In an industry where consumer tastes seem to evolve at pace, understanding what people want before your competitors is a powerful advantage.
That’s where AI is stepping in, spotting emerging trends on social media in real-time, helping teams tailor products to niche audiences and reshaping how multinational companies approach product development and brand strategy.
Today, food companies are using AI to go far beyond factory automation or supply chain logistics. In fact, they are plugging algorithms directly into their marketing and innovation teams – by using it to track and predict consumer behaviour.
Data-driven insight
For decades, food brands relied on a mix of instinct, historic sales data and traditional market research to steer product development. But, in today’s shifting consumer landscape, there is a demand for faster and smarter tools – and that is where AI promises to bridge the gap.
One business helping food companies unlock the power of AI-driven insight is Stravito, a Stockholm-based intelligence platform used by global brands like McDonald’s and Danone.
“The reality of a lot of food and drink companies is before we come in, they have a lot of disconnected systems and manual workflows, which in turn, leads to slow insights driven actions,” Thor Olof Philogene, the founder and CEO of Stravito, says.
“What we see as a cause for that is the fact that many of these food and beverage companies have become fragmented. In many cases, there is hidden data across teams and that makes it hard and time-consuming for anyone within the business to access and apply relevant and timely insights.”
Philogene believes the volume of research can “overwhelm teams” and that, in turn, can lead to “duplications, missed opportunities and delayed decisions”.
Stravito’s generative AI ‘assistant’ is said to automate data analysis, reducing time spent on insights by up to 1,500 hours per week.
Philogene says the platform “facilitates personalisation at scale, improving innovation and market adaptability”.
Human and AI co-creation can radically improve the speed at which you execute on your innovation pipeline.
Thor Olof Philogene, Stravito
“That means that, as a regular employee, I can suddenly reduce the time I would normally have spent searching for information and instead go as far to start helping other people to apply those insights,” he says. “The key thing to emphasise is that human and AI co-creation can radically improve the speed at which you execute on your innovation pipeline.”
This shift is especially valuable for large multinationals operating across various regions, where interpreting consumer behaviour used to take months of coordination and manual research.
The result is that food brands can design products and campaigns based not just on what consumers liked last year, but on what they’re starting to like now – potentially giving them a sharper edge.
Stravito client Danone uses AI to try to better understand their consumers’ needs, and to then act on them with greater speed, precision and impact.
“We’re using AI across the business to anticipate and respond to new trends – from AI-driven gut health research and predictive modelling to personalised marketing and demand forecasting,” a Danone spokesperson says.
“It’s also accelerating product development – tools like digital twins and in-silico modelling let us simulate and refine recipes, formulations and packaging virtually – allowing us to reduce waste and deliver more sustainable, effective and health-focused product faster.”
Meanwhile, Unilever is using AI to optimise production lines, reduce downtime and improve energy efficiency at its food factory in the Polish city of Poznań. “This has led to measurable cost savings and productivity gains,” a spokesperson for Unilever says.
Unilever is also harnessing in-silico testing – essentially computer-simulated experiments – to “explore millions of recipe combinations in seconds”, the spokesperson says. The tests allow the company to “tailor products to regional taste preferences and significantly reduce time to market”, they add.
The personalisation push
As consumers demand more tailored experiences – from personalised meal kits to snacks that match their wellness goals – food companies are increasingly turning to AI to help them deliver.
“What I think is exciting with generative AI is that you can do personalisation at scale,” Philogene says. “That means we can effectively provide a generative AI tool that can enhance how the teams at Danone access insights through natural language interactions.
“Suddenly they have access to this wealth of knowledge, which is effectively everything the company [Stravito] knows.”
This means that as an individual contributor at a “massive organisation” like Danone – that has over 100,000 employees – it “rapidly and dramatically speeds up discovery and the insights application process”, Philogene adds.
In 2025, advocates for AI say algorithms are now able to identify trends and niche behaviours in consumers that once went unnoticed.
For food manufacturers, this means new opportunities to create targeted campaigns, regional product variations and even customised nutrition strategies based on lifestyle data, proponents say.
However, the move toward hyper-personalisation isn’t necessarily about capturing attention – it’s also about building deeper brand loyalty – and companies are already putting these capabilities into action.
Danone says that AI-driven personalisation is “significantly enhancing consumer engagement”.
The spokesperson says: “Our recent Alpro campaign in the UK, in partnership with Tesco and Sainsbury’s, mapped the shopper journey across multiple touchpoints and delivered over 200 personalised visual messages using AI. This creative personalisation led to a marked increase in engagement rates.”
AI also plays a role in how Danone seeks to future-proof its operations, the French giant says. “From supply chain forecasting to connected factories, we’re using generative AI to drive enterprise-wide productivity and free up time for more creative work,” the spokesperson adds. “As we embed responsible AI across our systems, we remain committed to upskilling our workforce and preparing our supply chains to be future-ready.”
