#29 - The US Goes Crazy for Protein, the NFL’s “Green” Gets Real, and Compri Bene’s New Podcast

Protein Is Flying Off the Shelves, but Factories Can’t Keep Up

Protein fever has broken out across the United States: if it doesn’t have enough protein, it doesn’t even count as breakfast. The problem? Factories can’t keep up. Danone has admitted it flat out: high-protein yogurts and drinks vanish from the shelves the moment they arrive, but American plants are maxed out.

The result? Frozen innovation, a product lineup trimmed to the bone to focus only on what can actually make it off the line, and an urgent investment plan to give the machines some breathing room.
It’s not just fitness obsession driving this rush. There’s also growing demand from people on weight-loss drugs looking for higher-protein foods.

The paradox is served: on one side the market pushing hard, on the other production choking and packaging struggling to keep up.
In the middle, an uncomfortable truth: today, real marketing means having production capacity. You can promise whatever you want, but if the factory can’t deliver, the schedule falls apart.

The lesson for Procurement: when the market screams “more protein!”, the winner is whoever has flexible capacity contracts (both in-house and outsourced), product-range priorities already agreed with production and finance, and changeover times that don’t eat up entire shifts. A slogan can be written in an afternoon. A new production line takes months.

🔗 Sources: Supply Chain Dive, ProFarmer, Reuters

The NFL and the “Green” That Weighs Tons

Some people talk about sustainability in PowerPoint decks, and then there’s the NFL, which does it for real: with contracts, trucks, and scales.

The league’s new operations manual isn’t a manifesto of good intentions. It’s a practical guide that starts with the procurement contracts and ends with the final weigh-in: tons of food that’s prepared but not served, which end up at food banks instead of dumpsters; carpeting, fabrics, and components that get recovered and put back into circulation; reusable dishware that doesn’t sit in a warehouse forever, but genuinely circulates through an organized system of collection, washing, and reissue, run with the same precision as ticketing.

Any concrete examples? In Santa Clara, the 49ers introduced reusable cups at the stadium together with a longtime beverage partner: it isn’t communication, it’s a system that works game after game. In Philadelphia, the Eagles built a hydrogen refueling station powered by the more than 10,000 solar panels at Lincoln Financial Field. Not projects on paper: facilities that exist and actually work.

In this system, NFL Green coordinates partnerships with food banks, cooperatives, and recycling operators, aims to recover nearly all the waste from major events, and in some cases even produces dedicated renewable energy. This is procurement in its purest form: contract clauses, service obligations, reverse logistics, shared responsibilities, and metrics that even win over the CFO.

The lesson for procurement: green that counts is built into contracts (clear requirements on reuse, recovery, and traceability) and measured at the end, by the waste avoided and materials recovered. Fewer promises, more trucks coming back full.

🔗 Sources: Procurement Magazine, San Francisco 49ers, Waste360, AP News

🔐 Procurement That Innovates and Negotiates on the Ground, with Filippo Milanese (Dormakaba)

In this new episode of the Compri Bene Podcast, we interview Filippo Milanese, SVP Chief Procurement Officer at Dormakaba, the Swiss multinational leader in access systems for airports, stadiums, and hospitality.

A candid conversation about Procurement that makes a difference: how to bring innovation with suppliers beyond the theory, which soft skills really matter in global procurement teams, and why some negotiations only close once you get your hands dirty (even with a late-night ping-pong match near Shanghai).

🎧 Watch and listen to the interview! ⬇️