Aleks Fiege - Enrico | Roots In Good Food

Managing hundreds of SKUs with a lean team might sound like a logistical nightmare to some, but for Aleks Fiege, Marketing Director at Enrico Food, it’s simply the reality of building a strong, agile food company. In this interview, Aleks shares his perspective on what drives brand growth, how innovation plays a central role in Enrico’s strategy, and why the Netherlands is the perfect testing ground for new ideas. From launching a lighter pizza base inspired by Italian food fairs to learning from a failed concept that didn’t translate in-market, his stories offer valuable insights into what it really means to grow a brand

Brand Growth at Enrico Foods

At the core of Enrico’s business model lies a powerful belief: brands exist not just for storytelling but to deliver financial value. “A brand is essentially a means to make more money, a way to link reputation to a product so you can drive pricing. You need to tie financial KPIs to it, not only brand equity KPIs,” Aleks says.

There are quite a few KPIs Aleks looks at when it comes to brand growth. “From a business standpoint, it’s about turnover, margins, competitiveness, and shelf share. But when it comes to brand health, we also look at brand awareness, preference, rotation and penetration.” He explains, “With more premium products like Jean Baton, our premium mayonnaise, rotation won’t be as high as with some of our mass-market products or private label propositions. That’s where penetration becomes the leading indicator. You’re reaching fewer, but potentially more loyal households.”

“A brand is a vehicle to make money by building a reputation around a product so consumers are willing to pay more for it.”

From Gut Feeling to Structured Innovation

For a company like Enrico Food, innovation isn’t an occasional campaign; it’s embedded in the growth strategy. “For us, innovation is a crucial growth engine. We are very successful with innovation through private label and 3^rd part brands. From a branding point of view, innovation also helps us deliver on the brand promise,” says Aleks. “We’ve grown rapidly over the past years, expanding our portfolio significantly.” But fast growth also comes with the challenge of focus: “We want to innovate across our entire assortment, but that also means we must continuously make sharp choices because you can’t give equal attention to every product line when your team is this compact.”

“We continuously look for ways to use our brand strength to enter new categories, especially in the Mediterranean segment where our roots lie.” One of the main indicators of whether an innovation will stick is how well it sells in stores shortly after launch. “If it ends up in the bottom 20% of the portfolio, that’s a red flag. That often means the product won’t have long-term potential.”

A recent success came from a gut-driven insight spotted at trade fairs in Italy. “We launched Bertolli Pinsa, a lighter, thinner pizza base with fewer calories. It’s very authentic and something we felt was about to trend in the Dutch market,” he says. “We didn’t test it extensively.. The growth has been spectacular.”

Another effective and simple idea was the decision to place Jean Bâton mayonnaise in squeeze bottles alongside the classic glass jars. “I already knew from data that jars and squeeze bottles cater to different consumers. Just offering both formats gave us a natural uplift.”

However, not every launch yields success. Aleks recalls a product that didn’t meet expectations, a 1–2 person pasta sauce in a pouch. “We did the concept testing, and it looked promising. But when it hit the shelves, the price ended up being 30 cents higher than what we’d tested, due to retailer pricing and inflation. That, combined with the fact that it required consumers to change their cooking habits, meant it just didn’t work,” he says. “When the version on the shelf doesn’t match what you tested, the research is interesting but also becomes less meaningful.”

“For us, innovation is a crucial growth engine. From a branding point of view, innovation helps us deliver on the brand promise.”

Learning to Balance Agility and Insight

Aleks has worked across both extremes of the innovation spectrum, from highly controlled corporate pipelines to fast-paced entrepreneurial decision-making. “At my previous workplace, you couldn’t launch anything without extensive testing. Every part of the business needed convincing. That taught me discipline, but it also slows you down,” he reflects. “At Enrico Food, we used to go with our gut, which brought speed. Now, we’re evolving. We still want to be agile, but we use research to prioritise and to understand where the biggest opportunity lies.”

He also sees value in deepening understanding around taste, not just for product development, but for communication and claims. “We’re investing more in research into what ‘tasty’ actually means. It’s no longer enough to say something tastes good. What’s behind that? Is it the depth, the intensity, the texture? If we can define that in consumer terms, it becomes something we can build on, even for claims and campaigns.”

A key advantage for Enrico lies in its home market. “The cost of failure in the Netherlands is relatively low,” Aleks explains. “Retailers are open to trying new products, you don’t need a big field team, and the market is compact. You can build distribution quickly and see results fast.” That dynamic is very different in other countries. “In Germany or the UK, on-shelf-testing an idea is much more expensive. You need bigger volumes, more packaging, and more negotiations. Retailers are more conservative and harder to convince. That makes the Netherlands a great innovation market, you can experiment, fail quickly, and adjust.”

“At Enrico, we used to go with our gut, but we use research to prioritise and to understand where the biggest opportunity lies.”

Brand Power Beyond the Shelf

Looking ahead, Aleks sees opportunities for brands to expand their reach far beyond their traditional categories. “Look at Milka,” he says. “It used to be just an iconic chocolate bar. Now it’s in biscuits, ice cream, and even McDonald’s desserts. That kind of brand extension not only drives innovation — it massively increases brand visibility and thus mental availability.”

Oreo follows a similar path, evolving from a single biscuit into a platform brand across categories and channels. “That’s the direction more brands are heading in — using the strength and familiarity of their brand to stay relevant in new spaces,” he adds.

It’s this mix of commercial focus, instinct, research, and agility that defines Enrico’s approach to brand building. “It’s about art and science,” Aleks concludes. “Research provides the science, but the art is in interpreting it, understanding consumer behaviour, and turning insights into action. That’s how you build business and brands that last — even when the market keeps changing.”

“Research provides the science, but the art is in interpreting it, understanding consumer behaviour, and turning insights into action. That’s how you build brands that last — even when the market keeps changing.”