"Change - A new way of talking business" IÉSEG Magazine - Issue #3

03 JUNE 2020

A NEW WAY OF TALKING BUSINESS

BUSINESS AND RESEARCH

Packaging: are we on a way to zero waste? /P.14

GOOD NEWS

With Act for food, Carrefour’s actions speak louder than words /P.16

NICE TO MEET YOU

Robin Blondel, general manager new markets and global head of product and supply chain EXKi /P.18

A BETTER SOCIETY

Feeding ourselves in the future

/P.04

LOOK .

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...

THANK YOU TO: • Julie Bayle-Cordier • Lucie Basch • Cyrine Ben-Hafaïedh • Robin Blondel • Constance Bordes • Maxence Boulant • Florence Hennebel • Nico Heuvinck • Sonia Levillain-Desmarchelier • Pierre Maggioni • Amir Nahai • Hugues Pelletier • Loïc Plé • Maxime Pouvreau

A BETTER SOCIETY

Accor makes a commitment to healthy and sustainable food

BUSINESS AND RESEARCH

Feeding the soul: the virtues of meditation /P.12

NUMBER 03 A new way of talking business

IÉSEG 3 rue de la Digue - 59000 Lille 1 parvis de La Défense - 92044 Paris www.ieseg.fr June 2020 Publishing director: Jean-Philippe Ammeux Editor in chief: Sophie Guérin Editorial team: Alexandra Briot, Antoine Decouvelaere, Anne-Marie Deprimoz, Laetitia Dugrain-Noël, Manon Duhem, Andrew Miller, Victoire Salmon Design & production: Caillé associés Editing=: Caillé associés Photography: Barbara Grossmann, IÉSEG, Pixabay, Shutterstock, Istockphoto

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/P.09

BUSINESS AND RESEARCH

Petit Pot goes big

/P.14

GOOD NEWS

War on waste

/P.16

BETWEEN US .

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“Our students have never been more aware of ethical and environmental concerns...”

The history of food is in many ways a history of fear - a fear of not having enough, a fear of food poisoning, or a fear of the unknown, such as when corn or potatoes arrived from the New World. It could even be a fear of junk food… With all due respect to Malthus, that first fear - of food shortages has now greatly diminished. Across the world, major famines are becoming rarer and the question of our collective ability to feed humanity no longer arises either in terms of production volume or food distribution.

So it is the issue of quality rather than quantity which will be at the heart of the economic challenges of the future. What will we eat? Where will the food we eat in the future be produced? Can we really succeed in the move to the organic and local products that an increasing number of consumers are calling for when their lower yields mean countries that are currently self-sufficient would have to import agricultural produce? Will meat still be on the menu in the future? Has junk food and fast food had its day, at a time when more and more French people are rediscovering the pleasures of cooking at home and healthy eating? There are so many important questions that society needs to get to grips with without being put off by the endlessly complex challenges related to food. We raise many of these questions in this issue by talking to researchers, teachers and experts.

At IÉSEG, one thing is very clear. Our students have never been more aware of ethical and environmental concerns, particularly in the food sector, such as animal suffering, preserving the ecological balance and health and nutritional issues. These factors are very important to them and they have very high expectations. Every day, they show a maturity that gives us hope that they will be the ones to tackle food transition in the future. It will be up to them - in the way they behave and in the careers they choose - to pave a way that allows them to reconcile quantity, quality and responsibility. It’s a quest for balance that is undoubtedly complex, but very exciting.

Jean-Philippe Ammeux, director of IÉSEG.

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Feeding ourselves in the future

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For decades, our relationship with food in Western societies has gone beyond the question of meeting basic needs. But while the fear of not having enough has disappeared, other problems have emerged: what does it mean to ‘eat well’? How can we eat responsibly and healthily? Naturopath and trainer Florence Hennebel, who has taught marketing and communication for many years, regularly works with companies and with students at IÉSEG. Her message: we need to simplify our relationship with food, whether materially or spiritually.

For years you have promoted the idea that we all must question our relationship with our bodies in general and with food in particular. Are things moving forward?

Our modern lifestyles are characterized by a kind of constant race where it has become imperative to set aside time for rest and reflection, and that includes looking at things we do that seem basic or obvious. In my opinion, you should never lose sight of the fact that eating is putting something into your body. This is relevant, because before it appears in front of us, food has been through a long production cycle in which we are all implicated, individually and collectively. What we choose to eat is essential in relation to our vitality, energy and health, as is the way we shop, how we select our products and how we manage waste and our trash.

In our society why is it important to be so interested in what we eat?

Isn’t that a privilege of wealthy societies?

It seems to me that the question is more complex. It’s true that engaging in this type of thinking is a problem specific to those who are well off. In Western countries, the food available is infinitely varied and everyone considers it normal to be able to eat whatever they like wherever and whenever they like. The fact remains, it’s not so long ago that there were countries whose populations experienced food shortages or poverty, even in the West: my own grandparents suffered from hunger and many people still remember post-war rationing. Even today, mechanisms such as Zero Waste, initially deployed in Roubaix in northern France and

*Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

much imitated since, have enabled disadvantaged families to rethink their relationship with food, as part of drawing up a financial plan. Eating properly and according to your appetite is not only an issue for the wealthy, it is also a concern for the less well off, including in those places where one can easily imagine that the problem no longer exists.

