VIENNA, Austria – Marcel Löffler, Julius Meinl Group CEO and Chairman, shared his view about the business plan of the company focusing on the expansion of the international market, explaining how the brand approach to business changed during the last decade. Below, we share his opinions.
The Meinl Barista Cup was the first competition created by Julius Meinl. What does the Cup mean for Julius Meinl?
“The idea is more than a competition. The baristas competing are trying to get the best out of the coffee beans they are working with. This is about quality. Product quality and premium quality were always the core elements of our culture.
This is why the Meinl Barista Cup is so important to us. Also, we must not forget the service part involving the coffee machines and the grinders that are crucial to guarantee a top-quality experience to the customers.
Also this, of course, represents a social event: socializing is at the heart of Viennese coffee culture. This competition is not meant only to offer artists an opportunity to compete and to show their passion but it is also a reflection of our culture”.
What is your business plan in Italy?
“We have been present in the Italian market for a long time. Italy is an extended home market for us. We tried to merge the Viennese coffe culture in the competitive Italian market: this helped us to strengthen ourselves.
We are currently ranked between number 6 and 7 in Horeca companies out of 920 and we intend to grow even more and rank at least number 5 and even further. Italy is a core market for us”.
Last year you mentioned that Julius Meinl wants to focus more on the international market (especially the USA). How is the expansion going?
“We are delighted with our job in the USA. Of course, the first years are the most difficult ones but we were able to successfully establish our gastronomy horeca business in Florida, in Washington D.C., and in Chicago.
Now we have a strong presence in the USA with 15 million in gastronomy but potentially we want to achieve our presence with a 100 million business in 7-8 years. In the USA we are also looking for acquisitions to move up.
We are still in an early stage so we need to experiment as much as we can. We need at least 3 years to really push in the consumer market in the USA”.
How would you say Julius Meinl’s approach to business changed during the last decade considering the pandemic, the war, the inflation, the energy and raw materials crisis?
“First of all, our web platform needed to be more stable to grow. We needed a robust IT infrastructure which we now implemented with SAP 4 (an enterprise resource planning software for large enterprises). And we also deeply explored the digital world. Through the pandemic, both factors, this IT infrastructure, and the digital component became much more important to our business.
We are in the middle of a transformation process here on IT and digitalization, which is now in the second half of the implementation. But that was dramatically strengthened through the pandemic.
The second thing is efficiency. And the third component is horeca. We love gastronomy but when in 2020 all our shops across the world were closed, we said “We need something else”. And so reaching out to the end consumers in retail became a priority.
Then we started paying even more attention to sustainability as we celebrated 160 years. We want to ensure that we, as a company, can last another 160 years, but also we want to make sure there is coffee for another 160 years. But the pandemic together, of course, with the global warming has shown us that business models can suddendly change, and I think our commitment to sustainable initiatives has tripled in our core business in the past 10 years.
Also, if a company has a CRM model (customer relationship management), it is possible to steer their sales force better.
In that case, you can understand better your customers. Thanks to AI you can talk to consumers with artificial voice, so you can have a digital sales force on top of your own sales force and you can double results. So this is for us: the digitalization, the e-commerce side, and understanding better your needs.
For Julius Meinl, since we always focused on the traditional aspect, it is also fundamental that we fully absorb it the technological aspect“.
What are the countries that have a stronger presence in Julius Meinl sales?
“Our best countries in terms of sales are Austria, Romania, Croatia, Italy, Poland, and new markets in which we are investing more like Germany and the United States: of course, they are not the same size, but those are our future markets together with Italy and Poland”.
What are the company numbers when it comes to net sales?
“In Italy, from a net sales perspective, we are expecting a 4-5% organic growth. I would see us doubling our business in the next 5 or 6 years. And that will not happen without an organic growth, which is acquisitions”.
