Consumer Foods to Go

Recording from their homes, Cyrille Filott and Maria Castroviejo update you on what they see happening in foodservice and food retail on the back of the coronavirus crisis. Maria and Cyrille touch upon the key questions they received from Rabobank clients over the last two weeks. They share anecdotes from the food & agribusiness supply chain and look a bit beyond the crisis into the almost inevitable economic recession. This episode is a follow-up to one released two weeks ago on this channel.

Everybody is talking about the coronavirus, and we at Rabobank have published a lot about its effect on Asian industries. The virus is now leading to disruptions in Europe (e.g. a lockdown in Italy) and North America.

Maria Castroviejo and Cyrille Filott, co-host and host of Consumer Foods-to-Go, provide their initial thoughts on the virus's current impact on foodservice and packaged food in the western hemisphere, as well as what structural shifts we might see in the future. A warning: the R-word will be used.

Consumers are constantly looking for ways to improve their health, and food can certainly help with that. But many people are also looking for more convenient options, which we refer to as 'nutraceuticals.' These come in many shapes and forms – from isolated ingredients to ready-to-swallow pills – and are targeted at various audiences. In this episode, Consumer Foods-to-Go host Cyrille Filott quizzes senior analyst Maartje van den Berg on the topic.

Every year, Rabobank analyst Nick Fereday asks clients, stakeholders, and colleagues to name their single biggest food surprise of the previous year. For the first time, apart from sending out the results in a report, we're providing you with the highlights in a specially recorded podcast episode. Consumer Foods-to-Go host Cyrille Filott and co-host Maria Castroviejo quiz Nick on the findings in general – and on those big surprises.

In this episode of Consumer Foods-to-Go, host Cyrille Filott takes a close view of the outlook for global food service. Cyrille and analyst Maria Castroviejo discuss four key themes in food service for the year ahead: the economy, input costs, sustainability, and – obviously – delivery.

In January 2019, the EAT-Lancet report came out. Written by academics, this report described what should be done to achieve a healthier diet that is better for the environment. One of the main conclusions is that meat consumption, and therefore production, should be reduced. In this episode of Consumer Foods-to-Go, host Cyrille Filott and co-host Maria Castroviejo discuss with Fabrice DeClerck, science director at EAT, the content of the report, what has happened on the back of the report, and what still needs to happen to achieve a sustainable diet.

The new Nutri-Score food labelling system is being rolled out by various retailers and food producers over the next few years in Europe. Nutri-Score may help consumers make a healthier choice by providing a letter representing the nutritional value of a given food product – ranging from A (healthy) to E (unhealthy). In this episode of Consumer Foods-to-Go, your host Cyrille Filott shares the mic with fellow Rabobank specialists Maria Castroviejo and Sebastiaan Schreijen. They take a look at all actors involved in the launch of Nutri-Score: governments, retailers, food producers, and consumers. But how will the food industry itself respond to the new labels?

Rabobank has recently published its agri commodities outlook report, "Supply Slide Saves Grounded Demand". In this edition of Consumer Foods to Go, Cyrille Filott is discussing the outlook with its lead author, Rabobank's own Stefan Vogel. Demand growth for agri commodities in general is pedestrian, while there is still abundant growth on the supply side. However, prices for some commodities (including sugar) are very low and may move up from here. We discuss risks to price movements like African Swine Fever, trade wars and obviously weather. The key message of the report is that demand needs to pick up dramatically to cause a big move in prices; otherwise supply, partly driven by technology, will more than keep up with demand.

This Consumer Foods to Go episode comes from Shanghai, and is devoted to sustainability in F&A in Asia. Why? Because the views in that region are very different from what is the norm in the US and Europe. This podcast sheds light on these differences and how to make sustainability in Asia practical. We have enlisted the help of an outsider this time: Richard Brubaker, the founder of Collective Responsibility, will guide us through the issues and solutions. He has a view on meat substitutes in Asia! And did we mention he has been living in Shanghai for 19 years?