During his more than 37 years at Nestlé, Marco Settembri had extensive experience across the world’s largest food company. He joined Nestlé Italy in 1987 and worked in different roles, ultimately being named to the position of executive vice president and chief executive officer Zone Europe. Settembri embodies the company’s commitment to a broad range of stakeholders beyond its shareholders, continuing a tradition that began in 1867, when founder Henri Nestlé created one of the first baby formulas to provide a healthy and economical product for mothers who could not breastfeed their babies. Before his retirement on June 30, 2024, Settembri discussed Nestlé’s ongoing stakeholder commitment in an interview with Richard Webster, leader of Bain’s Global Consumer Products practice.

Q: Nestlé has a long history of focusing on the needs of its consumers. How has that influenced the ways that Nestlé thinks about its stakeholders more broadly?

Settembri: At Nestlé, we have always looked to impact our consumers in a way that benefits everyone. Our mission is to generate value for our consumer but also for society in a way that creates positive impact across the board. I see consumers as more than people who buy and consume Nestlé products but as individuals with multiple needs that Nestlé can help serve—a cleaner environment, healthier lifestyles, for example. In fact, I prefer to call them citizens, not consumers.

Q: How do you measure that impact?

Settembri: We rely on KPIs that go beyond just financial performance to also track our impact on the planet and stakeholders. This creates a virtuous cycle approach that ties together financial performance drivers as well as integrated sustainability performance metrics. Among the nonfinancial KPIs that we monitor on a daily to quarterly basis are the safety of our employees, product safety for our consumers, and our sustainability project portfolio investment and the realization of those projects.

Also, we track our corporate reputation and brand reputation on a trust dimension. We constantly measure CO₂ reduction, the percentage of packaging designed for recycling, and the reduction of virgin plastic. Additionally, we measure diversity and inclusion metrics, including the percentage of women in executive positions and the total percentage of women in our teams across the Zone [Europe]. We track the growth in sales of products with Nutri-Score A and B. These are among the many examples.

Q: As president of the industry organization FoodDrinkEurope, can you talk about how the organization improves impact across the industry?

Settembri: I believe that we need to work together with competitors as an industry to take advantage of scale in Europe. It’s very exciting that we have this alignment across the industry in Europe, where we have joined with almost 3,000 companies, many of them small and medium-sized enterprises.

Covid was a moment in which we saw an opportunity to be united with consumers, retailers, and society in general. What we achieved, especially in the first six months, was to keep our factories open and to provide food for people. It was an extraordinary moment. The industry showed great resilience, and we are taking those learnings to collectively call for solutions to be better equipped for the future.

For example, through FoodDrinkEurope, the industry has collaborated in advocating for the mainstreaming of regenerative agriculture. Last year, FoodDrinkEurope launched a new EU Food Investment and Resilience Plan to make the agri-food sector more sustainable and competitive. A key pillar in the plan is to stimulate investment like we have seen being proposed in other regions, for example in the US Inflation Reduction Act. Now we are engaging with the European Commission to bring this plan to life.

Q: Can you provide a specific example of how you worked directly with the European Commission and any specific successes or win-wins?

Settembri: Engaging with the European Commission allows us to put forward our expertise and knowledge to help shape effective EU policies and legislation. Where possible, we partner with like-minded stakeholders to conduct this engagement together. For example, over the past years we worked with a group of NGOs and competitors to support proportionate EU-wide legislation that guides companies to address environmental and human rights risks in their supply chains. We were all aligned on the need for a law that would lead to stronger action and public-private collaboration to address sustainability issues along supply chains in Europe and beyond.

Q: As these health and sustainability issues become more top of mind, how is your approach to consumers changing?

Settembri: Food and beverage consumption is changing quite fast, and we need to be positioned to address those changes. It’s very different than it was 10 years ago. Consumers are changing what they’re eating, how they’re eating, and where they’re eating. Think about how people drink coffee now. It can be at home for breakfast, in the office, in a coffee bar, or in a restaurant, so reaching the coffee consumer is totally different. That means we need to continue to innovate. We need to understand where we can gain a sustainable competitive advantage. We also need to reaccelerate after Covid, inflation, and the energy crisis. The last four years have been something of an emergency, and we’re just now moving back to a more normal period. Forecasting the future is always hard, but I feel more in control now. But only a little bit more.

Q: Looking ahead, what are the most critical shifts that you see impacting your industry over the next year?

Settembri: Two things are converging. Technology is huge. [CEO of OpenAI] Sam Altman was right—we won’t know the full impact of artificial intelligence for two to three years. It will affect society and our people in a way that we can’t yet predict. At the same time, people are aging and looking to live healthier and longer lives. How long will people live past retirement age? What will these people eat and drink to stay healthy? As the population ages, people will need personalized solutions. We’ve made a large investment in Nestlé Health Science because we believe that technology and science will lead us to the answers, and we can enhance the quality of lives through nutrition.