The consumer society has driven the roll-out of highly processed food. What do you think of these products?

This highly industrialized food is not good for us because its manufacturing processes

and ingredients have a whole series of negative effects on our bodies - it leads to the consumption of too much salt and causes high blood pressure and weight gain. In the United States, it’s normal and culturally acceptable to serve portions that are clearly too large even if you end up throwing away half of what’s on your plate. Not only is excess food and poor nutrition starting to produce more serious effects than malnutrition, but we end up in a ridiculous situation. The obesity pandemic is directly linked to the crazy spread of junk food, which is affecting all parts of the world. This is evident even among the IÉSEG students I work with.

When I ask about their favorite dishes, no

(...)

Challenges from all sides The consumer society and agri-food industry notwithstanding, eating remains a primary need which poses a series of challenges that are as varied as ever. First of all, there’s the issue of quantity: while food shortages and famines are still occurring in emerging countries, the stampede towards supermarket shelves seen during the Covid-19 epidemic showed that the fear of food running out is still profound and can even be seen in Western countries. There are also quality issues: behind every food scandal - horsemeat in lasagne or contaminated milk - hides the long-held fear of eating something dangerous. Then there is the demographic challenge: the planet’s theoretical capacity to feed humanity is estimated at 12 billion people by the FAO*, by 2050 there will be 10 billion of us… There are also financial, medical and geopolitical challenges: while hunger still affects six million children a year in poor countries, over-eating is causing an obesity pandemic: 300 million people are obese and 1.5 billion are overweight, with all the related diseases. Finally, there is the powerful question of ethics with the vegan movement refusing to have anything to do with anything that comes from animals, or the new expectations of consumers who are more and more concerned with responsible eating practices. The challenges are endless…

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(...) matter where they come from their answers are the same: pizzas, burgers, cookies etc.

What are the consequences of poor eating habits?

Rather than poor eating habits, I prefer to speak of eating habits that show no respect for either yourself or other people. The ready availability of food leads us to snack constantly, to get used to eating almost all the time, even if it’s only a cereal bar. The digestive function is one of the most energy-intensive for the body. If it’s constantly working to process what we have eaten, it can never rest or focus on other tasks. Eating meals that are necessary for our biological function, however, is essential to avoid feeling exhausted or to help us better focus on different tasks, on a personal or professional level. Making a habit of eating meals in five minutes at a corner of the table, while doing something else so you can return to work faster, is no better. It takes the body 20 minutes to feel full. Cutting corners makes no sense when preparing food to eat yourself is a thousand times more enriching for the body and the mind than buying a ready meal and putting it in the microwave.

Cooking is good for you.

while you don’t need to make dramatic changes, getting into the habit of appreciating the flavor of things and how the product feels is an important mental process. It reminds us that eating is not magic and helps us to become aware of the long chain that leads a food substance ending up in our bodies. With this kind of approach we also reconnect with those whose job is to grow and produce what we eat - and this is one of the keys to responsible behaviour, for ourselves and for others.

Florence Hennebel, teacher at IÉSEG.

“Eating meals that are necessary for our biological function is essential to help us focus better.”

You need to have time though…

Time in itself is a precious commodity ... The aim is not self-denial. On the other hand,

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PEOPLE IN THE WORLD IS UNDERNOURISHED (FAO*, 2018)

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30 %

OF THE FOOD PRODUCED ON THE PLANET IS THROWN AWAY, WASTED OR OUT OF DATE (FAO*, 2018)

The subtle art of changing eating habits We know we have to change the way we eat - to protect the planet, to support local producers, to reconnect with the flavor of real food and to look after ourselves and our health ... But there’s a catch: as usual, there is a big gap between saying we want to do something and actually changing our behavior. What can be done to help consumers? Nico Heuvinck, professor of marketing at IÉSEG, provides some answers.

There’s an increasing demand from consumers for food that’s better for them and more responsibly produced. But is there a difference between what they say they want and what they really want?

I think that most of them are expressing a sincere wish, the media is putting across these concerns more and more and governments are increasing their efforts to raise awareness. Consumers know that unhealthy eating is a major risk factor for a whole list of serious conditions: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. And that’s the paradox because over-eating continues, which in my opinion can be explained by two things. The first is the ambiguity which surrounds the subject: consumers are confused by contradictory information and 80% of them say they are confused when making choices*. The second is that they rely heavily on cues that are not necessarily related to food safety or nutritional facts. Their perception of how fresh something is or a long list of ingredients is therefore more important than objective facts. Another classic phenomenon is the idea that the more expensive a food is or the better it tastes, the healthier it is.

For a long time, organic products have been considered to be healthier, but less tasty. They are now given a prominent place in supermarkets. Is this effective in terms of sales?

We should start by remembering that organic products are not intrinsically healthier than others, even if the general public tends to makes this connection. It’s equally wrong to say that organic food has less flavor than other foods. What is correct, however, is that these products have less impact on the environment, which is ultimately beneficial to our health. For many researchers, promoting the rise of organic products involves moving from a paternalistic message (“they are good for your health”) to a less guilt-inducing narrative, focused on well-being. The question is how to convince people to buy organic. Research shows that it can help, for example, to mix organic products with their more conventional counterparts. If this doesn’t happen, displaying them in a separate section of the store can stop them ending up in customers’ baskets, because they get overlooked.

