Tomás Pascual Gómez-Cuétara, president of Pascual: “We must enhance value chains with ingredients such as digitalization and sustainability”
“The key to sustained growth is to focus on customers, listen to them and ask them what they expect from us” said Tomas Pascual Gómez-Cuétara, president of Pascual, at the latest session of Desayunos Esade, held by Esade Alumni in conjunction with Criteria Caixa. “We used to focus on selling our product but now we know we should operate the other way round, asking our customers what they expect from us and our brands (Leche Pascual, Bezoya, ViveSoy, Bifrutas, Mocay, Café Jurado…)”.
During his talk, besides underlining the need to focus on customer satisfaction, a cornerstone for growing his company, Pascual acknowledged the challenges and obstacles involved, “Milk is a mature industry, competition is cutthroat and it’s hard to grow”. So, “we must exploit our resources and make the value chain increasingly sophisticated by incorporating elements such as sustainability and new technologies to produce products and brands attractive to consumers”.
New era, new challenge
“Society has changed considerably since my father founded the company” said the president, “Not only must we adapt to the constant changes taking place, we also have to deal with considerable noise when trying to get our message through”. In this respect, Tomás Pascual explained that this change in society not only affects his firm’s customer segmentation and communication strategies, but also how it structures its workforce. “We firmly believe in uniting young talent with the experience of older employees: a very forceful combination” he said.
Collaborating with social development
The company’s ESG (environment, social and corporate governance) concerns were also an important part of Pascual’s talk. The president highlighted the company’s proactive collaboration with young farmers in the form of scholarships to encourage them to stay on the land, and participation in projects to avoid food waste in conjunction with partners in the third sector. Pascual emphasized that the involvement of employees in purpose-driven projects that contribute to society is essential for furthering their commitment to the company.
The president of Pascual was accompanied in this session of Desayunos Esade by Mario Lara, director of Esade Madrid.
