Ep. 187: Braden Cadenelli – Bringing sustainable practices to the food industry

Connect with Braden:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/braden-cadenelli-a0737b108/


Full Episode Transcript:
Adam (00:05):



I'm Adam Larson and welcome to Count Me In, the podcast that
explores the world of business from the management accountants
perspective. Coming up, I speak with Braden Cadenelli about the
realities of implementing sustainability practices in the food
industry.


Adam (00:20):



Braden is a professional baker in pastry chef who runs six
state-of-the-art test kitchens for Puratos, a company which makes
ingredients and products for bakers patissies, and chocolatiers
around the world. This podcast helped me understand how
sustainability practices must be baked into the financial
planning and budgeting process at companies in order to drive
long term value. And Braden is finding that management
accountants are excited to work with him on his sustainability
issues, especially when he brings the treats. Let's listen in
now. Braden, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise
with us. And as we jump in to get started we know that many
businesses are dealing with the reality that adopting sustainable
business practices is really what's needed to be successful in
the future and also is what's needed for our planet. Can you
share a bit about your story, about how you came to see that this
is a need and how you started the process with your company?


Braden (01:20):



Of course, Adam, thank you so much having me on today. I really
appreciate it. And I'm excited to get to share and talk about a
subject that I'm very passionate about, and that is
sustainability and specifically sustainability within the food
industry. There's really for our specific company where I work.
We're Puratos, we're a bakery ingredient company. There's really
two specific factors that have led us to our sustainability
initiatives. The first one is that we are a family-owned company
and the second generation of those families is starting to move
into leadership roles within the company. And sustainability is a
very important topic to younger people. Not to say it wasn't on
the radar of the generations before not to say it wasn't
important. It's even more important to the leaders who are coming
up now, not only through our company, but in other companies as
well.


Braden (02:18):



The second is consumer demand. We work in the food industry.
There's a large demand over the past 10 to 15 years to clean up
food. And a lot of people say they want to have food labels where
they can pronounce everything on that label. If you're going to
put that focus on cleaning up your food label and caring so much
about the food you are creating as a food manufacturer, you have
to care about how you're creating it. You have to care about
every step of the system that gets you to that final finished
product. And what that means is nowadays you have to have a
sustainable system if for no other reason so that you can
continue to be a successful business in the marketplace.


Adam (03:11):



I can see how that would be super important, especially if you're
listening to your customers. Has it been difficult to start that
path as especially with, you know, you're listening to your
customers, but you also have to worry about your bottom line. So
there's so many different things that you have to weigh. What has
that process been like? Especially, you know, obviously this is a
podcast for accountants, you know, what's this been look like as
you're looking at your bottom line, working with your finance
team, trying to see what is the best way to do this?


Braden (03:40):



Well specifically in my role. So to fill the listeners in a
little bit, I manage a network of test kitchens within the United
States and we have six test kitchens. That means I also have a
little bit of a reach into some of our other practical physical
facilities. When I work directly with our finance team in this
aspect, it's all about long term planning. It is all about
targeting the solutions that are going to work for our kitchens,
and then making sure that we have the financial capital to be
able to implement those solutions. So it's really, I have monthly
meetings with the finance team, making sure that I am telling
them what it is that I'm going to be looking into purchasing why
I need to make these purchases and building out a proper budget.
A lot of my job around sustainability is actually around
budgeting and making sure that I'm doing the research and I'm
talking to the right industry people and finding the right
solutions and then finding ways to plan for them.


Adam (04:43):



That's great. So you have a really good relationship with your
finance team then, because obviously if you didn't, you wouldn't
be able to work on this project at all.


Braden (04:51):



Exactly. No, I'm very lucky. I mean, sometimes I have to bribe
them with a cake or a cookie or a brownie if I really, you know,
annoy them, if I forget to submit a report on time or if I forget
to put a project through in power steering the right way.
Generally speaking though. Yeah. We have a great relationship.
It's really, for me, very interesting to get, to see that side of
the business and get to play a role in planning out these long
term projects and what the finances for those mean.


Adam (05:22):



So as you've become a partner with that team, are there other
teams that you've had to kind of become a bridge with to kind of
make this project a success?


Braden (05:32):



Yes. That's a great question because you cannot accomplish
anything in any kind of business. It doesn't matter food industry
or not. You cannot accomplish anything without learning how to
partner with and work with other departments and other people. I
heard a great saying once, and it was said to catch people's
attention and it was all business is personal. And a lot of
people, especially if you grew up watching eighties movies, you
go, well, what about all those movies where they just said, oh,
it's nothing personal. It's just business.


Braden (06:01):



All business though is personal because you're conducting
business with other people. So what I've had to do is I've had
to, A.) Get buy in from my own department, because when we're
talking about sustainability, we're talking about changing
people's daily activities because we are changing or removing
resources that they are used to having. So I need to find
solutions that they'll buy into. And so that they see the long
term vision of this. I then have to sell the finance team on why
we need to budget for this. For example, let's say we need to
remove one use disposable item, but we need the CapEx to purchase
a reusable item in its place, reusable that involves a capital
expenditure, right. Something that I'm gonna use once and throw
away. That's more OPEX. I control. I'm lucky I control OPEX for
my department. I only have a small say in CapEx, right?


Braden (06:59):



The other people that I really have to have buy in from is our
engineering team. They're the ones who are out there helping me,
scour the industry and look for solutions. And then helping me
implement the solutions. Because if we're talking again from a
financial perspective, it's not only the solution. If I'm
replacing, let's say a piece of technology, let's say a piece of
bakery equipment that is very heavy in a certain type of utility
usage. I need the tradespeople to take out the old machine. They
need to install the new machine. There's an entire part of that
process that isn't necessarily seen by everybody, but I need to
worry about it and...