Nestlé launched on Wednesday its first social impact food: a cereal bar with sale profits going entirely to NGO Gerando Falcões, which fights poverty in 1,700 poor neighborhoods in Brazil.
Called Gerando Falcões bar, the product is a global novelty of the multinational, present in 83 countries, and will initially be sold only on the internet, on platforms Mercado Libre and Empório Nestlé. “This is the first of many. My dream is to one day see, in supermarkets, exclusive shelves with all kinds of products, chocolates, cookies, coffees, whose profits are donated to social transformation,” said Nestlé Brazil CEO Marcelo Melchior.
The initial expectation, according to Carolina Sevciuc, head of digital transformation at Nestlé Brasil, is to generate R$1 million monthly, which will be allocated to the NGO´s iniciative Favela 3D.
The Favela 3D project — “dignified, digital and developed” — aims to restructure Brazilian poor neighborhoods to promote transformation through income generation, housing, citizenship, health, culture, education, and entrepreneurship programs.
This is the second major partnership announced by Gerando Falcões in less than two months. In December, Ânima Educação announced it will invest in courses in the communities where the project is being developed: Marte, in São José do Rio Preto (São Paulo state); Vergel, in Maceió (Alagoas state); Morro da Providência, in Rio de Janeiro; and the Boca do Sapo neighborhood, in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, Greater São Paulo.
“This initiative with Nestlé opens the way and will accelerate the development of social technologies. It can lead other companies to also want to create similar products, with actions that are institutionalized, that last,” said Eduardo Lyra, founder and CEO of Gerando Falcões.
According to Mr. Lyra, the NGO is supported by Kayma, an Israeli company run by Dan Ariely, a prestigious researcher in psychology and behavioral economics. The company specializes in creating digital solutions and methodologies that will help measure and assess the impacts of Favela 3D. “The goal is that it can be replicated in all the favelas in Brazil.”
The creation of the cereal bar involved the participation of 60 people, including employees of Nestlé and the NGO. There were more than 40 ideas presented, until reaching 12 final concepts that resulted in the bar. “We are starting sales through online channels because we don’t want to make this a chicken flight, but a hawk flight. We want all this learning, whether in distribution, in the price point, or in the investment made, to help us build something bigger, with sales that reach the whole of Brazil,” said Mr. Melchior.
According to Instituto Locomotiva, around 17.1 million people live in Brazilian favelas, equivalent to 8% of the population. Added together, they would form the fourth most populous state in the country, behind only São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro.
Source: Valor International