NOMAD FOODS

BREAKTHROUGH OPPORTUNITY

In 2016, Breakthrough was brought into Nomad Foods as Stefan Descheemaeker was appointed as their new CEO.

When Breakthrough and Stefan set about transforming the company’s culture, the business was suffering from poor financial performance, a 12.5% drop in year-on-year earnings from 2013, and market threat from discounters.

Having been recommended Breakthrough, Stefan had high expectations for turning the business’s culture around so that it would thrive and deliver on his ambitious growth targets.

BREAKTHROUGH APPROACH

Breakthrough’s first step was to work with Stefan and the Exec to identify Nomad’s strategic outcomes for the next 5 years, and identify how their culture would drive this success.

Nomad’s Outcomes were to:

• Double the size of the business’ growth by 2020 & grow Market Share
• Increase the innovation of Core products
• Align as a one ‘Nomad Foods’ brand for its consumers and in its internal operations

Breakthrough would deliver on these by linking Nomad’s culture directly to its strategy.

• Our Breakthrough Tools would be the vehicle for living Nomad’s our way Values.
• Breakthrough’s Growth Mindset would become a standard for Nomad.
• All MU’s would be united with one Common Language, behaviours and ways of working.

Breakthrough has delivered and will continue to deliver on these outcomes with the rollout of Wave 1 & Wave 3 Programmes.

WAVE 1 – LEADERSHIP

We first started working with the Executive and the Enterprise Leadership Teams in Q4 of 2016. Breakthrough had to shift their collective process-driven mindset to ignite Nomad’s new corporate narrative, strategy and values. We did this by holding a Leaders Intensive that would give the Leadership the time, permission and means of adopting a Growth Mindset and move away from their fixed perspectives of the business.

We believe that the success of an organisation’s Breakthrough lies in its follow-through, and for Nomad this meant planning Accelerators that would align with their key internal growth targets. These Breakthrough Accelerators have taken place with the Exec and ELT every 6 months since their first intensive to successfully ensure that commitment to their growth targets has not lost momentum.

WAVE 3 – CRITICAL MASS

In parallel to their Wave 1 Leadership rollout, Nomad is following our Wave 3 Programme structure. Having rolled out 13 successful 1-day Tools Programmes to their Regional Market Units, Nomad are now rolling out to their Supply Chain associates.

As a result, Nomad are reaching a critical mass of participants who are equipped with Breakthrough’s language and are well on their way to making Breakthrough culture inextricably linked to Nomad’s culture.

DIGITAL

We have moved over 1000 Nomad participants through our Breakthrough Digital Experience. Through this experience, we ensured that all associates received consistent post-programme support. By creating a transparent platform that contains content for applying Breakthrough principles with their colleagues and a virtual community, the platform promotes collaboration across different seniorities and MU’s in the business.

FROM TURNAROUND TO TRANSFORMATION

Nomad now moves into the next step of their Breakthrough journey as our 2019 outcomes concentrate on driving Nomad from ‘Turnaround to Transformation’.

Their Transformation phase focuses on building a sustainable Breakthrough culture that will enable the company to deliver on their ambitious 2020 targets.

As participants move through their Transformation phase, it is important that everyone feels empowered to lead Breakthrough behaviour for themselves. The combination of Breakthrough Leaders Accelerators, Tools Programmes and digital support will ensure the entire organisation gets to this stage together.

BREAKTHROUGH RESULTS

Nomad and Breakthrough have successfully worked together to deliver on the outcomes set out at the beginning of our partnership in 2016, with Nomad seeing significant return on their Breakthrough investment.

IMMEDIATE FINANCIAL RETURN

• Since Breakthrough partnered with Nomad in October 2016, Nomad turned into profitability after incurring losses for the previous four years
• Nomad increased their earning in the last four years from 2016 to 2020 by 519% averaging 130% annually
• Both Revenue and Operating income have increased for the last five consecutive years by the end of 2021
• As of March 2021, Nomad enjoyed a 17 quarters of growth by March 2020
• Breakthrough completed 25 Programmes with Nomad
• Since we first partnered with Nomad on the 3rd of October 2016, their stock value has increased by 115%, from $12.01 and to now $25.88 by the end of 2021

PORTFOLIO DIVERSIFICATION

• Acquisition of Green Isle Foods Ltd. (‘Goodfella’s Pizza’) was completed in Q2 2018.
• With this, Nomad demonstrates the commitment they are making to expand their share of the frozen food category in Western Europe.
• Goodfellas Pizza will provide Nomad with deep knowledge and expertise to thrive in the new attractive frozen pizza category.

MARKETING INNOVATION

• Core products and Nomad’s brand image has been innovated to bring it up-to-date with contemporary food trends.
• The innovation of Birds Eye’s Inspirations fish range has seen their well-loved core frozen fish products evolve to meet consumer health-eating and environmental standards.
• Birdseye and Igloo’s mascot, The Captain, has also had a facelift. The company revealed the newly appointed Captain in January 2018 to reflect a contemporary consumer image. This €8 million advertising campaign promotes Nomad as a brand that understands its consumers and has evolved with them.

As a result of Breakthrough embedding a growth mindset across the organisation, Nomad are delivering on their commitment to bringing innovation and R&D across the organisation. Their focus on innovating Core products and renovating a well-loved brand image has meant they have built on existing consumer loyalty for the brand to reach new consumers.

As we complete our journey with Nomad in 2022, they have exceeded their growth ambition and fully transformed as an organisation.