by David Weiner
This week’s feature by John Seabrook in the New Yorker is chock full of great insight into PepsiCo efforts to reshape our business for long-term growth through our commitment to innovation. One of the more interesting sections comes when he interviews Dr. Greg Yep, PepsiCo’s senior vice-president of long-term research.
Dr. Yep describes PepsiCo’s cadre of “trekkers” who travel the globe looking for new and innovative flavors that researchers can study for possible use in our products.
“We go into local villages, street markets, wherever, and we ask people, “Hey, how’d you make this taste sweet? Did you put sugar in it, or something else? We collect samples of everything – fruits, plants, roots, even bugs. Might be beetles – they have a nutty flavor. Might be bee larvae. Might be a certain variety of chili pepper which has a sweetness in the stem.”
As you can see our local flavors are very important to us – finding the right flavors will always drive performance. We have such a wide variety of products around the globe it might take me years to try them all! Which one’s your favorite?