Credit: HJBC/Shutterstock.com
Despite rapidly advancing AI toolsets, food companies are not entirely replacing traditional market research but rather using AI to enhance it. For example, the Danone spokesperson says that the brand harnesses AI to “accelerate insight generation, scale personalisation and identify emerging trends early”.
Therefore, traditional market research remains essential for “testing hypotheses, ensuring representativeness, and understanding nuance”, they add.
New AI tools like TasteGPT allow Danone to “detect trends in real-time, model scenarios and rapidly test product concepts”, the spokesperson adds, with a caveat.
“What once took months of research can now take days, especially in early-stage innovation. But before launching a product or campaign, traditional testing – like sensory panels, ethnographic studies, or in-depth interviews – is still used to validate AI-generated hypotheses. AI is no longer just a tool for automation – it’s becoming a strategic partner.”
Limits and ethics
Despite the excitement, industry experts caution that AI is no silver bullet – and as food brands strive for more personalised experiences – there is also a growing debate around the ethical use of personal data. The question becomes: how far is too far?
Nienke Creemers, senior trends researcher for Stylus, says the public are “starting to feel a lot more comfortable with AI than two years ago”.
Stylus, a subsidiary of Just Food parent company GlobalData, is an intelligence company that predicts cultural trends across various sectors including food.
Creemers adds AI is increasingly used by consumers for personalised nutrition and meal planning, with 19% of consumers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia already using AI for these purposes.
She says: “AI chatbots are becoming more like a personalised recommendation machine, as it helps them with their individual nutrition goals. At the same time, they’re also using it for shopping and helping them to select items and better manage their grocery lists,” she says.
“For example, DoorDash has already integrated AI in their app, so you can transfer your grocery list that you put in your notes to DoorDash, and it will create a basket for you.”
However, Creemers notes that as more people become comfortable with using AI, the risk of a data or privacy breach increases.
“I think one big opportunity, that is also an immediate risk, is that if people input all this information into food companies and dieting apps about their diets, such as how they eat, when they eat and what they eat, that creates so much data around what people are doing and how they are behaving.
“That information becomes such a wealth of insight, and as a company, you can do so much with that. They could create products with that information, which is great.” But she says that a notable downside to that is company transparency.
“How are companies using that data? Do people read the terms and conditions of their service? How are they using it ethically? I believe that consumers want that transparency, so being up front is key.”
Manufacturers are also thinking carefully about the role of AI. Many view the technology as a tool for guidance – and not as a replacement for experienced marketers. Therefore, food brands are taking the AI-assisted route, and not AI-led.
A spokesperson for Danone said: “We take a proactive approach to responsible AI. Our policies are regularly reviewed and updated to align with evolving legal frameworks – like the EU AI Act – to ensure we stay ahead of compliance requirements and consumer expectations.”
Creemers adds consumer sentiment towards AI is also dependent on region and how the technology is used.
“I think generally, consumers are growing more comfortable with AI. The longer it’s here and the longer consumers are using it, the more comfortable they get,” she says. “But it really depends, per region, what the purpose is, what they’re using it for, and whether they trust it or not.
In Europe, she claims that people are still generally sceptical of the use of AI and the data regulation surrounding the technology.
Creemers says: “In Belgium, only 32% of people say that they’re excited for AI-powered products and services. That figure is 34% in Sweden, 39% in the Netherlands, and only 40% in France, which is low compared to the rest of the world.”
However, she adds in South East Asia “enthusiasm to adopting AI is much higher”.
“In Indonesia, it’s 85% and then Thailand, it’s 78%. Most people in those countries think that AI products and services have way more benefits than drawbacks. With governmental restrictions in Europe, it makes sense that people would be more cautious around using it,” she explains.
Pointing to a global study Stylus carried out last year, Creemers says around half of consumers trust AI to give advice on simple tasks such as product recommendations.
“Lots of people are using ChatGPT, for example, as a therapist,” she says. “This suggests that AI tools around nutrition and even dietary advice will probably grow and will be adopted by people. We can’t forget that AI and machine learning is already integrated in so many things in our lives, and we don’t really see it all the time.”
Ultimately, ensuring consumer privacy, transparency and fairness will always be critical as AI becomes more embedded in product development and marketing strategies.
What’s next?
As AI tools grow more sophisticated, their role in shaping the food industry’s future will only expand. From real-time analysis to predictive modelling for new product launches, brands are not only beginning to embrace AI for what is trending but for what will be.
Philogene says: “I think the essence of our worldview is that we are continuing to innovate with human and AI co-creation and that’s something we strongly believe in at Stravito.
“We continue to be really excited about AI’s potential to amplify human expertise, and we want to bridge that gap between what has been a promise of customer centricity, and the reality of business impact.”
Philogene adds the public needs to embrace the fact that AI is here to stay. “I don’t necessarily think there’s a ‘right’ path but ignoring it certainly is the wrong path – because AI is not going away.”
The direction of travel is clear: brands that combine AI’s analytical power with human creativity will be best placed to meet the evolving tastes of tomorrow’s consumers.
