One place consumers have felt inflation the most - is the supermarket. Food and beverage companies like Kraft Heinz have raised prices amid supply chain struggles, labor shortages, and other challenges. The food giant reported an earnings beat, and also raised its full-year sales forecast. Carlos Abrams-Rivera, EVP & President, North America Zone at the Kraft Heinz Company, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Kraft Heinz EVP on Keeping Food Brands Attractive Amid Period of Economic Uncertainty

Welcome back to cheddar news. It's closing bell everyone. Well, one place that customers are feeling inflation the most is the supermarket. Several food and beverage companies raising prices amid supply chain struggles, labor shortages a number of challenges and one such company is Kraft Heinz, Food giant reporting and earnings beat yesterday also raising its full year sales forecast definitely good news, but shares of the company still did finish yesterday lower and over these past two days the stock is actually higher though that is definitely good news up close to 5%. So joining me now is Carlos Abrams Rivera executive vice president and president of the North America's own for Kraft Heinz. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I know your company saying higher prices did help it deliver a jump in sales but a drop in the number of items sold which did also impact profit margins. How is your company going to continue to make its brands and products attractive as prices are expected to remain high? Well, first of all, thank you for having me here today. Yeah, the way we think about it is obviously there has been a huge amount of inflation that is affecting all parts of our business, whether it's in our labor, the particular commodities and supplies, you know, but the reality is that what we're trying to do a curve heights is making sure we become as the fishing as possible so we don't have to pass all those prices up to consumers and the way we're balancing that out is making sure that as we think about the choices that we can provide consumers. You know, we're thinking of providing better value solution for them. So as we go forward, air plan is continue to be diligent about understanding how consumers are making those choices in their lives, whether that is consumers who may need a particular low price point to enter the category. For example, making sure we have a dollar version of lunchables product and also consumers who are looking to the overall better value where it might be a five pack version of our mac and cheese, where you can get the better value overall per ounce. So that idea of being flexible of how we offer different choices for consumers depending on their needs is how do we continue to drive our overall business forward in a way that makes our products great quality products, affordable and accessible to everyone. Carlos. I like some of that creative thinking that you're mentioning there, we know during times of economic stress, sometimes buying in bulk can be a good option as you laid out in. Certainly cheaper prices are positive for consumers as well. When will some of these innovations or changes to try to help the consumer and that's your company be rolled out across Kraft Heinz some of them christians we're seeing right now in our business, what we're also doing is being actually very much customized to our different retailer partners. So you'll see that for example, some of the offers were gonna be making certain retailers are gonna be varied depending on how the consumer basis for that particular retail. And I'll give you a couple examples, you know, there may be places where, You know, we find that it's better for us to talk about the fact that you know, one for $20, you can actually feed a family of four for lunch for an entire week. There there may be other types of consumers and retailers in which we're gonna be talking around. How do we make sure that every day we have a price that is affordable for that family and that may mean that we have a Kraft Mac and cheese product available and everyday low price between july and back to school. So it also depends on us being able to work with the consumers and where they're shopping so that we can actually customize the solution to that particular consumer base Carlos, What's the data that's informing your decisions? It sounds like in some cases some of the prices of these items and the packaged offerings will be updated in real time based on perceived demand? A seasonal demand as well? And what's going on at homes um as well as the start of the school year, How are you making these business decisions as to the price for certain items and the packaging. Listen, that's a great question. And I'll tell you that the other thing to think about is that sometimes what we find is that families maybe making different choices as the, as the months go by. So if you think about the cash flow for different families, it may be that they're buying a certain larger size at the beginning of the month and a smaller size at the end of the month. And there's two areas in which we're focused in order to make those decisions. Number one, making sure we have the consumer insights. So we are implementing a number of tools that are helping us making sure that we have direct consumer feedback through the leveraging of our first party data information and that and that we understand better how consumers are living the life in the real time. The second way we're doing it is by we have actually a partnership that we announced with Microsoft that allows us to better understand different ways to analyze the effectiveness of those promotions and different ways in which we can come with our products to store. So it may be that in real time we can understand how effective consumers are feeling that a different price point or a total value bundle might be to that particular consumer. And that could be an example of saying, you know, there may be situations in which we are actually testing things like bringing our Oscar Mayer ham with our Kraft singles and a private label bread. That idea of bringing that together. How did that consumer respond. And again, the technical tools that we have right now allows us to better get that read right away Carlos, I'm gonna jump in here, We are tight on time. Let's hope stores do pass on these savings to consumers. That's Carlos Abrams Rivera, president of North America for Craft Times. Thank you.