INC Chats With Jodie Johnston, Category Technical Manager – Food on the Move, Prepared Produce, Café & Hospitality at Marks & Spencer

Jodie Johnston leads technical teams to implement and deliver market-leading innovation to ensure that food safety standards and best practices are met across store operations and with global supplier partners small and large. She has worked within many areas in both manufacturing and retailing, including fresh, ambient and quick service restaurants. Her extensive experience in the manufacturing industry includes setting up new factories from scratch, working for major global/UK brands, and leading technical and new product development teams for Tesco across the UK, Europe and Japan to support a sushi project. She is passionate about the food industry and engaging with schools and universities to support future talent. A massive coffee lover, she set up a coffee tasting experience from farm to cup in Guatemala.

Let’s start with the big picture. In your view, what are the big consumer trends of the moment?

The biggest consumer trend at the moment is health, in particular high protein and gut health.

And what does this mean for nuts and dried fruits?

It’s a great time for the nut industry, as nuts are such an important part of the diet and trends going forward. Nuts provide important nutrients, including fibre, plant protein and vitamins and minerals. People who eat more nuts tend to have a lower risk of heart disease, cancer and death from all causes. Although nuts have high fat and therefore calorie content, the majority of this is the “good” fat: unsaturated fat. There is some evidence to suggest that the physical structure of nuts —that is, the food matrix— means that our bodies can’t actually extract all of the energy (calories) that they contain when we eat them.

Unfortunately, consumption in the UK is currently low. Nut spreads have increased in popularity, with new varieties such as cashew and almond spreads offering us more choices. Nuts are also handy for snacking and make a tasty addition to stir-fries, curries, stews, pasta dishes, salads, breakfast cereals, porridge and yogurt.

Nuts and dried fruits are key to maintaining our health strategy through our “Eat Well” brand, where customers follow the flower to select the healthier options within our foodhall. This area also supports our compliance with the UK’s new HFSS legislation. Under these rules, any product which is considered to nutritionally be too high in fat, salt or sugar cannot be stored at the front of stores or at till points. This, in turn, is giving the dried fruit and nut industry more merchandising opportunities in these store locations, which is increasing the customer base and sales of these products.

In terms of product development, how is Marks & Spencer responding to key consumer trends?

At M&S, we are all about innovation and creating trends, such as our high-protein and gut health ranges, as well as our collaboration with the nutrition science company ZOE, which led to the launch of the M&S Food x ZOE Gut Shot. We also take a lot of pride in our dried fruit and nut category, which features market-leading quality, innovation and depth of range.

What are some of the main challenges you are currently facing in the supply chain, and what is Marks & Spencer doing to address these issues?

The main challenge within the dried fruit and nut industry would be around traceability, in particular being able to complete traceability within the supply chains back to the grower for each nut commodity. M&S are addressing this through understanding the risks presented at each stage of the supply chain from both a food safety and a responsible sourcing perspective. Where challenges present themselves, the dried fruit and nut industry needs to drive and improve this and implement mitigation measures to ensure that supply chains are as safe as possible for both the product and the people working in the industry.

Food safety is always a top concern. How do you ensure that the food products sold by Marks & Spencer are safe and high-quality?

At Marks & Spencer, we are committed to ensuring that our products are safe, legal and produced in line with our brand integrity and quality standards. Our wonderful supplier partners from which we source our products are responsible for delivery against their legal obligations, in addition to our food safety, quality and integrity requirements. Our Food Technology team are then accountable for working alongside our supply base in achieving the requirements for food safety, high quality and technical innovation that we are famous for. We have a robust set of monitoring procedures in place to ensure that risk is effectively managed and mitigated where appropriate, including independent auditing, a robust product testing program and regular visits to our supplier partners.

How does Marks & Spencer view the issue of sustainability and what efforts are you making in this area?

Sustainability is part of how we do business at M&S —it’s in our DNA. From the beginning, M&S has built trust by doing the right thing by our people and the communities we serve, and this remains one of the core values we live by today.

The unique relationship of trust between M&S and its customers runs much deeper than our community impact —it runs right through our entire value chain. You will hear us talk about protecting the magic of M&S, and that magic is summed up in the trusted value promise we make to our customers.

Our founders knew that value means much more than price; it means giving customers assurance that raw materials are sourced responsibly to protect the planet for tomorrow, providing confidence that the people who make and sell our products are treated fairly. It also means setting the standards that others follow, whether in terms of animal welfare or product traceability.

Equally, there is a new EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which will apply to all EU companies and parent companies. It aims to enhance the protection of the environment and human rights within the EU and globally, so I would recommend it as a topic of discussion at future INC meetings to understand how the dried fruit and nut industry will comply. In addition to this, at M&S we are also updating our nut sourcing policy for publication to our suppliers this year.