Kraft Heinz is a roughly $26 billion food company with more than 200 brands, from the obvious ones (Heinz ketchup, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Capri Sun) to dozens you'd never connect to the parent. A company that size buys constantly: ingredients, packaging, freight, facilities services, marketing, IT, professional services. If you sell any of that, there's a real lane here. The trick is knowing which door to walk through, because Kraft Heinz runs two separate intake paths and most owners knock on the wrong one.
Here's how the supplier side actually works, what its supplier diversity program asks for, and a realistic read on the on-ramp.
The two doors: diversity intake vs. active-vendor onboardingKraft Heinz doesn't have one universal "apply to be a supplier" button. It has two systems that do different jobs.
The first is the Supplier Diversity Program intake, a registry where diverse-owned businesses submit their information to be considered for future sourcing. You complete an intake form on the program's SupplierOne portal (kraftheinz.supplierone.co), and your business lands in a database that procurement and category managers can search when they're building a bid list. This is discovery. It does not award you a contract, and Kraft Heinz is explicit that registering "does not guarantee future business."
The second is SAP Ariba, the system Kraft Heinz uses to formally onboard and transact with active vendors. You typically enter Ariba by invitation, after a buyer has decided to do business with you, to complete the registration questionnaire, banking details, tax forms, and compliance attestations. For ongoing account work, invoices, purchase orders, and price-sheet changes, the company's Supplier Hub routes support through a ServiceNow Help Center (khcprod.service-now.com).
The order matters. The diversity registry is how you get found. Ariba is how you get paid once someone wants to buy. If you're a new diverse-owned business with no Kraft Heinz contact yet, you start with the registry.
The Supplier Diversity Program: who qualifiesKraft Heinz launched its Supplier Diversity Program in 2021. The stated commitment is to fair inclusion of diverse suppliers in procurement, and the program partners with U.S.-based businesses that are at least 51% owned, operated, and managed by one or more of these groups:
- Women
- People of color (minority-owned)
- LGBTQ+ people
- Persons with disabilities
- Veterans
That 51% threshold is the same bar nearly every corporate program and certifying body uses, so if you're already certified, you almost certainly clear it. At launch the company set a goal to triple its spend with diverse suppliers by 2025. Worth confirming where that number landed before you build expectations, because corporate diversity spend targets across the food and consumer-goods sector got quieter through 2025 as companies reworked their DEI language. The underlying buying lane has held up better than the press releases; large food manufacturers still need diverse suppliers to meet customer and retailer requirements downstream.
One note on the program being U.S.-only at the time it launched. If you operate internationally, the diversity registry may not be your path, and you'd approach through standard sourcing instead.
Get certified first. It's the thing buyers filter on.The diversity intake will ask whether you hold a third-party certification, and a yes is what separates a searchable, credible profile from a line in a spreadsheet nobody acts on. Corporate buyers don't verify ownership themselves. They trust the certifying bodies, and they filter their supplier databases by certification type. Match your business to the right one:
- Minority-owned: NMSDC (National Minority Supplier Development Council), which issues the MBE certification corporate buyers recognize most
- Women-owned: WBENC (Women's Business Enterprise National Council) for the WBE
- LGBTQ+-owned: NGLCC (National LGBT Chamber of Commerce) for the LGBTBE
- Disability-owned: Disability:IN for the DOBE
- Veteran-owned: NaVOBA for the VBE/SDVBE
A certification isn't a legal requirement to sell to Kraft Heinz; plenty of suppliers transact with no certification at all. But for the diversity lane specifically, certification is what makes you findable and what lets a category manager defend choosing you. Get the one that fits before you fill out the intake, not after.
If you're staring at five certifying bodies wondering which apply to you and dreading the document gathering, that's the exact problem CertifyAll solves. You enter your business and ownership details once, and it handles the filings across the agencies you qualify for, instead of you running each portal separately.
What Kraft Heinz expects from suppliers (beyond the form)Getting registered is the easy part. Selling food-company inputs comes with real compliance weight, and it's better to know the bar before you pitch than to get surprised in onboarding.
Every supplier is held to the Supplier Guiding Principles, the Code of Conduct, and the Terms & Conditions of Purchasing. These cover labor, ethics, environmental commitments (palm oil sourcing, sustainable agriculture, deforestation-free supply chains), and ESG expectations. They apply worldwide to direct and indirect suppliers, contractors, external manufacturers, distributors, and service providers.
If you supply ingredients or anything that touches the product, the bar is higher. Kraft Heinz maintains an Ingredient Supplier Food Safety and Quality Expectations Manual and requires suppliers to permit auditing of manufacturing locations, either by Kraft Heinz or a second-party representative. Audit frequency scales with risk: high- and medium-risk materials may require Kraft Heinz audits, while a third-party audit (think SQF, BRC, or another GFSI-recognized scheme) can be acceptable for low-risk materials. If you're a food or packaging supplier without a food-safety certification already in hand, sort that out before you chase the contract, because it's a hard gate, not a nice-to-have.
Indirect suppliers, the marketing agencies, IT vendors, facilities and logistics providers, face a lighter version of this. The Guiding Principles still apply, but you won't be hosting a plant audit.
A realistic on-rampRegistering in a diversity registry and winning a purchase order are different events that can sit months apart. Here's the sequence that actually moves you forward.
- Get certified with the body that matches your ownership. Without it, the diversity intake is far less useful to you.
- Complete the SupplierOne diversity intake at kraftheinz.supplierone.co. Be specific about what you sell, your NAICS or category, capacity, and certifications. Vague profiles don't surface in searches.
- Build a tight capability statement. When a category manager pulls your record, you want one page that says exactly what you do, who you've served, and why you're low-risk to onboard.
- Work the category, not just the portal. Submitting an intake form and waiting is the slowest possible path. Diverse suppliers who win at large food companies usually get there through a warm channel: an NMSDC or WBENC regional council event, a matchmaker session, an industry conference, or a Tier 2 relationship with one of Kraft Heinz's existing prime suppliers who needs diverse spend in their supply chain. That Tier 2 route is underrated and often faster than going direct.
- Be ready for Ariba. When a buyer does move on you, onboarding runs through SAP Ariba (the SAP Business Network). Have your EIN, banking details, insurance certificates, and compliance documents ready so you're not the bottleneck.
Set expectations accordingly. A first purchase order from a company this size commonly takes a sourcing cycle or two to materialize, sometimes a year, and it often starts small before it scales. Treat the registry as the beginning of a relationship, not a submission you check off.
The bigger playKraft Heinz is one corporate program. The same playbook (certify, register, build a capability statement, work the councils and Tier 2 relationships) opens doors at every major food and consumer-goods buyer, and the certifications transfer. If you'd rather not run one company at a time, browse the corporate supplier diversity directory to see which programs match your business, and list yourself in our supplier marketplace so buyers running their own searches can find you. For the mechanics that apply across every one of these programs, start with how to get into corporate supplier diversity programs.
One registry won't build a pipeline. A certified profile, in front of buyers who are actively looking, will.
