The possibilities are endless.
We're really excited to be able to showcase that this year and the increased capability and capacity that we have.
This year we installed a new line in our Kendallville facility which is in Indiana, and it allows us to increase our capacity on Marbits and also try different flavors and different shapes that we haven't done before.
What flavors and shapes.
What kind of flavors are you exploring?
Oh, we've explored fun things like coconut and salted caramel.
We just launched a new peppermint marbot this year that's absolutely fabulous.
What do you think is driving this?
I think people really want easy ways to get sweet indulgence, and what is sweeter and easier to enjoy than a crunchy little marbit?
Makes sense.
So what else is going on in ingredients?
Yeah, one of the other areas that we're focusing on with innovation is how do we solve a customer's problem in manufacturing.
Innovation happens all over the place, but I think one of the areas that people forget is that there's a sense of operational efficiency.
So how do we help customers and manufacturers save pennies by finding new ways to be operationally efficient, whether that means opening less boxes or combining multiple flavors of cheeses into one master cheese?
How do we help people melt processed cheese faster or find a new way to improve using a cream cheese in a cheesecake?
Finding that sweet spot between innovation and flavor and operational mastery.
It is, yes.
So we started this focus on operational excellence with our innovation pipeline last year and we're continuing to proceed and how do we partner with customers to find ways to save them money in every possible channel.
Is this a result of the cost of living.
Absolutely.
Everything has gotten more expensive these days, so if we can save a penny here or a penny there, everything counts towards the bottom line.
I saw that you also have a personalized ketchup bottle station here.
Oh yes, so it's very popular, very popular.
So, so what was the inspiration behind that?
I think for us it's about reminding people that premium products deserve premium brands, and what is more premium than Heinz ketchup?
Everybody loves it.
It's TSA compliant because it's only 2.2 ounces, and you can get your own name on it, bring home a little piece of the show, a fun little something you can enjoy on your desk, or you can put it in your fridge and enjoy it with some fries.
So you are the vice president of Craft Kinds Ingredients.
Yes.
Could you tell us a little bit more about where Craft Times Ingredients is headed over the next coming years?
Sure, of course, we're always thinking about two.
One, which is how do we put our customer first?
How do we ensure that we're winning with our customers who are our manufacturing partners?
How do we help them solve problems?
And the second piece that we're always thinking about is how do we ensure that we're maximizing our brand reach.
I think one of the things that people don't realize is that at Kraft Heinz ingredients we carry the power of the Kraft Heinz brands.
So whether you're making cheesecake or queso, you're making pulled pork, or you're making something with marshmallow bits, you do have that ability to think about how our brands can help your brand be brought to life.
So when we think about customers and we think about our brands and the partnership and the power that those two can bring together, that's really where we're thinking about how we accelerate our go to market strategy, how we accelerate our partnerships, and what we think about for the next 5 years.
One of the things I'm really excited about that we've launched this year is the way that customers can interact.
With us we've launched what we call Cosmos, which is our online customer ordering portal.
It's where they can go to experience everything Kraft Heinz ingredients from entering orders to pulling down specs to asking for samples, and it's an all-encompassing space for customers to partner with us.
We've launched it earlier this year and we'll be finalizing it at the end of the show.
And last year you also presented a plant-based Philadelphia cream cheese.
We did.
How is that faring in the market?
Unfortunately, we didn't get as much traction on that product as we anticipated, and so it has sort of taken a back seat to where we're thinking about innovation in cream cheese.
Concepts that you're looking to explore that just kind of like an experiment that you'll think about it later.
Most of our innovation is driven by customer needs, so we haven't had too many people ask for that, but someone did earlier at the show today tell me I should put plant-based protein in marshmallow bits, so maybe we'll try that.
