Three of those recently won Kantar Product of the Year awards.
In years past, mixing peas and carrots in the same can was about as audacious as Del Monte got. “I think it’s safe to say there has never been this much innovation in Del Monte’s history,” says Druz.
“We know the number of people who eat canned foods is declining. And we got a little bit of a tailwind because of the pandemic, when people went back to shelf-stable foods, especially cans. But we know for the future that millennials and younger people are looking for food solutions and new packaging formats, so we want to be there with the fruit and vegetable products they want, how they want them.”
He says the product development process has been in “hyperdrive” since the arrival of a new CEO three years ago.
“Greg Longstreet established a forum where we are really entrepreneurial about our new products. We do fast-track product development on innovation projects. We meet with Greg and the executive team weekly, do cuttings with them, and that gives us a lot of visibility. That and the partnership with marketing means we get things done very quickly.”
The 19-member R&D Group is part of Del Monte’s marketing department, and Druz admits that most new product ideas come from marketing. About an equal amount comes from the R&D lab; and co-packers, increasingly important partners in the product development process, also contribute some.
While most of the more traditional products are made in Del Monte facilities, there is a growing network of co-packers, especially in the new categories of refrigeration and freezing.
Another factor helping the company’s expansion into new categories has been the résumés of some of the people on the R&D team. They come from a number of high-profile companies that specialize in other product categories and other forms of packaging; processors like Conagra, Nestlé, Campbell Soup and Frito-Lay.
“It’s a very entrepreneurial product development process,” says Druz, who came from Yum Brands and Taco Bell 12 years ago, although he worked earlier at Conagra and Unilever. “We think of ourselves as a 150-year-old startup.”
Still another contributing factor may be the innovation vibe of the San Francisco Bay area. R&D and Marketing are housed in a research center in Walnut Creek, Calif., just inland from San Francisco and near corporate headquarters, which are in a separate Walnut Creek site.
“The whiteboard in my office says the best R&D people are doers and tinkerers with a passionate desire to make an idea work,” says Druz.
The team includes product developers, including food scientists, plus experts in packaging development, analytical chemistry and regulatory affairs. Team meetings are held every other week, and senior staff meet in the in-between weeks.
Packaging has been a key component lately, looking not just for novelty but for plastic reduction and sustainability. “The packaging team has been working to lightweight our packages, source-reduce them, increase recycling, look for materials that are bio-based,” says Druz.
The coronavirus period required a different kind of innovation. “There was some R&D work being done in home kitchens. There was some ‘tele-cutting’ – sending products to the homes of team members, then having everyone open the packages at the same time on a Zoom meeting to sample and give feedback,” says Druz. The virus delayed work by a couple weeks, he estimates.
Generally, it takes Del Monte about nine months to get a product from concept to shelf. Sometimes schedules need to be adjusted to coincide with availability of crops.
Frozen products are filling the new product pipeline right now. One Druz divulged is a Veggieful pocket pie, “a nutritionally better Hot Pocket [hats off to Nestlé], with vegetables in the filling and coating.”
