Stewart Dryburgh, General Manager of Nestlé International Travel Retail and one of the most respected and influential thought leaders in travel retail, is to take early retirement from the end of June 2024. His replacement, to be named shortly, will start on 1 September.
Dryburgh’s career spanned 38 years, including 26 at Nestlé and 12 running the company’s travel retail business unit.
Dryburgh first joined Nestlé UK in 1998 before moving to the international travel retail division in 2002 as General Manager. In a major statement of ambition in 2004, he asserted that the confectionery category (then worth US$1.4 billion a year), could be doubled in five years.
“I saw huge, untapped opportunities for confectionery in travel retail,” he said. “Thanks to the support and belief both from retailers and other brand owners, we achieved that goal.”
In 2006 Dryburgh moved to New Delhi to drive Nestlé’s confectionery business in South Asia, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing emerging markets. He then returned to Switzerland in 2009 to become Global Brand Director for KitKat.
In his time, brand growth accelerated significantly driven by geographic expansion in Latin America and industry-leading consumer and digital engagement. Digital leadership was best encapsulated by a groundbreaking Android KitKat partnership with Google in 2013.
Dryburgh returned to travel retail in 2016 and after successfully steering the business through the COVID-19 crisis he identified the opportunity to drive the wider food category. In 2021 Nestlé announced its ‘Food #1’ ambition, with the aim to drive food to become the most purchased category in travel retail.
“Leveraging the Covid-induced travel-free during the pandemic we began exploring how we could accelerate industry recovery overall and grow our category,” said Dryburgh.
“When we compared category performance, we saw that food (including confectionery) was at best flat in global travel retail but in very healthy value growth in domestic. In addition confectionery was 77% of food sales in travel retail while it was only 7% in domestic. Subsequent bespoke research with travellers, in particular led by the fast-growing millennial and Gen Z groups across all key nationalities, confirmed a clear opportunity to accelerate food category growth.”
He added: “As the world’s largest food company, it was natural that we should lead the development of this opportunity for our industry.
“The subsequent response we received from our retail partners has been extremely positive. In practical terms over the past two years we have begun to execute concepts beyond confectionery, encompassing wellbeing, coffee and sustainability in-store. The results are extremely promising with the latest industry data showing that food category penetration accelerating quickly from 30% to 37% of baskets. Food is quickly closing in on the #1 most frequently purchased category, well ahead of our anticipated timeline.”
Dryburgh has been a regular supporter of and speaker at major industry events, sharing his vision for food & confectionery, leading conversations on driving sales in travel retail as well as on the importance of sustainability and wider regeneration projects.
“I’m proud to have supported key initiatives, such as the Trinity Forum from its inception,” he continued. Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe was the keynote speaker at the first Trinity Forum in 2003 – organised by The Moodie Report – and more recent industry events such as the TR Consumer Forum and TR Sustainability Week have received strong Nestlé support.
“We’ve always been keen to recognise excellence and in this spirit we’ve been the proud sponsor of Airport Retailer of the Year at the Frontier Awards for many years. It’s also been a great honour for Nestlé to have been recognised as Supplier of the Year in the Frontier awards in 2022 and 2023,” said Dryburgh.
“I’d finally like to sincerely thank so many people who have helped along the journey; my wonderful team at Nestlé for their incredible support over the years, our key travel retail partners across the world, our amazing agency and supplier partners, our vital industry associations and of course the invaluable travel retail media. Travel retail has been a wonderful part of my working journey and I have a plethora of fond memories to take with me. I look forward to staying in touch with all the friends I’ve made through the years.”
Comment: Stewart Dryburgh has been a voice of progress and positivity for the food & confectionery sector in travel retail for over 20 years. His drive to deliver growth in the channel at Nestlé has been matched by his ambition for the category as a whole – underlined by the recent vision to double sales to US$10 billion while making food the most purchased category in the sector.
From an early stage in his time at Nestlé he consistently voiced the need to “excite and engage travellers” and has long been a passionate believer in the power of travel retail to influence consumer mindsets and choices.
Stewart was one of the driving forces with Martin Moodie in creating the first Trinity Forum in 2003 – the contribution of then Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe remains a seminal moment in the event’s history – and has remained one of its most forward-thinking voices.
Above all, Stewart will be missed by colleagues and friends in the industry for his intelligence, his deep humanity, his immense personal support to others and his dry Scottish wit. We wish him well in the next chapter. 
