PARIS – Nestle S.A. will invest in Outsiders Pizza Co. and Wildscape while giving them time to make their mark in the frozen food category. The two brands are examples of new innovation models called “internal incubators” by Nestle.

“What we try to do there is to reproduce what start-up companies would do but benefitting from the scale and the strength of Nestle,” said Laurent Freixe, executive vice president of Nestle S.A., on June 13 at the Deutsche Bank’s dbAccess Global Consumer Conference in Paris.

Outsiders Pizza Co. is part of Foundry Foods, an innovation incubator backed by Nestle USA. Outsiders offers frozen pizza based on regional styles like Detroit and Milwaukee.

“While Italy may be the birthplace of pizza, the US reinvented it,” the company’s website notes. “Over and over and over again.”

Wildscape offers frozen food meals made from chunks of vegetables, whole grains and meat. Vegetables include portobellos, sweet potatoes, cauliflower and Brussels’ sprouts. Whole grains found in the meals are quinoa, sorghum, freekeh and farro. Chimichurri chicken, cilantro lime chicken, braised brisket and bourbon-braised pork are meat examples.

“Now it’s clear that Wildscape (and) Outsiders Pizza Co. are relatively small businesses today,” Freixe said. “We have to be patient. We have to continue supporting them. We have to plant the seeds.”

Freixe also spoke about Nestle’s coffee plans. Nestle, Vevey, Switzerland, in May received perpetual rights to market Starbucks consumer and food service products globally, outside of Starbucks’ coffee shops. Starbucks, an iconic coffee shop brand, joins Nespresso, a leader in premium portioned coffee, and Nescafe, strong across multiple geographies, in Nestle’s coffee portfolio.

“So, we will be combining, of course, all three, and that gives us increased exposure to North America, potentially to Brazil, the No. 1, No. 2 coffee markets in the world,” Freixe said.

A global coffee council within Nestle meets regularly to discuss strategy, he added.