The Intersection of Real Food and Snacking ——Craig Stephen Slavtcheff, Global Vice President, R&D, Global Biscuits & Snacks Division, Campbell Soup Company

1. The Intersection of Real Food and Snacking
——Craig Stephen Slavtcheff, Global Vice President, R&D, Global Biscuits
& Snacks Division, Campbell Soup Company
Let’s talk about the evolution of real food and our understanding about
future trends. This understanding will be the guide of following
innovation. First, I’d like to talk about fast food in developing countries
and Asian markets as well as American markets. Campbell Soup is a big
company with over 8 billion dollar sales volume, which has 3 main scopes.
One of them is the well-known soup, unlike before, soup currently only
accounts for about 40% of what we used to be. Now we focus more on
fresh food industry, such as the freshest food and the frozen food, which

2. generate 2.6 billion dollar a year. Developing countries specially pay
attention to real food, and Campbell Soup has become a good example.
Canned foods are processed foods. The raw material of Campbell Soup
canned foods is quiet good indicating we are transforming gradually. We
began with making chicken soup and tomato soup, and now our goal is
simple and clear which is to make natural foods. The goal will guide our
following operation in communicating with consumers and entering the
market.
The new concept has impact the way we think so deeply. Every time
when we communicate with marketing or logistics colleagues, we see
things from the perspectives like“Is this natural food?“ and “Is this
important to our customers?” For instance, overweight exists not only
in developing countries, the whole world is facing it too. Products of
Campbell Soup take center spots of supermarkets, and many of our
consumers are from low-income groups. These people are more likely to
suffer from overweight. It is our responsibility to supply real food for
them.
Another reason is that we have close relationship with food, the closer

3. we are, the more we want to know about food. How the food grows, how
the food get processed and how it affect our bodies. People want the
production of food as transparent as possible. Now we talk about real
foods every time when we have a meeting. What does real food even
mean? As a big company, we communicate with thousands of customers,
consumers, consult the academic and the industry, and we have found
the answer to real food just lie in our archives.
The founder of the company is a mechanical engineer and also the
inventor of Campbell Soup’s first soup. Condensed soup has
high-quality raw material and good shelf life and can be afforded by
most of the people. After condensed food has become the
representative of processed food, Campbell Soup has change consumers’

4. lifestyle. This is kind of ironic, because we want to make real food initially.
Our founder has brought up 5 element of real food definition. The first
one is real food is food we’re proud to serve in our own home. All my
children are boys and boys are curious about their father’s work. When
my 10-year-old son heard that I am the vice president of a snack
company, he was very proud. I hope my work will always make my
children proud.
Secondly, real food has roots. Consumers must be aware of the origin of
the food, and the food is prepared with care. I wonder how many people
would cook soup at home, if you do, how long will you preserve the soup
in the refrigerator before you throw it away? Three days? Four days?

5. Food scientists are handling many challenges to make the cold-chain
manufactured soup safe to eat.
The fourth element is that real food should be accessible to all. This
actually is a matter of price, which related to logistics, business model
and how to launch. The last one is critical, which is transparency, because
now consumers’ trust in food has dropped to its lowest point.
Next, let’s take a look at the real food of Campbell Soup according to
the 5 elements. First, roots. Our raw materials come from animals or
plants, not from synthetic stuff. To be more specific, it’s the same
materials that consumers will directly use in their kitchen. Then we
prepare the food with care, this includes premium materials, strict
production standards and high demand to the whole value chain.
There is an unwritten rule in food industry that any company should not
cheat, should not make severe mistakes, or you cannot survive. Therefore,
food safety is very crucial for us and we must secure our products and
guarantee reasonable price. As for transparency and credit, we are one of
the companies promoting GMO label. We believe the consumers are

6. entitled to know the raw materials. We always consider the genetically
modified foods are safe, but the consumers have the right to be aware of
and make their own choices. We have a real food list called yesyes list,
most of it come from the whole foods and the whole vegetable, it may
sound easy, but quiet difficult to achieve this in snacks. We also have a
nono list which is the opposite of the previous one, we will not use the
listed items as raw materials no matter in the view of science or
consumers.
80 years ago, the first color additive was invented. But now consumers
expect that the food field could make a breakthrough in 5 years and
break down what we have been doing in last 80 years. And they refuse to
think about the feasibility. The materials we applied 80 years ago have
made the food safe and delicious and can be used on all supply chains. It
is hard to make a quick shift, but we have implemented continuous effort
towards that.
Then I’d like to talk about the future. Our future grows from the present.
A famous journalist once said that the future is already here – it's just not
evenly distributed. That means we can catch the signals of future and

7. determine the directions. Over the past 10 years, many companies has
revolutionized the way people entertain, live, communicate, and eat.
Every element of human existence has experience total change and the
companies themselves have also changed a lot. They all happened in a
short time. If you have seen a signal and figured it could be a revolution,
take action now.
We must learn to foresee consumers’ changes. How will they consume,
how will they interact with brands and social media? What will they
think about agriculture and food? This is where real food, health and
technology will contribute to future food industry. Our company
conducted a survey recently to find out what is the most important for

8. future. One is the business model. The changes of business model also
change the payment and logistics. I personally pay more attention on
snack, will talk about snacking in future business later, which is the
second one. The third one is how do I get better. The fourth is
localization, which means the consumers want to connect more with the
places of origin.
I come from snacking industry. USDA conduct a research about how
people eat in America every 5-7 years including food consumption in 2
days of 10 thousand people. Tracking every single thing the 10 thousand
people have eaten in 2 days, and counting calories and nutrition to
understand the food consumption behavior. For the research results, in
the end of ‘70s, around 50% of the subjects did not consume any
snacks at all and the other 50% had about 5 kinds of snacks. The trend of
2013-2014 was quite different from what it was in 2007-2008, we found
that people ate 4-6 or even 7 kinds of snacks, a quarter of calorie intake
came from snacks. Why is this important? Because the nutrient content
of snacks affect the daily nutrition intake directly.
About the sugar, theoretically we should eat 15g sugar everyday based

9. on the 25% calorie intake ratio, but the actual number is 45g. The snacks
also lead to low intake of the trace elements like vitamin D and fiber. On
the other hand, snacks have become part of our diet structure. Using
snacks lacking of nutrition to replace meals will lead to Malnutrition, and
this is where we will change.
90% of people will eat snacks for several times and snacking is the only
category achieves a compound growth rate of 3%. Over 50% of eating
occasions is eating snacks, and about 50% of population do not eat
meals but just eat snacks. At Campbell Soup, we hold different attitudes
towards snacks and have executed a revolution from 10 years ago
including make soup into snacks, which people can drink while walking.
And cookies like little gold fish for kids and the butter cookies we are
selling in China.
I have already went through the sugar problem, we have learnt from
consumers that people always want sugar, and this wish is unchangeable.
Now there is a significant divergence of two different consumers, one
kind keeps very healthy eating habits, the other one eats extremely
unhealthy food. It is impossible to offer delicious and low-sugar cookies.

10. Even the healthy food like graham bread contains a lot of sugar. It
request constant changes. People want the snacks to be customized to
get the nutrition and to meet the emotional needs. Having snacks is
often related to emotions, you may want to have snacks when you are
nervous, tired, or bored. Snacks can be supportive mentally or supply the
energy physically.
To sum up, I’d like to point out that naturalness is one important
element to impact consumers’ choices. For example, although we all
understand monosodium glutamate is safe, consumers find it hard to
accept which result in changes of food industry. Meanwhile people tend
to consume more snacks and this phenomenon brings new changes. The
future snacking market will be more segmented and offer different
products towards people with different needs.