The American Food Sure Summit 2025 featured a jam-packed programme across two days, with updates from food safety leaders across North, Central and South America.

Luis Alberto Rodríguez, Country Manager North LATAM at Simplot, presented insight from a turbulent market in Latin America, in particular sharing leadership lessons learned when navigating uncertain times.

We’ve summarised the key takeaways in this article.

The Latin American context

Latin America presents unique challenges, with a large population very densely located in two countries – Mexico and Brazil. Additionally, roughly half the population of Latin America live below the poverty line.

From a market perspective, Rodríguez detailed the industry fragmentation between high quality food outfits, chains and independent operators. In Mexico, there has been a lot of macroeconomic difficulty with devaluation of the peso and now the constant threat of tariffs from the Trump administration in the US.

For Rodríguez, overcoming these challenges requires a collaborative approach and team work  throughout the whole supply chain. It also requires strong leadership - an experience from which Luis has learnt some important lessons for success. 

Three key learnings

Identifying and communicating your purpose is crucial to success:

Rodríguez highlighted that although Mexico, a third world country, has significant food safety challenges, his goal was clear from the outset: to build an organisation which produced world-class food and to create a working environment which attracts good people. Without clarity and focus around this goal, Rodríguez suggested it would not have been achievable. 

Attitude over acumen:

Rodríguez wanted to shake up his organisation and build something special from within – a feat he could not achieve without the right people. However, he highlighted that often the ‘right’ person is thought to be synonymous with qualification or education, whereas he believes energy, attitude and a desire to learn can often drive greater success.

If you’re taking care of your people, your people will take care of your customers”, Rodríguez explained.

Clarity of the value proposition:

Setting out a clear value proposition which translates to specific objectives and subsequently specific priorities will provide you with a competitive edge. If the what and the how are well thought-out then price and profit will follow. Rodríguez shared how his organisation evolved from losing money to being a profitable, award-winning company due to this clear value proposition.

Price is just a reference of your value” he said, “so if your value proposition is very low, the only thing you can do is be very cheap. But if your value proposition is high, you can put the price up over your competitors”.

And so, in an extremely challenging macroeconomic and socio-political environment, with constantly changing factors beyond his control, it is about taking care of the internal, rather than external, that matters.

“Everything is changing, but if we change with them and connect with our people, the possibility of doing amazing things is enormous,” concluded Rodríguez.