SUMMARY WITH ANDY RENAUD

Andy Renaud from Ferrara Candy is on AAI today and a common theme that comes up is what do we do with consumer insights? How do we use them to fill our innovation pipeline? How can we use them to engage our customer on social media and beyond? Andy talks to Josh about how they’re doing this in the candy space, from Crunchy Crawlers to a specific Wonder Woman candy – Ferrara is engaging customers in so many different ways.

The discussion loops around to COVID-19 and how Ferrara has remained agile through it all. From setting up employees to do R&D at home to understanding what the best tech tools are to use for collaboration. As consumer behavior changes, how does Ferrara change with it and keep innovating despite limitations?

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Full Transcript with Andy Renaud

Erin Srebinski: [00:13 ] Hi, and welcome to Ask an Innovator. This morning we have Andy Renaud from Ferrara Candy Company talking with us about innovations in the confection space. He talks about the innovation practice at Ferrara and how knowing your key strengths is essential for growth and launching new products. The podcast was recorded during COVID-19, so Andy and Josh also cover how Ferrara has remained agile and is continuing to deliver sweet delights to customers. For more, keep on listening and for the full transcript check us out at cityinnovationlabs.com/ask-an-innovator

Josh Barker: [00:42 ] Andy, I really appreciate you coming on. I’d love for you to give just a little intro to yourself.

Andy Renaud: [00:47 ] Yeah, of course. So I’m Andy Renaud. I’ve been in the confections category for my entire career. So I have an undergrad from UW Madison. In food science and so that’s just a study of all of the know-how in engineering, chemistry, even regulations, the marketing behind food, and how things are made for our food industry. So I got that back in 2009, I graduated and I had an internship in Chicago, which actually led to a full-time position at my prior company. Work they’re doing a lot of in the lab at the factory scale-up of product development, both on gum and candy and confectionery sugar, confections.

As of last year, January of ’19, I moved over to my current employer for our candy company in Chicago. And so since then, I’ve been doing a lot. My title is senior manager of innovation, growth management. Really, what that entails is looking at how Ferrara is doing innovation and what roles do we need in place? What process do we need to implement and deploy? What capabilities do we need to develop? But also from a strategic standpoint? What should we be having in our innovation pipeline to deliver growth not only for the company but also for the category? But also, what insights from consumers are we leveraging to develop that pipeline.

It’s been a really interesting opportunity over the last year and a half just because I’ve been able to really leverage my knowledge and experience doing the hands-on product development and translating that with strategic partnerships within different functions to deliver growth and so it’s been exciting. Ferrara as you know, we might get into later, is really in a time of rapid growth and change and really exciting to see our innovations help deliver that and actually get a lot of great feedback from the consumers themselves. So yeah, that’s kind of my background. I’ve been in Chicago since I graduated in ’09 and really love it. I think it’s a hub of CPG and just a lot of history with food manufacturers. And so just so a lot of great opportunities.

Josh Barker: [03:08 ] Awesome, Ferrara is a candy company, right? What does your day to day look like? You know, you mentioned gathering insights and bringing that to talk about how you might apply those to get more growth. What does that look like for you?

Andy Renaud: [03:25 ] Yeah, I mean, candy is a fun category. But realistically, I’m in a lot of meetings, a lot of conversations all day. But it’s working with our technical teams to understand how we’re going to be developing ideas, but then also working with marketing and our sales teams to pull together the right stories and make sure that our retailers and our distribution partners are really going to be excited and help drive the innovation.

So it’s a lot of partnership, a lot of defining, what do we need to do to deliver? It’s kind of interesting too. A lot of our innovations are launched at a similar time each year, which I don’t think a consumer, day to day, might not recognize. End of the year is when we launch all of our new items. And then we’re trying to do it on an annual basis. So depending on the time of the year, different shift.

Right now, we’re in a lot of ideation, exercises, and activities to build out ideas for future innovation. And so we’re looking at what do we want to be? What are insights we can leverage today to really help create novel and unique ideas for the consumer in 2023, and 2024? So it’s been, you know, a lot of further out looking, creative mindset implementation right now.

So today we’re actually, you know, in a lot of discussions about who needs to be helping us create ideas, how are we creating ideas? And then also, how are we going to refine those ideas over time, so a lot of planning for project timelines. So, yeah, it kind of shifts a lot. But right now we’re building out future ideas first, then technical teams go and develop.

Josh Barker: [05:10 ] Sure. You know, would you say you’re mostly inward-facing, mostly outward-facing? Or is it a kind of a marriage of both of those? Meaning like employee-focused, or customer-focused?

Andy Renaud: [05:23 ] Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely, I would say a combination. I think, starting wise at the start of where we want to start generating ideas, it’s definitely outward-looking. Where we’re engaging with our retailers, we actually have typically once to twice a year we’ll have innovation-focused conversations and summits with major retailers to discuss what does the future look like and how do we build that together? How can we provide new exciting products for you and for their customers?

But then also, how do we leverage what Ferrara is really good at. So looking inward? What capabilities and knowledge do we have in-house to really develop things synergistically that is beneficial for our retailers and for the customers. I think a lot of folks on this podcast have mentioned to if you don’t understand the consumer and the customer looking outward, your innovations aren’t really going to deliver.

Josh Barker: [06:27 ] Right. Well, and what got you interested in the innovation space? What do you like most about it?

Andy Renaud: [06:33 ] Yeah, I mean, to put it simply, it’s fun. Who doesn’t love coming up with a new idea? I think all of us come up with ideas every day. Yeah, it can be very simple. It can be grand, and it’s a lot of those ideas you never think would happen. For example, Uber, it’s something that, who would have thought we would get into strangers’ cars and let them drive us places and now it is just ubiquitous for traveling.

And so it’s all about the excitement of coming up with new ideas, but really inspire me. I had a really great opportunity in my undergrad to do an internship with a Candy Company, and who doesn’t love candy too? So it’s like, ultimately, you know, what gets me out of the bed each day is just, you know, working with great people, but ultimately, we’re working on a fun and loved to category. And so ultimately, to me, it just gives me something fun to do with my day.

Josh Barker: [07:31 ] You know, I was reading – are you familiar with 23 and Me, the genetic testing company? They actually said that women are, they genetically proved this, are 1.2 times more likely to like candy. So I remember that, you know, going into this, which I thought is so I’m assuming that’s is that some of your I mean, obviously, broadly, everyone loves candy, but right, but is there a specific target that most you know if you’re guiding a lot of your decisions of the target market?

Andy Renaud: [07:57 ] Good question, I think I hate to say it depends but really, Ferr has a large portfolio of brands. And so each of those brands really speaks to different audiences. And so depending really on I would say who the consumer is you can innovate in different ways. So yeah, you know, our Trolli brand really speaks to the weird the awesome nature of fun and candy and just being able to live in a different world for a moment. We actually have a lot of gamers love truly, that does provide just this weird kind of brand and perspective on the world.

Then we also speak to with sweet tarts are “Be Both” campaign and just marketing about you can have sweet and tart so combination and you’re allowed to do both within your world