Anniina, our Procurement Manager and one of the newest additions to our procurement team, finds building her own supplier relationships one of the best parts of her work.
âWe all have our own responsibility categories in the procurement team. Iâm responsible for the category of sports and health products. For example, protein products â a while ago I purchased a batch of surplus energy drinkâ, Anniina smiles.
âMaking it as easy and fun as possible for the suppliers to reduce food waste with us is not just fulfilling for me â itâs also a way to better achieve our mission.â
Anniina's everyday work is to buy goods that are under the threat of going to waste: this could mean products that have wrong labels, close expiry dates or products that are overstock. The suppliers can be both big nationwide corporations, subsidiaries of large multinational corporations, or small one-person suppliers.
The goods are given a new chance to end up to consumers via Fiksuruokaâs online store powered by modern tech. For example Anniina's sports and health products are often very popular, as customers can save in their protein bars and other supplements by purchasing them from Fiksuruoka.
Still, Anniina sees how big a problem it can be for the suppliers when a lot of goods are under the threat of going to waste. Itâs an environmental problem, too.
âThese are the two things that guide my everyday decisions as a Procurement Manager. Firstly, Fiksuruokaâs mission is to reduce food waste. Secondly, our goal is to grow our business to help reduce even more food waste,â Anniina explains.
The food waste challenge is accepted in different ways on every level of Fiksuruokaâs organization. In the procurement team, Anniina puts a lot of effort into building trust and relationships with her suppliers.
âMaking it as easy and fun as possible for the suppliers to reduce food waste with us is not just fulfilling for me â itâs also a way to reach our mission better. Good relationships with suppliers ensure that they know when to contact us and what kind of products they can offer for us. Quite often it also helps us to tackle the batches sooner and get products with more time before the best-before date. This way the goods will have a better chance of ending up to our customers and not to waste,â Anniina explains.
âWhen I applied to Fiksuruoka straight from university, I was a bit worried about switching the informal and familiar student life into working 40 hours per week in a corporation. I didnât want to go into an environment where I couldnât be myself and would have to be just a trainee not getting any responsibilities,â Anniina thinks back.
In university, Anniina was active in student organization activities and had a lot of different people to collaborate with. She is a person who appreciates the opportunity to be herself at work in a relaxed environment. But equally she appreciates serious work, professionalism, and ambition.
â
âI soon realized that I donât have to worry about too big a change at Fiksuruoka. I would get a lot of ownership of my own work and the decisions I would make. And at the same time it would be a really energetic and fun environment with a lot of sociability, friends and communityâ, says Anniina.
A big thing for Anniina is that she is the one making the purchasing decisions and learning by doing. Always with the support of her expert team. For example, she doesnât have to ask for her deals to be approved by anyone in the company hierarchy, but she can ask for advice anytime.
âI can see every time I've bought something whether the deal was good or bad. In our online store, it's inevitable that not all products are selling as expected. However, I've always been told that it's okay if I make a mistake, as long as we all get to learn from it. The goal is to succeed in the big picture,â Anniina says.
Making good deals in the big picture always means more food waste to be saved.
â