Interview with Nacho Gimeno, Portafolio Manager at IdrinkSuperFood

Tell us about your background, who are you, and what has your journey been like?

My story began and has developed almost entirely in Valencia. I studied Human Nutrition and Dietetics alongside Food Science and Technology at the University of Valencia. I was passionate about both disciplines, but I soon discovered that I wanted to continue my professional career in the food industry. I therefore moved to Barcelona to pursue a Master’s degree in Food Technology, Control and Safety.

After several years of considerable uncertainty in the job market, I started working at Mercadona as an R&D technician in bakery products. I continued developing my career as a quality manager at a small company in the meat sector, before subsequently joining ALNUT, a baby-food company where I spent more than six years and which clearly shaped my professional career. There, I had the opportunity to work both in quality and environmental management and in the commercial area. In addition to forming very good friendships that I still maintain today, this allowed me to develop completely different skills which, over time, became complementary and helped me build the versatile profile I have today.

My last experience before joining this company was at Zuvamesa, a juice company specializing in NFC. It was a short stay, but I learned a great deal at a company with very high-quality standards and a team with whom I was fortunate to work very comfortably from the moment I arrived. In February of this year, I decided to join iDrink Superfood, in what is my first experience outside Spain.

If I had to identify one lesson from my career, I would say never close doors based on the profile you come from or what you studied. The professional world will always put opportunities in front of you to develop skills that were not part of your initial plan. The important thing is not to set limits, but rather to remain open to taking that leap when it appears, because I am sure it will enrich the way you work for the rest of your career.

Information Sources and Market Trends

What are your daily reference sources for anticipating price movements in raw materials such as concentrated juice, and how do you distinguish market noise from a genuine trend that should be reflected in your portfolio?

My main source is direct consultation with the leading producers in each market and for each product. This gives us reliable, up-to-date, first-hand information, something that any generic report can provide at the same speed. In return, we offer them visibility through publications developed with our marketing team, both on our own platforms (ZestNews) and in media outlets with which we collaborate, such as The DairyNews Today.

It is a mutually beneficial relationship: they provide real-time market intelligence, and we provide editorial exposure. My role is to translate that information into clear, verified criteria that the commercial team can then execute confidently when closing contracts or adjusting stock.

In a sector so exposed to weather and harvest shocks, how do you turn macro information into concrete purchasing or price-hedging decisions for the company?

The commercial team makes the final decisions on contracting and stock volumes, but my work comes beforehand: filtering and cross-checking what producers tell us against the actual evolution of the harvest and the market, while keeping our system updated so that the best decisions can be made.

This validation gives the commercial team the confidence to act with room to react.

What role does monitoring consumer trends (health, functionality and sustainability) play in sourcing decisions beyond the price of the raw material?

It is one of the central pillars of my work. A portfolio manager who only looks at price and not at changes in consumer preferences will end up building an outdated portfolio within 12–18 months.

At the moment, sugar reduction, functional ingredients and clean-label formulations are several of the areas we are actively exploring. They directly influence the types of concentrates and extract we prioritize when assessing new suppliers, not just the customer’s final formulation. In this regard, we work very closely with our Marketing department, which provides us with valuable information on how these trends are evolving.

Product Development with Suppliers

When the idea of a new formulation arises, how is it translated into a technical brief that the supplier can execute?

A project can originate with us or with the customer. When the initiative is ours, the first thing we do is present the idea to our suppliers (we consider them partners, because without their joint effort we could not carry out any project) to assess its real feasibility.

When the project originates with the customer, they provide us with complete brief containing all the relevant information. From there, we work with suppliers while considering the key variables: recipe, regulatory compliance, cost and production feasibility.

What technical information do you always require from a supplier before approving a new concentrate or extract, and why is that level of detail so important?

Every project must meet two requirements in parallel. The first is the recipe from a purely technical perspective: the formulation and ingredients, which lead directly to the physicochemical and organoleptic parameters.

The second is regulation: the product must guarantee legal compliance in both the target market and the age group for which it is intended. Developing a product for the Middle East is not the same as developing one for Europe; nor is developing a conventional product for adults the same as developing one in the Baby Food category. These are intrinsic product characteristics that must be reflected in the final development.

What is the process of coordination and iteration with the supplier until the final product is reached?

We mainly work with large, established producers, and this is a deliberate decision. Development with them may take somewhat longer and the cost may be slightly higher than with a smaller supplier, but that difference is offset by a level of service, reliability and ability to fine-tune technical parameters from the first attempt that smaller suppliers would find difficult to offer.

