Mark This! is a podcast in which we peel back the corporate curtain to reveal the cool and innovative people, programs, and projects that are happening all over Aramark’s varied lines of business. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them--building opportunity, building innovation, and building community.
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Mark This! Podcast, Episode 4, Supplier Diversity
Host: Heather Dotchel, Corporate Communications
Guests: Natily Santos, Jonathan Mason, Mercedes Rodriguez
It is time to Mark This, a podcast in which we peel back the curtain to reveal the cool and innovated people, programs and projects that are happening all over Aramark's varied lines of business. I'm Heather Dotchel. As a member of Aramark's Communications team, I see and hear about all of the amazing things that are happening across our company. These remarkable initiatives happen because we have remarkable people behind them. Building opportunity, building innovation, and building community. Mark This provides a space in which we can explore these initiatives with our audiences. Today we are learning about responsible sourcing at Aramark, a unit that drives local procurement, supplier diversity, and sustainable sourcing across the enterprise.
Responsible sourcing is a shared priority with the enterprise and with our partners. Clients and customers want the bigger story behind the products and services we provide. They want to know where their food comes from and how we are supporting local communities and economies. As you can imagine, responsible sourcing is a vast topic, and we could speak for days about it. So for this episode, we are going to focus on supplier diversity. We are speaking with three guests who seek to expand the footprint of our local sustainable and diverse supply chain every day, and they also love to share what they do. Natily Santos is Vice President for responsible sourcing. Natily, let's begin with your background and bio please.
Hi, Heather. Thank you. So I started in the hospitality industry and haven't left. I've always enjoyed being a part of creating memorable experiences, working as a team, especially a team that has a passion for service, and that's what really attracted me to Aramark. I've been with Aramark close to 20 years. I started in operations and sales and the last eight years in supply chain across various roles.
Our next two guests are Jonathan Mason and Mercedes Rodriguez, and they are supplier diversity managers on Natily's team. Jonathan, what has been your journey to your present position?
Hey, good morning, Heather. So that is an interesting question. So my background is actually in finance and accounting. I graduated with an accounting degree from Temple University. I started working with Aramark as an intern in finance and accounting, and working through different analytical roles. I landed in supply chain, doing inflation analysis, supporting our procurement and pricing teams. And from there I found out about an analyst position on Natily's team back in, I believe, 2018, about 2018, 2019. And I was really interested more so in the work and being able to utilize my analytical background in a role that really seemed to impact our suppliers, their communities, et cetera. So going on eight years since I've been with Aramark, this has definitely been a fulfilling experience, working with our suppliers and supporting procurement. There are a lot of different Aramark teams internally that our work supports. And just being able to see a measurable impact with the work that you do every day.
Mercedes, you and Jonathan share titles. How has your journey either paralleled or differed from his?
Mercedes Rodriguez (03:44):
I started my career with Aramark in 1999 as a part-time sales associate. And in my 23 years now with Aramark, I have acquired cross line of business experience from the different administrative roles, supporting top executives who truly guided me to success. Two years into the Avendra acquisition, I was promoted to manage supplier diversity for Avendra Hospitality. And I've been in this space now for three plus years. I started it off as a senior analyst, and Natily promoted me to manager of supplier diversity just about a year and a half ago now. It's been a tremendous experience and learning curve for me. Helping our supplier partners grow within their existing businesses, helping our clients reach their supplier diversity goals. Being exposed to the different projects and the self-development piece of it. Very thankful, very grateful, and also just thrilled to have built these amazing business relationships, not just with our Aramark colleagues, but also with our supplier partners and our client partners.
Well, thanks to all three of you for being here today, and we're going to just dig right in now. Natily, let's begin with two big questions. What do we mean at Aramark by responsible sourcing, and why is it important?
So responsible sourcing at Aramark is fully integrated in all aspects of supply chain procurement and within the organization. And what we mean, our mission, is truly to create industry leading solutions that strengthen our ESG commitments and deliver long-term value for our business and stakeholders. So we do that by ensuring that throughout the process of procurement, sourcing, as we have conversations with our clients. As we brand programs and menus and concepts to our consumers and other partners, that we are very intentional on how we develop and incorporate social, ethical and environmental factors and measurements into that process. So wherever we can, we want to make sure that we're driving meaningful impact through various programs throughout the organization. But specifically within supply chain, we want to ensure that we are being thoughtful on what products we procure, what supply relationships we develop, and how that impacts our ESG efforts. And some of the ways that it truly benefits the organization as a whole.