We know that price remains a determining factor. Can we convince consumers to increase the proportion of the budget they spend on food in order to eat better?

Price remains a decisive factor in healthy eating, especially since there is an instinctive tendency to associate this with paying more. This is a misconception: you can eat healthily without spending a lot more money just by buying local, seasonal vegetables and fruit for example, which are cheaper than exotic, non-seasonal equivalents. It seems to me that more and more people are ready to spend a little more to invest in their (...)

Nico Heuvinck,

professor of marketing at IÉSEG.

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Blockchain could be the key to food tracing Guaranteeing customers honest and detailed information about what they are eating - whether it’s producers, retailers or in the catering sector - the question of trust will be decisive in the coming years. It remains to be seen how customers can be shown the efforts being made at each stage of the food chain, from farmers and breeders to packers and logistics experts. The answer could well lie in blockchain, a word which for a long time has solely been associated with virtual currencies.

Guaranteeing traceability

This is what the IBM Food Trust is counting on, with a collaborative solution implemented by the American computer and software giant, explained Constance Bordes, the company’s director of strategic missions.

“Technically, IBM Food Trust is a blockchain, in other words an IT solution that allows information to be stored and transmitted in a transparent and secure way by all its users. On a ‘philosophical’ level, the idea is to create a secure, intelligent and sustainable ecosystem enriched by everyone’s contributions, at every stage of the process leading up to the distribution of finished food products. All of this allows consumers to make their choices in full knowledge of the facts - where raw materials are sourced, the date of production, composition, traceability of transactions, etc.” The IBM Food Trust takes the form of a QR code for customers which allows them to access all the information they need. For example, the Labeyrie Group recently decided to allow full traceability in relation to two of its benchmark products on the smoked salmon market. Thanks to the IBM Food Trust blockchain solution, its customers can access all the information they want about the salmon they eat. For producers and manufacturers, this shared information base makes it possible to follow the successive sales processes of their products in a precise way, but also to accumulate useful data for their production strategies or marketing. The Carrefour group recently began using the IBM Food Trust, which is available worldwide and has no real current competitor on this scale.

(...) health and improve their general well-being.

What tools can producers, restaurants, stores and supermarkets use to support this change in behavior?

This can be done at two levels. Food manufacturers can focus on the healthiness of their products by modifying their packaging or displays. There’s a lot of work to be done around nutritional labelling (scored from A to E) and the color codes used to give nutritional information about products. The codes are easy to understand and could be rolled out in cafeterias. When it comes to supermarkets, the most fascinating line of research concerns sensory marketing. Customers who have been exposed to a warm ambient odor such as cedarwood have been shown to buy lower-calorie products than if they were exposed to sharper scents, such as eucalyptus. Likewise, playing music at a low volume leads to increased sales of «healthy» food because customers unconsciously feel more relaxed. On the other hand people tend to choose less healthy food if the ambient lighting is poor. In addition, positioning healthy products on the shelf to the left of less healthy ones helps to sell more of the former. Our own research has recently focused on how the weight of the packaging influences people. Results show consumers believe that lighter foods are healthier than heavier products and are willing to pay more for them. These are all subtle interventions that supermarkets can put in place to boost responsible sales and, more generally, the well-being of consumers. *Food and Health Survey Report, 2018.

Constance Bordes,

director of strategic missions at IBM.

For more information

www.ibm.com/fr-fr/products/food-trust

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Accor makes a committed to serving healthier food?

In 2015, the Accor group formalized its commitment to healthy and sustainable food through a charter of zero tolerance for food waste. This commitment is explained by Amir Nahai, Chief Executive Officer Food & Beverage and Lifestyle brands for Accor.

Why is the Accor group committed to serving healthier food?

It’s our own initiative, but follows an increasingly pronounced trend among consumers.

We have entered a period where people are waking up to the issue and it’s now much more of an ethical and environmental issue than a commercial one. The fact remains we didn’t need to be asked twice to spring into action ahead of the rest of the hotel sector.

Accor serves more than 200 million meals every year to its customers. Your goal is to reduce food waste by 30% by the end of this year. How do you intend to do that?

It’s a complicated process which led us initially to work on collective awareness inhouse. This issue wasn’t really on people’s radars four years ago and we met a degree of resistance. Some of our staff thought the subject was less important than that of labelling or of being organic. Over a period of 6 to 12 months and through a process of explanation and education we managed to convince all our teams of the vital importance of the war on waste. The next phase was to ask the question of how we were going to do it.

What action are you taking?

Amir Nahai,

chief executive officer food & beverage and lifestyle brand for Accor.

We’ve put into place some practical measures in the kitchens to analyze the type and volume of our waste in order to stop ordering excessively large quantities of food that won’t be used and to reduce the production volume of certain dishes. One of the most striking examples is what we offer for breakfast. It was not uncommon to throw away several kilos of scrambled eggs every morning… Another thing we did was to explain to our customers the reason we were putting

less out on our buffets, based on the observation that some of them were taking too much. To stop this happening, some of the measures we implemented were educational and others more indirect, such as serving certain dishes in a glass or reducing the size of the plates. The third measure was to find a new use for produce that was being thrown away, whether in our own kitchens or by contacting charities or organizations such as Too Good To Go (see page 16).

