Europe First, Then America
Kraft Heinz generated approximately $25 billion in net sales in 2025, making it one of the world's largest food and beverage companies. Yet its American core is struggling — enough that management announced a corporate split in September 2025, only to pause it in favor of a $700 million reinvestment plan.
The turnaround strategy has a clear compass: Europe.
At the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in February, chief executive Steve Cahillane described the company's European operations as a source of 'tangible, repeatable blueprints' the company intends to replicate in America. The architect of those blueprints is Karen Owen, Kraft Heinz's chief growth officer for Europe, who argues the continent's complexity is precisely what makes it valuable.
'If a product can survive in Europe, it can survive almost anywhere,' Owen told Fortune. 'We tend to lead the way.'
The Numbers Behind the Claim
The confidence is not without foundation. Heinz controls almost half of Europe's ketchup category sales by value, according to Owen, and the brand sells over 650 million bottles a year globally. A mayonnaise relaunch with a new recipe in 2016 has since reached 20% market share in the U.K. and 13% in Germany — a textbook case of patient brand investment paying off.
The company's London office runs a working chef's kitchen where recipes are tested weekly and retail partners are brought in to taste products. A near-identical kitchen in Amsterdam uses the same ovens as Domino's Pizza franchises to stress-test sauce performance at scale. A pilot plant at the Dutch R&D center was built specifically to determine whether a chef's recipe can survive industrial production without losing flavor.
That infrastructure costs money. It also produces results that a leaner, cost-cut operation could not.
Headwinds Are Real
The picture is not uniformly bright. In the second quarter of 2026, net sales in Kraft Heinz's international developed markets segment — which groups Europe with developed Pacific markets — fell 3.5%. Owen acknowledges the company spent several years underinvesting in Europe, denting market share and consumer awareness. Tighter household budgets and the growth of private-label goods have compounded the pressure.
A newer disruption is also registering. According to PwC, 70% of GLP-1 weight-loss drug users are purchasing fewer snacks and confectionery. In Germany — one of Heinz's largest European markets — more than four million households now use or have considered using weight-loss drugs, according to YouGov.
The Free-Enterprise Lesson
What Kraft Heinz is doing in Europe is a case study in what free enterprise does when regulation and competition force discipline: it innovates or it loses shelf space. The EU's patchwork of 24 official languages and dozens of distinct consumer cultures functions, in Owen's words, as a 'useful filter' — a private-sector stress test more demanding than any government quality program.
German consumers scrutinize ingredients and health claims; British consumers respond to emotion and nostalgia. A product that clears both markets has, in effect, been pressure-tested against a wide range of global tastes before a single dollar of American marketing is spent.
The $700 million reinvestment plan is a bet that the discipline Europe demanded can be exported back to the brand's home market. Capital rewards clear rules — and Kraft Heinz is betting that the rules Europe wrote are worth the price of the ticket.
