By: Wael Ismail, VP Corporate Affairs, MENA and Pakistan, PepsiCo 

Wael Ismail, Vice President, Corporate Affairs MENA and Pakistan – PepsiCo

The future of the food industry has been significantly marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The year 2020 has served as a catalyst for change and growth and newly adopted habits are here to stay.

The ‘new normal’ for the food industry in MENA, as well as the rest of the world, encompasses a greater focus on sustainability, adapting to meet shifts in consumer behaviors, and a renewed focus on health and safety.

The outcome has been what many expect to be irreversible trends. However, therein lies opportunity for those agile enough to embrace the new reality and adopt emerging trends such as prioritizing sustainability, investing in technology, revamping food safety, and adopting innovative ways to connect with customers.

Like many businesses across MENA and elsewhere, PepsiCo quickly recognized the profound nature of Covid-19 and its potential impact on how the food industry operated. Along with the rest of the industry we realized we had to respond robustly in order to retain customer confidence. 

Retaining customer confidence

Covid-19 raised consumer awareness of health and safety. More consumers are now thinking about the hygiene and sanitation involved in processing, transporting, and preparing food and drink. As a global F&B leader, we adhere to the strictest standards of food safety, but the pandemic challenged us to take this even further. In order to protect our consumers we needed to enhance our health and safety measures in food processing, packaging, and bottling facilities, to keep our people, colleagues, consumers, and partners safe. 

The outcome for the industry as we emerge from the pandemic are that the changes in safety made across the food industry are here to stay.  Consumers are looking at products and brands through a new lens. They want innovative packaging solutions that they can be confident are free from contamination, but that are also recyclable (more on that later). Research indicates that the new habits formed during the pandemic will endure, with customers permanently changing and prioritizing brands and food suppliers they turned to and trusted during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Conscious consumption

As we emerge from the pandemic consumers have become more mindful of what they’re buying. They are striving to limit food waste, shop more cost consciously and buy more sustainable options. To meet these changing priorities and to bring about positive change for the planet, PepsiCo has announced a company-wide sustainability transformation.

Branded as pep+ (PepsiCo Positive), which is an end to end transformation to make a positive impact on the climate change and create a sustainable food system.. It will see us embrace regenerative agriculture, reduce virgin plastic use, and evolve our food and beverage portfolio by incorporating more diverse ingredients such as chickpeas, plant-based proteins, and whole grains. Our aim is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040 and become net water positive by 2030. 

Our sustainability mission is in line with the strategic aim of MENA’s regional governments including Saudi Arabia’s Green Initiative, UAE’s sustainability vision that is now enabled by EXPO 2020 and recent net zero commitments. pep+ is our commitment to our consumers and people of this region of the need to more and partner more strategically with governments and civil society in MENA to make meaningful and lasting change. 

At PepsiCo, we have already taken progressive steps to promote sustainability including the launch of multiple plastic collection programs across MENA in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Sudan. We have introduced Aquafina cans in the UAE to increase collection rates and recyclability. At Expo 2020 Dubai, we launched our Sunbites snacks in compostable packaging and have committed to collect and recycle PepsiCo’s waste generated on site across the 6-month period. In Saudi Arabia, we’ve signed an MoU with the Saudi Waste Management Center to promote sustainable policies and support a circular economy and continue to explore partnerships with governments, industry members and civil society to ensure we are truly embedding a circular economy approach in everything we do.   

These steps together with pep+ reflect the new business reality where consumers aremore interested in the future of the planet and society. Sustainability is now at the center of everything we do. It will enable us to leverage our connections with consumers to inspire positive change and make sustainability mainstream. F&B brands must put sustainability at the center of their business – it’s not just the right thing for the planet, it’s also good business. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, adopting a circular economy approach across plastics, steel, aluminum, cement, and food can achieve a reduction of 9.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2050. It also presents a unique market opportunity of close to $4.5 trillion by 2030.

People are buying differently 

In tandem to a focus on sustainability, the Covid-19 pandemic forced a much greater reliance on e-commerce. According to Statista, 68% of UAE’s population and 73% of Saudi Arabia’s population moved to online shopping and the MENA consumer is among the most connected and digitally savvy in the world. Shopping online changed from a preference to a permanent habit and companies have had to be agile in their response. Companies big and small shifted their businesses online and e-commerce sales rocketed.

While we still largely lean on grocery stores, our digital channels are continuing to see growth and we can use e-commerce to foster a direct relationship with our customers, while also using it as a testing platform to help with new item roll-outs. 

In another first we also launched our first unmanned AI-powered store at Expo 2020 Dubai offering an invisible check-out experience which could herald the future for corner shops. 

The pandemic has significantly changed all our lives and as a company we are looking at different ways of how to ensure we play a critical and important role in driving a positive impact on our planet and putting our customers at the heart of everything that we do. Customers are much more conscious about health and safety; they are buying differently; and want to associate themselves with brands that hold a truer purpose. As the food and beverage industry we are part of our consumers daily lives and success will largely depend on our ability to truly adopt purpose in everything we do as well as leveraging all the technological advancements and breakthroughs available to stay connected with our consumers, and communities around us.  

What lies ahead is a changed world. As we return to travelling, in-person meetings and engagements we will have some form of normalcy back, but one thing is for sure, there is no turning back to doing things the old way.