It drives supplier development and innovation, specifically within supplier diversity. We find that many more local, smaller suppliers, they're so connected to their communities. That's where we can really identify culturally relevant product and services. We work with minority women, various diverse organizations that really support our broader DNI commitments. And then there's also a lot of connectivity between supplier diversity and our broader sustainability goals agenda. Because ultimately we want to create that collaboration that through building these supply relationships, we drive those important efforts. And holistically working on these types of programs, it is mutual beneficial, not just to us because we have these public facing commitments. But we also support our clients in driving their own similar commitments. So again, it's part of developing an ecosystem that prioritizes ESG commitments. And through responsible sourcing, through supplier diversity specifically, we really have an opportunity to give back to the communities through the suppliers, the local, the minority, the woman-owned, the diverse owned suppliers that we support.
So in addition to just the collaborative efforts, we also make sure that there are measurable goals and targets and that we're holding people accountable. So there are various internal priorities and goals as well as external public facing goals. We do have that 25% goal by 2025, as part of our Be Well Do Well commitment. But internally, there are various measures that we track progress against, and those are shared throughout the organization, with our teams, with our leadership. Again, to make sure that everyone is aware of the program, supporting it, moving forward, and understands the progress, the opportunities or challenges so we can all work together to move it forward. So I would say that's one of the essential goals of developing a strong supply diversity program, awareness education. But most importantly, making sure that they are measurable targets and holding groups and individuals accountable to support and move the program forward.
All right, thanks for that explanation. Let's move on to the day-to-day. Jonathan, I know that typical days are a myth. There's rarely a day that matches the one before or after, but what are your consistent tasks as a diverse supplier manager?
Sure. So I would say the majority of the work that I do, especially on a day-to-day basis, centers around supporting our new business opportunities, working with our growth and sales organization to respond to RFPs that a lot of times have small diverse sourcing requirements. So helping those teams to first understand what those requirements are. So we partner with legal, to have legal help evaluate the opportunity and what our obligations are. And then working with, again, the growth team, procurement, the operators at the client level. To then begin sourcing against those requirements, evaluating supplier diverse certification status and all of those different things.
That's the bulk of what I do. And then we have, of course, the other activities that are maybe not as consistent, but are, I would say equally important. And I've definitely grown to enjoy them, maybe even more than the sometimes repetitive processed components of the work that we find in the RFP space. So supplier development would be included in that. Helping internally to help innovate and grow our program and do different things with reporting and improving our capabilities to, as Natily mentioned, empower our other stakeholders to join in the work of supplier diversity. So those are the other things that I would say take up my time on a day-to-day basis.
And Mercedes, similar question for you. What are your day-to-day actions and how do they make a difference in the business?
Mercedes Rodriguez (10:40):
Sure. Well, one thing Jonathan failed to mention is our day starts with coffee. Our day-to-day starts with a big cup of coffee.
Mercedes Rodriguez (10:55):
Yes, a lot of coffee. So my role is very similar to Jonathan's role. A lot of what Jonathan mentioned I do as well. I think one of the probably bigger differences is I find that in my role, I am a lot more involved on the client aspect. They take up a lot of my day-to-day with ad hoc requests, reports, emails, just series of meetings. So while I also help support them in sourcing of diverse suppliers and attending different events to be able to bring forward the many talents that we're seeking to include in our competitive initiatives and RFPs. My day-to-day is really heavily involved around client requests, ad hoc requests.
But also most importantly, I think that the day-to-day actions that really make a difference is being able to provide the hours in my day to just support our clients, support our suppliers. Be able to assist them with questions on reporting, on certifications, be able to help our sourcing department with managing a list of diverse suppliers that they're looking to include in their competitive initiatives and RFPs. And so I usually find that my days are very fulfilling. One, because I am a huge proponent of helping others. And I think that those actions to me are what fulfill me the most. And how I feel that I help our supplier partners and our client partners the most, is being able to pretty much be on call as a doctor would. And just answer emails, answer phone calls, answer questions, provide reporting requests, needs, and so that's my typical day-to-day, aside from the many duties that Jonathan also mentioned that we have to be available for and ready to take action.