Apart from waste, the charter implemented by the group plans to work with your suppliers. In what way?

First of all, it involves taking part in discussions with them to get them to make a definite commitment, to reduce packaging, for example, or to improve their recycling processes. If that doesn’t happen, we reserve the right to reduce our order volumes, or even to stop working with the less virtuous.

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An appetite for training As the leading supplier of independent restaurants and food outlets and a committed defender of culinary tradition and French excellence, METRO France has seen its business evolve in line with social changes. These upheavals pose the question of how to support employees whose roles are constantly changing. How do you maintain their motivation, commitment and skills? For the brand’s training director, Pierre Maggioni, it all comes down to one thing: always wanting to do the job better.

Pierre Maggioni,

director of training at METRO.

URES METRO IN FIG 4,4 billion euros turnover (2018) 9,000 staff 98 points of sale 800,000 customers 90 % of floorspace dedicated to food products 4,000 suppliers 60 % of turnover generated by fresh produce 80 % of Michelin-starred French chefs get their supplies from the brand

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Like all companies, METRO has seen its business evolve in recent years, especially with the digital revolution. The brand, which supplies catering professionals with the essentials for their profession - food and raw materials but also restaurant paraphernalia, kitchen equipment etc - has had to transform at a fast pace. “In a business that’s all about customer contact in which relationships with people are center stage, the digital shift has been all the more striking since the brand set itself the target of becoming the number one market place in the B2B market,” said Mr Maggioni. Maintaining the trust, the warmth and the proximity often established over a long time between stockroom staff and their customers, while improving commercial performance, is a real challenge.

Flexibility and volunteering

Whether it’s logistics, purchasing, sales, business expertise, marketing or customer relations, new skills are needed at every level of the company to strengthen commercial performance. In order to continue the considerable training undertaken over two years on point of sale and services, the company relies on joint enterprise and voluntary action, said Mr Maggioni: “We work for food business operators. It’s not only logical to rely on our employees’ eagerness and appetite for learning, it’s also consistent with our values.” On a more practical level, METRO has set up focus groups for discussion and dialogue where the classic hierarchies do not prevail. The aim is to bring together different points of view and experiences to determine the methods and tools necessary to better serve clients and improve collec-

tive performance. Carried out on a purely voluntary basis, the approach has been a success: 3,500 of the 9,000 employees are taking part, encouraged by the freedom they are given to test new ways of doing things, even if they need to make changes over time if necessary. Another approach has been to send volunteer employees to work with clients. This approach of “walk a mile in my shoes” is particularly useful, said Mr Maggioni: “It allows us to better understand each other’s constraints and needs, and therefore provide clients with exactly what they need.»

One final important measure has been to put e-learning modules online that can be consulted by employees if and when they want to, and at a pace that suits them. And it works: the modules were consulted 25,000 times in 2019 compared with only 200 times three years ago. So what conclusions can be drawn? “Making people want to do it is what works. The main thrust of this is that it’s not about training being an obligation, but being something you have an appetite for. It’s simple, but the desire to improve is an essential key to training.”

Tangible results

After two years, the results are clear: the efforts being made are already bearing fruit, internally and externally - a performance that can be objectively measured by the Net Promoter Score (NPS*), said Pierre Maggioni: “In retail in general, the index hovers around +14. In two years, METRO has risen to +35.» It seems to be a recipe for success... * NPS is an indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty, estimated on a scale of -100 to +100.

Seeking inspiration elsewhere Travel broadens the mind, as the old saying goes - and there’s more than a grain of truth in it. IÉSEG has launched a short-stay programme, called Learning Experiences, to develop community spirit.

The idea is to allow everyone to get out of their comfort zone and open people’s minds by looking at what is happening elsewhere, outside the School. Loïc Plé, deputy director of pedagogy and academic development, tells us more.

The Learning Experiences programme is designed to help IÉSEG teams grow.

What is its principle?

It consists of giving our colleagues the opportunity to go away in teams to a destination of their choosing, to meet a wide range of companies, institutions, NGOs, universities, schools etc It’s up to them how they structure these projects, which last for a maximum of three days (or a little longer depending on the destination, if longer travel time is). The aim is to understand the issues that these operators face, through a series of meetings and discussions, and to examine the way in which major social changes are transforming their businesses, their way of thinking, what they do and how they work, their recruitment policies and the expectations of their stakeholders and partners… It’s a pursuit of open-mindedness and diversity which starts from the principle that it’s by looking at what other people are doing that

you improve the way you work yourself.

How are the teams made up?

The whole point is to allow colleagues to get out of their usual group - we want to promote diversity within the teams. So there’s no question of having members of the same service leaving for the same destination, for example. We try to get a mix of careers and professions, with teams made up of a combination of academic and administrative staff, from different services or teaching and research departments. Each project has a leader, who submits a proposal and is responsible for coming up with, and then managing, a specific budget allocated according to the number of participants in the Learning Experience.

Do certain destinations or certain themes stand out more than others?

