November 23, 2024

Knowing which flavors or ingredients are popular now or in the future isn’t particularly helpful if we don’t get great products to our consumers. This is why we’re using technology to unleash innovation in the snack aisle, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to transform how we make, move and sell our products.

From new product development to inventory distribution with our retail partners, AI helps us provide consumers with greater variety at every point of choice—delivered with precision and efficiency at the right price.

Here’s just a few ways we’re using AI to unleash innovation in snacking:

• Augmenting human intuition with AI by calculating a “store potential” for every outlet in the country, fusing shopper demographic information with data from other similar retailers—leading to recommendations to local sales reps to deliver information and predictions to ensure full shelves week after week.
• AI also allows us to find “flavor inspiration” via trend tracking, computer sensing, in-store activity and social media monitoring—giving us a window into what flavors or products consumers want, as well as identifying local spikes in demand tied to seasonal changes and weather patterns.
• We can reduce development time by using AI to accelerate consumer behavior tracking along with speeding up our testing processes by as much as 50%—predicting top sellers based on historic analysis of flavor and texture profiles without using time consuming and expensive surveys.
• AI leads to increased speed-to-shelf times with visualization software that can show specific demand in local regions and lets us shift production to facilities closer to our consumers—giving them fresher snacks with less environmental and community impact.