Natily, how has the role of supplier diversity and responsible sourcing evolved over the past year, 2, 5, 10 years that you've been shepherding this?
It's definitely been a journey, but I would say the most positive result has been the development of this team. As you heard from Jonathan and Mercedes, they're so dedicated and committed to the work. And this team gets pulled in a lot of different directions. We support every line of business across the enterprise. So absolutely, we start with coffee, they're very early days, they're very long days, but the focus is on serving and helping others to move this work forward. So from 10 plus years ago where it was just mostly an individual person to a team, I think that has been a great positive result. Because the more resources you have, the more work that you can do, positive work in this space. But outside of that, I think on a macro level, supply diversity has gone through a big evolution over 40 plus years. Initially, it was very much a program focused on the public sector, government driven, very compliance driven.
And Aramark for itself, the program was again, very compliance driven. But obviously there was still an element of alignment around our community building efforts. But over the last 10 years, been very fortunate to have had leaders that really support the work in terms of providing resources, providing funding to really evolve the program. Where it was initially, again, very compliance driven, to now providing a more holistic and comprehensive initiative that not only focuses on spend tracking, but also how are we leveraging that spend and our scale to support supplier mentoring, supplier capacity, building alignment with grant funding.
So that starts with not just spend, but really working directly within the communities, identifying suppliers and meeting them where they are. And I say meeting them where they are because maybe they're not ready to work with an organization like Aramark, but they may have a really innovative product. So our role has been to identify those suppliers and build programs like mentoring and capacity building webinars, make those resources accessible. Try to close the barriers of entry as much as we can to really foster a diverse supply chain that results in more innovation, more culturally relevant products. So that's been ultimately our goal.
That seems to be a really good point to pivot here. We've been talking overview of what you all are doing to help move the company along. But now let's talk a little bit about specifics and bring that macro level down to some very particular examples. So Mercedes, let's start with you. Can you share a concrete example of a partner who has impacted our business in sustainable ways?
Mercedes Rodriguez (16:15):
Sure, Heather. Well, we have several, actually. So I'll start off with, first we have several diverse supplier partners that are minority owned and women owned who are participating in the EcoVadis program. And so for those that are not familiar with EcoVadis, it's a global provider of business sustainability ratings and insights. That enable companies to reduce risk, drive improvement, and accelerate positive impact on our planet and society. And so through EcoVadis, Aramark surveys, suppliers on sustainability topics to assess their sustainability programs and alignments with our Be Well Do Well program. So our diverse and sustainable supplier partners are impacting our business in sustainable ways by continuing to participate in the yearly survey and follow sustainable measures that align with our sustainability programs. And so some of those diverse and sustainable partners that we have today, they're servicing our clients, delivering local, regional, and national products. And some of those products are in the food supplies, amenities, bedding and lining, disposable gloves, aprons and uniforms.
Jonathan, you work a lot with mentoring programs within our responsible sourcing group. Can you explain how and why we make it an integral part of our strategy?
I would love to explain this. I was very excited to get to this. So you're right, we do a lot of work with mentoring, supplier development, et cetera. And I think this is the work that, yes, is very important, but it's also, I believe, going to become an even more integral part to the success of our program in the coming years. So as Natily mentioned, our external, we have external facing goals. One of those is to have 25% of our spend be with small and diverse suppliers by 2025. An aggressive goal, but I believe attainable if we continue to invest in supplier development, mentoring, et cetera. I think when you look at, an example would be, when you look at the job market, and a lot of times people say, "I didn't get the job because I don't have experience. And I don't have experience because no one will give me the job."
So when you look at a lot of our small and diverse suppliers, they want to work with companies like Aramark, billions of dollars in spend and procurement. But they don't have the capacity or they don't have the ability to distribute to all of the different locations that we need them to distribute in, et cetera. So our mentorship programs, our supplier development programs and maybe small ways or foundational ways, help a lot of our suppliers to understand how to scale their business. Understand how to do business with companies like Aramark. What are some of the things you want to do to help brand yourself, to promote yourself? What does your capability statement look like? Giving them feedback on their capability statement. So beginning to bridge that gap between the capabilities of our small and diverse suppliers and what it is that we need on the corporate side.