The curiosity shown by our colleagues

+ Loïc Plé,

80

means that the list is very varied: Canada, Singapore, South Africa, Japan and Rwanda. In contrast, some wanted to take the time to meet up with SMEs just a short distance from Lille or Paris. It’s not so much the distance that matters as the degree of originality and variety of the meet-ups and experiences, although some do stand out more than others, such as the Learning Experiences conducted in Singapore and India, for example, where our colleagues discovered the world of social entrepreneurship, or in Estonia, where the theme was the digital state.

What do people get from this type of experience?

What’s interesting, judging from the reports that each colleague writes on their return, is that everyone gets something different out of it. Many of the initiatives implemented in our departments or in our teaching are directly or indirectly inspired by something picked up as part of Learning Experiences.

In the long term, everyone benefits from these individual experiences that keep everyone engaged and curious.

LEARNING EXPERIENCES HAVE BEEN ORGANISED BY IÉSEG SINCE THE PROGRAMME WAS LAUNCHED.

deputy director of pedagogy and academic development.

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BUSINESS AND RESEARCH .

Feeding the soul: the virtues of meditation For the last four years, IÉSEG students have been able to register for a course whose title - Mindfulness & Management - might surprise you.

Meditation in a business school, really? And yet it has proved popular with students, demonstrating their growing interest in a practice that has tangible benefits. Julie Bayle-Cordier, professor of CSR at IÉSEG, tells us more.

Viewed from the outside, it might seem surprising to see a management school providing meditation lessons - it’s not a practice that’s really associated with the business world. But is this a misconception?

That’s certainly the reaction in France where people are still surprised to see the introduction of meditation to the business world, just like CSR before it - another idea that many people used to think was absurd. In a world that is traditionally very focused on performance, competition and efficiency, indulging in a practice that aims for long-term effects rather than short-term gain remains counter-intuitive. Meditating is, in part, a letting go and detaching from the idea of an objective, an approach that goes against the idea of the rational operator or manager capable of being master of his environment.

However, things are changing in France and elsewhere in the world. In the United States, a recent survey has shown that 13% of employees have been trained in some form of meditation practice, making it a sizeable market.

How do you explain this phenomenon?

For five to ten years now, there have been an increasing number of scientific studies of meditation that have highlighted the benefits of its impact on the body and the brain.

Companies are beginning to admit that meditative practices, far from detracting from performance, are on the contrary helping to maintain it, both for the individual employee

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and for the workforce as a whole. If it helps reduce staff turnover and improves the commitment of managers ... isn’t it something you should be doing?

Isn’t this exploiting meditative practices?

It certainly moves away from the original intention, but you can understand the need for managers to legitimise meditation by pointing out that science objectively validates its worth. It remains to be seen how companies evolve over the next few years to see whether this vision, initially a means to an end, leads to a change in managerial practices, ways of operating or corporate culture.

It is still too early to tell. It’s possible that companies will adopt different strategies in relation to the implementation of meditative practices, just as they already do in relation to CSR practices.

What are the most important effects of practicing meditation?

In the West, the practice really started in a hospital environment, when the American biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn created the first meditation center within the medical school of the University of Massachussetts in 1979.

The first positive effect identified was a reduction of stress and anxiety, and it also had positive effects on insomnia. Forty years later, neuroscience has shown that meditation modifies brain function, even when practiced in a much more low-key way than figures like Matthieu Ricard or Christophe André. With 30 minutes a day, the effects are

Julie Bayle-Cordier,

professor of CSR at IÉSEG. already tangible in everything related to emotional control and the ability to concentrate. You can also develop your capacity for compassion.

Be calm, take a step back, empathise ... those are the so-called ‘soft skills’.

Meditation clearly develops emotional intelligence by allowing everyone to be more in touch with their emotions, feelings and thoughts. Not only does this lead to developing empathy towards others, but more recent studies show that leaders who practice meditation are better appreciated by their teams, who consider them more ethical and better able to make the right decisions.

Is there life beyond meat?

What’s new in the artificial meat market? Since Mark Post, a Dutch researcher, presented the first synthetic “steak” in 2013 - albeit at a cost of €250,000 - many companies have launched themselves into this promising market ...

«The IÉSEG slogan is ‘Empowering changemakers for a a better society’.

This course really showed me that IÉSEG was indeed trying to involve us in changing society.»

Student on the Mindfulness & Management course, IÉSEG, Lille campus, January 2020

The lessons in mindfulness and meditation that you give at IÉSEG are in high demand. How do you explain this?

I also teach CSR and like many of my colleagues I’ve noticed that our students are increasingly attentive to issues of conscience, morals, equity and social justice. In my view, the success of meditation is explained by the fact that it’s rightly associated with a better ability to make ethical and fair decisions.

Further more, student life is stressful, both from an academic and a personal point of view. Taking part in meditation classes allows students to learn to manage their stress and also get to know each other better, ultimately leading to a better life balance.

“It’s not about to stop any time soon,” said Cyrine Ben-Hafaïedh, professor of entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy at IÉSEG: “According to the AT Kearney consultancy, by 2040, just over a third of the meat we eat will be made in vitro.” In China, Europe and the United States, there are a growing number of initiatives, investment is also increasing and new players are appearing - and some are unexpected, such as pharmaceutical laboratories like Merck. And there’s a good reason for this: what used to be something out of the pages of science fiction is very close to becoming reality.