In addition, thanks to our volume and market position, we obtain more favourable commercial terms than a customer could achieve by negotiating directly with those same producers or with other intermediaries. We also maintain a direct presence in the territories where we operate, which streamlines day-to-day coordination.

Over the years, this relationship has generated process synergies to the point where we operate almost as a single company with our key suppliers.

What differentiates a good supplier partner from a mediocre one in this co-development process?

We have been working with the same suppliers for quite some time, so the selection and evaluation phase was resolved long ago. They provide us with a high degree of reliability. The teams are integrated and know the project-development process first-hand.

It is true that there are always small performance differences between suppliers, but at this stage the real value lies in continuity: the trust and mutual knowledge accumulated over the years are what enable us to be agile today, more than any one-off comparison between suppliers.

Tastify: Product Personalization

Tastify proposes personalizing recipe, price and taste. Why these three variables specifically, and how do they interact in practice?

Combining these three variables is not easy, because at least one of them is almost always in tension with the others. Tastify seeks optimization: finding the balance that benefits the customer most, getting as close as possible to what they truly require overall.

When something has to be compromised, we try to ensure that it is always the point that has the least impact on the product according to the customer’s own criteria: in some cases that means prioritizing price, in others the organoleptic component, and in others a clean-label recipe above everything else.

Which type of customer benefits most from a tool like Tastify: a major beverage brand or a small/artisanal manufacturer? Why?

We have prioritized first solving the technical equation properly (the balance between recipe, price and taste) before segmenting the offering by customer type, because we want the system’s foundation to be solid before differentiating the experience according to the profile.

This is a sequencing decision, not a limitation: we know that priorities change substantially between a major brand, which seeks iteration speed and reduced commercial risk, and a small or artisanal manufacturer, which needs flexibility in minimum production quantities and cost adjustments.

We are continuously working to incorporate that segmentation layer, as part of the continuous improvement philosophy we apply to all Tastify development.

How do you see Tastify evolving in the medium term? Where is product personalization heading over the next 2–3 years?

Our idea is to move in step with the market and technological advances, which means a gradual increase in product personalization. We must move ever closer to the optimal point between recipe, price and taste in relation to what our customers demand.

But Tastify is not designed solely to address a health or cost need: we want it to have a purely experiential dimension, which is increasingly demanded by the market and, in general, by people all over the world.

Successfully adapting a formula fully to what the customer is looking for turns the product into a positive experience that they will probably want to access again. That will be our success.

The Use of AI in Daily Work

What specific tasks do you use AI for in your day to day work, and what role do you see for generative AI in Tastify or in your R&D process?

Today I mainly use it for specific tasks: monitoring and structuring price and market-trend information, supporting the review and translation of suppliers’ technical data sheets, and speeding up the drafting of internal communications and analyses.

This is a deliberately progressive development: we are steadily incorporating these capabilities, with the clear aim of scaling towards AI integrated into the R&D process as a whole and Tastify in particular, capable of accelerating the match between recipe, price and taste.

I firmly believe that those who become proficient in AI and adapt to continuous improvements in its use, in any sector, will generate genuine competitive advantages, from operational efficiency to penetration into new markets. That is why our approach in this area is one of continuous improvement.

Closing Reflection

In a small company such as iDrink Superfood, our individual performance takes on a particularly important dimension. We must be able to combine rigor with flexibility and step outside our comfort zones when interacting across different departments, because our structure itself requires us to move away from compartmentalization. Properly channeled, this is highly positive, as it represents an opportunity for continuous learning.

In my case, this dual perspective allows me to make portfolio decisions that do not remain solely technical (the sensory or physicochemical profile of the product) but also incorporate an understanding of what those parameters really mean in terms of costs and lead times and, ultimately, how much value we generate for the end consumer.

Regarding the sector’s global context, the main factors remain unchanged: raw materials will continue to be volatile, the climate will continue to influence harvests and prices, and AI will increasingly determine how we access information.

However, the real competitive advantage will not lie solely in who has the fastest data, but in who knows how to translate that data into a meaningful formulation decision, something that combines market rigor with product intuition.

That is, ultimately, what we are trying to build with Tastify: not a tool that merely optimizes numbers against a formula, but a bridge between the rational and the experiential, between what the market can offer and what the person on the other side truly wants to feel when consuming that product.

Check it out on Youtube!

https://youtube.com/shorts/NqrknVMrpaw?si=J52uU3mtQF2_KMHq