Interview with Eva Corretgé, Innovation Manager at Frit Ravich.
Frit Ravich is a leading company in the snacking sector, with a unique dual business model as both a manufacturer of Chips, Nuts, and Snacks and a distributor of major national and international food brands such as Ferrero, Mars, Nestlé, Red Bull, and Chupa-Chups. The company stands out for its commitment to quality and innovation, focusing on sustainability and corporate social responsibility, reinforcing its reputation as a market leader.
At Frit Ravich, innovation is a strategic lever, and FritLab leads initiatives to drive the company’s growth and competitiveness while embedding innovation in the company’s DNA and all its employees. We spoke with Eva Corretgé, Innovation Manager at Frit Ravich, to understand how innovation is being approached.
What innovation challenges are you currently working on? Can you share some specific examples?
From the Consumer strategic axis, we are addressing two major challenges: healthy snacking and sustainable packaging. These are challenges we recently launched at ACCIÓ’s Open Innovation Challenge.
In the Supply and Client axes, we are working on various projects centered around AI technology, such as Forecasting, Promotional Efficiency, and Route Optimization. We are currently starting a pilot with generative AI applied to the Help Desk of the technical systems team.
How do you stay updated and nourished with projects, startups, and new technologies that can address these challenges? What would be your recommendations?
This is one of the main pillars of FritLab: generating an Innovation Ecosystem and acting as a Radar. We strive to create, work, and maintain an ecosystem where we can contribute, share, and learn. That’s why we are part of associations, clusters, and forums where we can share knowledge and experiences with other companies, startups, technology centers, scientists, and universities. INDPULS is one of the associations where we have the most participation, as it constantly provides us with high-interest inputs, promotes collaboration among partners, and connects with high-level startups relevant to the future and present of the company.
Another way we initiate new innovative projects is by opting for grants, with ACCIÓ being our main partner. As mentioned earlier, we recently participated in ACCIÓ’s Open Innovation Challenge at Alimentaria, where we were offered contact with over 140 startups developing healthy snacks and sustainable materials for our packaging.
How do you foster a culture of innovation within your organization, and what methodologies do you use for developing innovative projects?
At Frit Ravich, we foster a culture of innovation through InnoPills, informative capsules about new technologies and trends, as well as through our intrapreneurship program called FritInnova.
In terms of methodologies, we are undergoing a global transformation in our working system at Frit Ravich. A year and a half ago, we started FritWay, an innovative and agile way of working based on OKRs that focuses on impact, always questioning why we do things, and focusing on what is truly relevant. We do all this through autonomous teams working in a networked and synchronized manner, with a distributed leadership model focused on guiding, accompanying, and removing obstacles the teams encounter on their way to achieving their goals.
You recently organized the Frit Ravich Bootcamp in collaboration with Xavier Verdaguer. Can you tell us what the objectives of this initiative were and what results you have obtained from this experience?
Yes, what a great experience! We held a bootcamp outside our facilities to take our teams out of their daily routine, both physically and mentally. Twenty people from Frit Ravich participated, and we created five teams with very different profiles, some of whom had never worked or interacted before. Having the participation of Xavier Verdaguer and the Interactius team made the experience excellent, and all participants left the bootcamp with a more creative outlook, understanding the entire ideation and creation process of an innovative proposal.
In less than 48 hours, we achieved five incredible potential product ideas. Beyond this great output, our main goal was educational, to instill the culture of innovation. In this short time, participants learned methodology, innovation dynamics they could implement in their daily work, and became aware of their capabilities as a team to generate high-value ideas while enjoying the process. This is where the great value of this program lies.
What does INDPULS mean to you?
INDPULS means being connected. It allows us to stay attuned to innovations regularly, share similar situations with other colleagues, anticipate potential problems, meet new and valuable startups, and stay connected with the ecosystem through talks, visits, or events. INDPULS is the HIIT of innovation, with small but interesting capsules that keep us in shape in this field.