“Once the final technological barriers have been lifted, nothing stands in the way of large-scale marketing, especially since the major industrial Cyrine players in the sector can see that artificial meat Ben-Hafaïedh, is the future,» said Dr Ben-Hafaïedh, pointing to a clear sign: legislation is beginning to evolve in professor of entrepreneurship, the United States. innovation and strategy at IÉSEG What remains unknown is whether this rather special meat will appeal to consumers. “There shouldn’t be a problem with acceptance,” she said. “In the end, many of the processed meat foods we already eat are not particularly natural and the question of taste, appearance and texture will gradually be resolved with technological progress.” This leads to a relatively counter-intuitive conclusion at a time when each gram of in-vitro meat still costs thouOF CARBON EMMISSIONS IN THE WORLD sands of euros. “Once the industry steps up a gear, synthetic steaks ARE LINKED TO MEAT FARMING. will not be premium products, but entry-level foods,” she said.

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Packaging: are we in way to zero waste?

With a turnover of €90 billion euros in France alone, business is booming for the packaging sector. There’s just one problem: at a time when environmental concerns have never been greater, it is often criticised for the impact it has on the planet. However, there are solutions, as Hugues Pelletier, founder of Petrel, explains: “The stars are aligned,” said the former director of Ooshop. “Consumers are putting pressure on brands, industrial enterprises have become environmentally aware and the state is getting involved in the shape of the law on the circular economy.” Beyond recycling, it is the old practice of throwing things out that Petrel, founded in 2018, wants to highlight: “Our role is to support distributors and manufacturers to move towards the circular management of packaging and help them change their ways. We tend to think of plastic when we talk about waste, but the whole idea of single use items needs to change.” What’s needed is an eco-responsible strategy that involves a fundamental change in the e-commerce supply chain: this is exactly what Petrel specialises in and it has just helped Carrefour integrate the ‘Loop’ solution, designed to recover reusable packaging from customers before returning it to distributors.

Petit Pot goes big Pot de Crème have been tickling American tastebuds for the last six years ever since consumers got a taste for a concept which was relatively unknown in the USA. It’s all thanks to a great idea from Maxime Pouvreau, a young entrepreneur who launched the Petit Pot brand in San Francisco in 2014. The company has taken off after being named start-up of the year in the 2015 FABA* awards...

You’ve lived in California for 11 years. How did you come up with the idea of creating Petit Pot?

When I arrived in the United States, I worked as a pastry chef in several restaurants and quickly found that the rice puddings and pot de crème I offered on the menu were very popular. I also realised that there was no equivalent in American supermarkets of the creamy desserts such as those offered by well-known brands in France such La Laitière or Danette, including at the top end of the market. I used family recipes to develop my first products.

Has the project changed along the way?

At first, I thought of offering consumers a sort of Liègeoise, with whipped cream on top. Little by little, I moved towards pot de crème like the ones we produce today. Here again, the packaging needed to be tweaked. The terracotta pots that French customers know and love don’t have the same appeal for American customers and we finally decided on glass jars, with an orange lid.

Hugues Pelletier, founder of Petrel.

To find out more: www.petrel.fr

*The French-American Business Awards (FABA) is a competition which rewards the best young Franco-American entrepreneurs in San Francisco and northern California.

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Finding meaning at work

4.2

g

MILLION EUROS: PETIT POT’S TURNOVER IN 2019

Has being French helped when it comes to winning over American consumers?

France’s reputation for gastronomy is known the world over so being able to offer the ‘French touch’ is obviously an asset. In the United States as well as in Japan and elsewhere, French products have a positive image but that alone is clearly not enough. You have to live up to that by offering high-quality, tasty products.

Developing your dessert is one thing, getting distributors to take it on is another. How did you manage this delicate process?

After perfecting my products in the restaurants where I worked, I started very modestly by approaching the stores myself. I put several crates of pots in the back of my car and I went around San Francisco, shop by shop. Little by little, we built up to around 40 stores, and once we reached that point we decided to go for professional distribution. Now we’re available in more than 6,000 stores. We have had a strong presence all over the West Coast, but the East Coast is our second largest market.

Aside from the quality of your products, how do you explain your success?

Determination is key. There’s an American expression that sums it up well: don’t take no for an answer. Even if you are told that your idea is a little nuts, you must continue to believe in it and trust the quality of your products.

To find out more: www.petitpot.com

One in five workers thinks they are in a “bullshit job”, as described by anthropologist David Graeber. How do you find meaning at work? Sonia Levillain-Desmarchelier, professor of management at IÉSEG, gives us some answers.

Can you define the concept of “bullshit job”?

I prefer the broader notion of the consequences of managerial practices, but it’s certainly a sensitive issue since personal perception can vary widely from person to person. What sustains one person will not sustain another and some people’s irritation with certain processes they see as too long-winded will seem normal to their colleagues.

How someone feels about their work is based on the interactions between the individual and his environment at large. If they’re not masters of their own destiny, an employee who no longer finds meaning in his work needs to question what they can do in their sphere of influence, in the area where they can make an impact.

How can you give new meaning to someone’s work?

