Kraft Heinz, Istanbul, Türkiye: Bosphorus Go-to-Market Project

Total 200 words used.

Kraft Heinz is a global food giant with a delicious heritage spanning across 150 years all around the world.  As part of the international growth strategy centered on “taste elevation”, Kraft Heinz made a quiet entry to the Turkish market with two distributors and limited range of imported products. 

A transformative milestone in the company’s journey of “making life delicious” was the acquisition of Assan Foods in 2021, a renowned Turkish sauces and condiments manufacturer. This strategic move provided Kraft Heinz Turkey the means to expand its production capacity, broaden its product offering and strengthen its foothold in the market.

Although inheriting Istanbul HQ, facilities, local brands and distribution network of Assan legacy paved the way for a deep-rooted presence in both retail and foodservice channels, Kraft Heinz Turkey first had to face multifaceted challenges regarding the integration of two fundamentally different business models.

To overcome commercial differences and steer the unified company towards a new strategic direction for rapid growth, go-to-market project "Bopshorus" was launched in 2023. Just as Bosphorus bridge connects two continents in Istanbul, the project's main purpose was to grow Heinz disproportionately by designing and implementing an integrated commercial strategy that takes best of both sides.

Written answers to the questions

Total 248 words used.

Bosphorus GTM project has leading KPIs in foodservice and lagging indicators in retail. Main objective of was to rapidly increase sales performance of Heinz brand in foodservice utilizing global brand equity and build upon this acceleration to reach overall business growth and higher profitability in all channels and brands.

Results exceed the ambition of topline growth in 2023 and bottomline growth in 2024:

Total gross sales +%48, from $149M('22) to 205$('23) to 220$('24)

Heinz gross sales +101% from $32M('22) to 49$('23) to 65$('24)

Heinz gross profit rate from 13%('22) to 23%('23) to 35%('24)

Heinz became the market leader(share in top categories excluding private label) from 10% ('22) to 13%('23) to 17%('24) 
While previous leader Tat sales dropped by -4%('23)

Achievement of financial targets were tied to 3 growth levers:

Presence in Top Chains
Top restaurant chains including Burger King, KFC and Dominos constitute up to 20% of the market and hold strategic value.
# of customers from 14 to 21 out of 40

Distribution in Independent Restaurants
Premium and mainstream restaurants make up the bulk of the market with low to high tier outlets
Coverage from 33k to 42k outlets out of 109k
Brand converted (Assan to Heinz) 1.8k outlets

Hospitality Focus
Turkey is a major tourism country with a high level of F&B consumption due to widespread all-inclusive model hence the special focus to unlock opportunity.
Large Hotel Chain customers from 12 to 16 within top 20
Hotel coverage from 1.2k to 1.5k outlets
 

Total 98 words used.

See "Bosphorus Project Summary" for a brief outline of the GTM project 

See "KHC Bosphorus Consolidated Material" for project details which includes a comprehensive set of slides showing the design of all workfronts mentioned in the nomination form.

See "KHC TOP CHAINS_2024" file for the list of top restaurants based on Euromonitor Consumer Foodservice 2024 report.

See "Nielsen Scantrack Report 2024" for market share data

See "Tat Insvestor Report 2024" for competitors declining sales volume in 2023

See link for official news from Turkish Republic Invesment Office on the acquisition of Assan: https://www.invest.gov.tr/en/news/news-from-turkey/pages/kraft-heinz-acquires-turkish-assan-foods.aspx

Total 246 words used.

Entities involved in the project are a global premium brand with retail roots and a local business built upon private label and value brands in foodservice. Such merger with contrasting models required tremendous effort for a seamless match. Rather than a one dimensional approach, the solution was a network of sales initiaves closely tied together, each addressing a different angle of 360 agenda. Integrated commercial strategy was crafted through the following workfronts:

Market Sizing
Both globally and locally, foodservice suffers from the scarcity of market data. For an accurate sizing and targeting, multiple internal and external sources such as Euromonitor and Deliveryhero were used to generate CDI (Consumption Distribution Index)

Distributor Network
Heinz had only 2 master distributors with weight distribution focus whereas Assan had 102 distributors focusing on numeric distribution. Network was optimised based on distributor assessments to cover whitespaces and increase distributor efficiency.

Hospitality Model
To capture growing hotel opportunity, segmentation was conducted to cluster each region based on their volume potential. This was followed by assigning specialized distributors and hiring hospitality development executives.

Gross-to-Net Model
After network optimization, existing gross-to-net model was revisited and transformed with a more profitable approach. Pay-for-performance program was introduced to as a key driver for Heinz penetration.

Sales Structure & Sales Tech
Comprehensive changes in sales strategy required a reformed sales structure with new roles and hires addressing each growth lever. Aside from structural changes, sellout data automation and perfect store program were introduced for data-based high-impact actions.