So we've seen a number of our suppliers that we began working with in their early stages grow to millions of dollars and spend annually, having a lot to do with their business with Aramark. So those are the things, that's where we begin to see and create the stories that we all like to talk about. But the hard work is, how do you begin to develop suppliers even before they're able to give you everything that you would need from them. So how do we have contracts that are set up that are economically what we need? How do we get them to provide services on a more timely basis, more efficiently, more cost effectively? Well, these are the things that we can do to, help them help us, so to speak. So I'm very proud of the work that we've done to date and really excited about continuing these efforts going forward.
I love that coaching aspect that takes our privilege in the field from where we are and then brings through our partners-
... to help them from pre official partnership all the way through to making that big difference in their business. Where are we with our dedication to BIPOC sourcing, Jonathan? What impact are we hoping to have there?
So in January of 2022, Aramark committed to a three-year funding program to support the Fruit Guys community fund. And as a part of that partnership, Aramark sponsored support for nonprofit BIPOC farmers and different agricultural projects. So this impacted 17 different farms across 11 different states this year. And then we also launched a BIPOC farm purchasing pilot with some of our collegiate hospitality locations, both in the southeast and in southern California. These locations are working directly with farmers to coordinate crop planning, menu development, purchasing commitments, et cetera. And so far, a lot of these farmers, Aramark is the first corporate account that they're obtaining. So we talked earlier about what that could mean for a small and diverse supplier to be able to work with Aramark. And so for a lot of these suppliers, we're helping them to break through that barrier. And we're the first corporate account that they're working with. So we're excited to learn and grow as we help them learn and grow with us. And we're eager to help continue to support these local economies.
So it's my understanding that another way we help our diverse suppliers succeed is through a certification process. Mercedes, can you explain more about that?
Mercedes Rodriguez (22:02):
So Aramark works with a company called Certify My Company, they are certified as women owned and disabled own. So they're contracted by Aramark to assist self-classified suppliers and obtaining third party diversity certification. And so through this process, Certify My Company pretty much provides high level support to our self-classified suppliers to obtain third party certification. Why is this important? It's because our clients and customers want to work with suppliers that have official certification from NGOs such as WeBank, NMSCC, NGLCC, and Disability IN. Those are some of our top national suppliers that Aramark partners and works with.
And so these self-classified suppliers, once they obtain certification through the support process that Certify My Company offers, they are then granted third party certification. And we then communicate to our customers and clients that these suppliers went from self-classified to certified and they can now start to count and track their spend as certified spend. Which then enables them to be able to count that spend towards goals like the Billion Dollar Roundtable or just simply certified spend. Which is primarily what all of our customers and clients are looking for, so that they can continue to work with Aramark, Avendra and the supplier partners to be able to count that spend towards their supplier diversity goals.
That's excellent. Another program that I've heard about, but could use some schooling on is matchmaker programs. Jonathan, can you talk a little bit about that?
Sure. So a lot of it is in the name, so when we have a matchmaker event, a lot of times the goal is to give suppliers the opportunity to connect with potential buyers or organizations like Aramark, for example. And give them an opportunity to learn more about their business, but also share the services, products and capabilities that they have, that they could provide to a company like Aramark. So throughout a typical year, we're attending 10 or more of these types of events along with conferences. So a lot of the NGOs that Mercedes mentioned, they hold national conferences and most of them have a matchmaking component to their national conference. So we attend those conferences, participate in those matchmakers. And again, it's just an opportunity to engage with different suppliers that could potentially provide products and services to Aramark. And a lot of times it's a one-on-one opportunity to speak for 20 to 30 minutes and really get an in-depth look at these suppliers and allow them to do the same with Aramark.
These programs sound fantastic and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain them to all of us. Want to learn more about responsible sourcing and supplier diversity at Aramark? Visit our newsroom on aramark.com to access more information. Natily, Jonathan and Mercedes, thank you so much for joining us today and explaining the focus and priority that our enterprise puts on sustainable and responsible sourcing. And as always, I'd like to thank our listeners for tuning in to Mark This.
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