Those who are most engaged in their work are those who work in a profession that suits their talents and skills, which enable them to do an excellent job. This makes them better able to resist stress, get better results, feel engaged and better manage their time while enjoying what they do. That said, those things are necessary, but may not be enough: it also follows that workplaces must not impede or damage this balance, for example by creating a situation where employees are over-invested. Thinking carefully about personal and professional aims is essential for everyone’s state of mind, but organisations must not underestimate their share of responsibility and should encourage managerial and interpersonal practices that are sustainable, effective and constructive.

Sonia LevillainDesmarchelier,

professor of management at IÉSEG.

Maxime Pouvreau,

founder of the Petit Pot brand.

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GOOD NEWS .

With Act for Food, Carrefour’s actions speak louder than words Carrefour is putting healthy eating at the very heart of its business model - that’s the aim of the Act For Food programme.

Lucie Basch,

founder of the app Too Good To Go.

“Its main goal reflects the top priority set out by Alexandre Bompard when he became CEO of the company two years ago,” said Maxence Boulant, director of the hypermarket in Armentières, Hauts de France. “He wanted to include education as part of a more responsible social and environmental approach to distribution.”

Practical, measurable action

Anticipating that some people will be quick to accuse it of ‘green washing’, Carrefour is showing actions speak louder than words with an approach that is being rolled out across France tackling the issue on 13 fronts. “We are giving a guarantee of 100% French seasonal organic products, the elimination of additives and colourants in Carrefour products, the total elimination of antibiotics and GMOs in fresh produce and the animal sector, elimination of eggs from hens reared in cages by 2025, recyclable packaging etc,” says Maxence Boulant. “In every case we are really, genuinely committed to high-quality food at a fair price.” And that includes safety and ethics as well: all of the brand’s production sites are certified and audited, including slaughterhouses, and all are equipped with CCTV to avoid some of the poor practices recently reported by the media.

For more information www.actforfood.carrefour.fr

War on wa Launched in 2016 by Lucie Basch, the Too Good To Go app uses collective intelligence and geolocation to reduce food waste, by offering users the chance to collect unsold items from restaurants and food shops. Its founder describes this smart and effective solution: Ten million tonnes of food are thrown away in France every year. How do you explain this waste and how do you suggest to reduce it?

A third of the food produced worldwide gets thrown away each year. In France, this equates to 29 kilos per person ... A third of this waste happens at production level, 21% during processing and storage, distributors are responsible for 14% and households for 20%*. Everyone therefore has a role to play. Too Good To Go offers a solution that allows each person to take action at their own level. It is our way of helping the government reach the milestone set for 2050, which aims to reduce waste by 50%.

Do you think reducing waste has a role to play in environmental terms?

We’re not the ones saying it, it’s the IPCC**! Its latest report identifies three types of measure in the fight against climate change: increasing

Maxence Boulant,

Carrefour hypermarket director.

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6 millions

THE TOO GOOD TO GO APP HAS SIX MILLIONS USERS IN FRANCE AND BRINGS TOGETHER 12,000 PARTNER RETAILERS.

8%

FOOD WASTE ALONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR 8 % OF GLOBAL C02 EMISSIONS.

aste productivity, changing diets and combating food waste.

Do you consider yourself a company committed to being part of this?

I would go further and say we are activists! What motivates Too Good To Go’s 500 “waste warriors” is the desire to have a visible impact by changing the habits of everyone involved in the food chain, from producers to consumers, including industrialists and public authorities. And it’s working! In 2019, we passed the target of saving 25 million meals in Europe. And we are going further, by focusing on the issue of expiration dates, responsible for 10% of food waste in Europe, for example.

In January 2020, we launched a Pact on best before dates signed by around 40 stakeholders in the food industry, both distributors (Carrefour, Monoprix, Leclerc, Intermarché, etc.) and manufacturers (Nestlé, Danone, Bel, Savencia etc). This Pact features ten ambitious, concrete, measurable commitments, relating to the management and understanding of best before dates and has the support of France’s Ministries of Ecological Transition and Agriculture and Food. With consumers, we are exploring other avenues to give them ideas and help them change their daily routines, via social networks, our blog and the anti-waste guide, published last October.

mouth publicity we benefit from means that more than a thousand retailers are now contacting us every month wanting to work with us.

Rightly or wrongly, your users are associated with being a wealthier audience. Is that correct?

Food waste should be a concern for all social classes. We have more than 18 million users in Europe, a third of them in France and their profiles are very varied: students, retirees, families, young workers, etc. We can identify three groups, which are not mutually exclusive: those with small budgets, «foodies» who like to try new dishes, and the greener users.

One of the most wasteful sectors is mass catering.

What can be done about this?

We have been working on mass catering since 2019 with Elior, which runs in many workplace cafeterias. We hope to do more and reach new audiences. This is a priority for 2020 and we are setting up a dedicated team to change the figures in this sector. We have also successfully launched a series of pilots in school cafeterias and we organise children’s awareness workshops. They are the consumers of the future! *Ademe, 2016. **Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

How did retailers react to your approach to begin with?

Is it easier to get new partners on board now?

It took all our powers of persuasion to convince the first retailers to join us, but food waste has become a huge concern and constantly in the media. In three years, people’s mentalities have changed and consumers are quick to hold brands to account. The very good word-of-

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NICE TO MEET YOU .

