Taking philanthropic cues from the company’s founder, the Feeding Happiness platform started as a “blank slate to start to think about how we want to show up as it relates to impact in this world,” Ludmer explained.
In 2023, Kellogg Co. split into two independent companies—Kellanova and WK Kellogg Co.—with the latter retaining its cereal portfolios. The split made WK Kellogg’s sustainable operations more agile, Ludmer noted, “because we were a global business it was a little bit more disconnected and siloed than it could be in this smaller organization.”
Divided into three interconnected focus areas surrounding environmental, health and community initiatives, the Feeding Happiness platform works with WK Kellogg's marketing partners to "to find programs that generate positive impact, while still [following] business metrics that create a sustainable model,” she said.
The three focus areas include:
- Make Eating Well Easy, which focuses on improving access to nutritious foods and ingredients
- Help Kids Be Their Best, which intends to reach 2.5m kids through the Mission Tiger program by 2025, the company’s initiative to fund public school sports programs via non-profit partnerships
- Better Our Communities, which aims to improve employee and community partnerships as well as advance the company’s science-based target initiatives and improve packaging recyclability and reusability
Connection between sustainability, health and community 'is fundamental for the future'
Ludmer, a dietician with a decade of clinical experience, joined Kellogg in 2014 where she worked on nutrition, regulatory claims work and communications at a time when the company was evolving how it defined nutrition through physical, emotional and societal wellbeing. Currently, she oversees consumer affairs, regulatory, nutrition and sustainability from an environmental lens, and her work with Feeding Happiness is to “make this a part of [WK Kellogg’s] culture and a part of everyone’s job.”
She elaborated, “What we’re doing is helping to create how we think about doing our business with these things in mind. What I mean by that is I will work with my chief supply chain officer and as she is looking and working with her team to identify whether we need capital for plant equipment … as we are assessing what we might spend, are we [also] considering what one piece of equipment versus another will have an impact on environmental output?”
Rather than focusing on separate programs within the platform, Ludmer emphasized that each program informs the other to “help show that connection I think is fundamental for the future.”
She added, “In today’s world if we’re going to feed the amount of people that are going to exist in the world by 2050, we have to start connecting what are those regenerative agricultural practices that have positive impact and nutritional quality, that create a cost and an equitable working environment collectively."
