CHRIS MANZINI: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to “Food for Thought.” Today, I'm excited to continue the conversation on how we're becoming a stronger company through tech-enabled transformation. Let's welcome our guest, chief strategy and transformation officer and CEO of LatAm Foods, Dr. Athina Kanioura. It's really exciting to have you here. We talked to Ramon about the 2030 strategy. We talked about portfolio innovation, away-from-home, we talked about modernization as some of the keys of driving growth for the company, being hungry and thirsty for growth. It sounds like given all the amazing assets that sit in Latin America, there may be synergies with the work that you've been doing in transformation globally that can help accelerate growth in Latin America.
ATHINA KANIOURA: I mean, it's such an amazing region, a growth engine of the company. Beautiful portfolio.
CHRIS MANZINI: We've got some NatuChips here.
ATHINA KANIOURA: NatuChips and Sabritas and Maria’s.
CHRIS MANZINI: Mexico's number one cookie.
ATHINA KANIOURA: Amazing portfolio. This is a place where we can test the new consumer engagement model. If you were to think of how we want to approach consumers, last year we were able to truly roll out the D2C platform both in Mexico and Brazil. Hopefully we will reap the benefits from much more intimate consumer engagement, more direct sales, and also reward platform, and our e-go-to-market ecosystem, which is how we engage with customers in a much more digital-first way.
CHRIS MANZINI: Can we pause on that one, actually, because we hear e-go-to-market, right, a lot. Can you talk a little bit about that? How that helps our people be more effective? What does it free them up to do?
ATHINA KANIOURA: When you have the salespeople going to the store, more than 50% of their time is taking the order. Now, the store owner has access to the application. We already have given the storeowner the ability to do auto order, which means the salesperson now becomes a business development and relationship manager. Therefore, when they go and meet the store owners, it is to build relationships. It is to do cross sell, upsell and not just do the manual task of taking the order.
CHRIS MANZINI: I've heard that technology and mindset is something that will make us future fit. Can we talk a little bit about specifically the technologies maybe that we're using today that are making us future-fit and driving growth to the company?
ATHINA KANIOURA: Well, AI is now in every part of the business, and there are different facets of AI. So there is this aspect of AI is now allowing the specialist to be able to do their job even better. Then go to more newer areas like agentic.
CHRIS MANZINI: What does agentic mean?
ATHINA KANIOURA: Agentic means, you interact with me in a very physical, human way, obviously. But imagine you have now instead of me, my AI to interact. It's the digital Athina.
CHRIS MANZINI: Okay, I love that.
ATHINA KANIOURA: What is more important is not the interaction, is the type of activities, tasks, and capabilities now that you can unlock because of that. Already we are building through the power of digital twins and agentic, the ability for that individual to interact directly with an agent in a very real-time way to get recommendations, to go down to root causes, to do predictive maintenance, to have inventory forecasting and visibility. So the reality is it unlocks not just efficiency and effectiveness, but it unlocks the opportunity to be much more forward-looking and have the foresight to drive the business in a very different way.
CHRIS MANZINI: So I'm hearing not replacing, but really just like we're getting more help.
ATHINA KANIOURA: We’re getting much more help. It's about amplification of the human centricity. We truly believe that.
CHRIS MANZINI: So, Athina, tremendous amount of helpful information. We really appreciate you taking time. Thank you for being here and talking to us.
ATHINA KANIOURA: Absolutely, cheers with Junior as well, he’s my third baby, my Yorkie.
CHRIS MANZINI: It sounds like a challenge for me to get Bowser in the mix for some of these interviews, my dog, or like get a mug. Have a play date.