Goodbye fast food, hello good food When Frédéric Rouvez, Arnaud de Meeûs and Nicolas Steisel founded EXKi in Brussels in 2001, the fast food sector was still largely dominated by North American-style outlets. The important thing was to eat quickly rather than well: taste, nutrition and environmental responsibility came second. On paper, EXKi’s idea - to serve tasty, healthy and sustainable food - seemed risky and yet in less than 20 years, the Belgian chain has made a name for itself. Robin Blondel, general manager new markets and global head of product and supply chain for the brand, brings us up to date.

We don’t necessarily associate food on the run with eating well. How did EXKi’s idea come about?

The company’s three founders built their business model around the idea that eating quickly and healthily are not mutually exclusive. It was a daring move in a sector dominated by the fast food giants, but they were quick to realise that consumers sometimes want something other than burgers, if that’s not too much of a generalisation. They also realised that increasing urbanisation was going to lead to a significant number of workers eating lunch out at a time when only three or four meals a week were being eaten outside the home. Finally, the growing number of women in the workplace also played a role in that they were not being catered for with fast food that was often too fatty, rich, too salty or too sweet. There has also been a noticeable social change: when the company was created, EXKi’s clientele was 75% female. Now it is much more mixed and the share of men in our clientele continues to grow.

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How do you explain the success of your model?

I think it has a lot to do with a desire to offer tasty and balanced cuisine, but the real difference is that EXKi is built on strong values, starting with the desire to protect the planet in a sustainable way. Our ecological and environmental values are not something we added on as an afterthought: right from the start, EXKi offered vegetarian recipes, provided wooden cutlery for its customers and decided to give its unsold products to the Salvation Army every evening etc...

Fast food is often associated with noisy and hectic places. Has EXKi also sought to differentiate itself in this respect?

We are aiming to be like Starbucks in this regard. In a fast-paced world, being able to have a kind of comfortable third place that is neither the office nor the house and where you can eat in peace is important. You don’t go to EXKi for lunch, but to take a well-being break: this requires a particular type of service and a calm and peaceful setting, open from morning to evening, regardless of the time of day.

You have outlets in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands ... How do you adapt to the tastes of consumers in these different markets?

There’s nothing more intimately linked to culture than food, which in fact makes it a bit tricky. In addition to the regular menu we offer everywhere and is pretty much the same, we can also add dishes adapted to local expectations and specialities. What sets us apart wherever we are is the freshness, quality, variety and choice of our products on the one hand and our inventiveness and responsiveness on the other.

Expectations and trends are changing so rapidly today that there’s a constant need to be aware of new demands and new tastes.

Where a new trend used to take five years to cross the Atlantic, it now only takes six months. And there’s a certain irony: while we are constantly reinventing to launch new recipes, some of our bestsellers are simple and reassuring things that have often been on the menu for a long time.

EXKi, the Belgian business that’s on the way up Robin Blondel,

general manager new markets and global head of product and supply chain EXKi.

In 2014, your attempt to get a foothold in New York was unsuccessful. Why was that and what lessons did you learn from it?

What EXKi was doing as such was appreciated, but we didn’t quite get all the details right. What we learned from this episode was that it’s no good to try to get established in the United States without having an American partner, especially when you are looking to start your business in the middle of Manhattan. Without a partner, everything costs you double, from the rent to the raw materials… We also underestimated the importance of the pricing issue. Offering organic, fresh and quality products implies relatively high prices. However, from a certain price level, American customers expect table service and our economic model did not allow for that. The third point, linked to the second, concerns the cost of labour and the American practice of tipping. In the restaurant world, an employee who does not serve a table gets no tip. In order to motivate our employees, we had to overpay them to compensate for the lack of tips… We decided to call it a day. We might try again in the United States in a few years, but in ano-

ther place and in a different way.

How do you get the feel of and measure new trends?

Our business is characterized by low margins but also by a low cost entry point. We operate on the basis of test & learn, regularly offering a large number of new recipes, even if we quickly reject those that don’t work. It’s calculated risk-taking that allows us to test our hunches without taking big risks. Our customers are our best judges! And that teaches us to remain humble: of the products I‘ve launched in my life, the ones that worked best were not always those that looked best on paper...

Founded in 2001, EXKi had 105 restaurants by January 2020 with a turnover of 156 million euros, compared to 150 million euros year before. The chain employs 1,500 people (1,000 FTEs). For the first time last year, its international business exceeded the volume of business in Belgium. Last year, the brand established itself in Spain for the first time and now has a presence in six European countries.

Growth prospects tend to be where we are not yet sufficiently active, in home delivery for example. We’ve also created a little sister, Sowl, based on a new concept of salad bar where customers serve themselves. The second pilot, which has just opened in Brussels, is a good illustration of our desire to continue to explore how we can respond to changes in consumer habits, but it is not a question of expanding for the sake of it. We don’t want to be a huge restaurant chain, but a sustainable one.

What are your main areas of development in the coming years?

The brand already has several strings to its bow: we operate under our own brand and franchise, with restaurants in city centers, stations, airports, shopping centers and recently we have begun operating in motorway service areas. We still have room to grow, but the pace of openings should stabilizee.

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