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Nestlé Professional - Middle East country business manager Jeroen Pluijmers talks to Caterer Middle East about changing trends in the region's F&B market and the role Nestlé Professional plays in developing the regional food and beverage market.

Created as an entity of food and beverage giant Nestlé, Nestlé Professional - Middle East offers the region's F&B industry a wide range of products and business solutions.

Nestlé Professional - Middle East country business manager Jeroen Pluijmers describes the firm creation as providing "a new mindset" for Nestlé: "It really is a change in our business focus," he says.

The supplier is committed to developing closer relationships with its foodservice partners, as well as targeting the growing market potential of out-of-home consumption - something Pluijmers notes is "developing fast" across the region.

"The environment today has changed," he says. "With the increase of on-the-go consumption, people are consuming more and more outside the home."

Nestlé Professional offers a wide range of food and beverage brands including Maggi, Chef, Nescafé, and Coffeemate, while also offering its customers various F&B solutions to improve their businesses.

"We hold product application and demonstrations weekly at different outlets, in order to support renovation of menus and correct application of our solutions," explains Pluijmers.

"We are also involved with the Emirates Culinary Guild where we offer our support for the industry through different culinary events.

"For beverages, we offer a total package starting from tailoring the coffee taste to the profile of the consumer to proposing the right machine as per the outlet's requirement," he comments.

According to Pluijmers, every solution offered by Nestlé Professional to its clients needs to be of a high quality and carefully looked at, taking into account the fact that healthy eating trends are becoming more prevalent across the region.

"While we innovate and renovate our products to suit the needs of today, our focus is firmly on the quality of the ingredients and food safety standards.

"Part of our quality standard is to educate the operators and, in turn, help them educate their consumers about the health aspect of the products they serve - even quick-service restaurants are moving towards the fresh and healthy side of things now."

Changing trends means the company's employees need to be fully aware of what it is they are explaining to its clients.

"We have special training sessions with our in-house nutritionists so that we understand the importance of healthy choices before advocating the same to others," explains Pluijmers.

"It is especially important that the focus on health does not take away from the focus on taste.

"Every consumer wants to have healthy products as long as they are tasty and every operator wants to sell healthy products as long as they make money - we have to work within these parameters."

As part of an international corporate giant, Nestlé Professional has both an international and local perspective when offering the right solutions, says Pluijmers. He notes, however, that the business would like to have more competition so as to improve the region's quality standards across F&B outlets.

"The presence of other players would help raise standards creating more consistency in the industry," he explains, adding that more competition would lend a helping hand in improving the "challenging area" of hygiene and food safety regulations across the Middle East.

"As a result, we work closely with chefs to help give the Middle East deserved recognition as a world-class culinary destination," he concludes.

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