Manik Jhangiani
Management
And profitability, I think what's critically important is a lot of people continue to think as we made our foray into discounters that was going to be unprofitable, right, we're discretive. Actually, the profitability that we have in the discount channel is actually very strong, right? Because ultimately, we have a much lower cost to serve, central warehouse delivery, no merchandising. We are not typically to even enter the store, right? So it's actually a very profitable business and actually continues to be accretive.
And actually, it's a good point just to build on something Damian had said earlier. Our home business that we've built and the resilience of that business with the diversification, but also the profitability of that business has really continued to evolve, right? So if you recall, I know with several of you, we've had this discussion around what is the home and away from home. And away from home is such a simplistic way of really looking at 8 or 9 different subpanels and how very -- how HoReCa can be in 1 market versus QSR versus food-to-go, et cetera, right? But we typically always saw that you had a revenue accretion piece that came as you grew your away from home, a mix benefit, right, because the revenue per case is higher. But if you then think about down to the operating profit level, -- and this is some great stuff that we learned actually with the API acquisition as we did a lot more modeling of our channel profitability based on the work that they've done, that our cost to serve is much higher, right? You've got your coolers. You've got your sales force that's calling in to those outlets. And we used to talk about the fact that away from home was typically around that 1.1x higher from a profitability level.
COVID really allowed us to reset that home business, right, with that diversification of pack, the pricing, the smart RGM that we've done in the store. So today, I would say to you, yes, that revenue accretion stays for the profitability of our home channel is just as strong as our away-from-home channel, right? And depending on the subchannel within home and away from home that you're looking at, actually, some of the home channel can be even stronger, right? So the beauty is, today, we can benefit from the growth that's coming across all channels as opposed to worrying about how do I push this one more because that's where the profitability is better, right? So that's a great thing for our business as well going forward because we want to be where consumers are, where they shop, where they buy, where they consume and our profitability then is strong from both.