GRATE insights from Invest NI Insights Conference
Hello GRATE readers,
Sometimes you don’t realise how tired you are until you stop… Last week I had the lovely opportunity to escape to the Algarve for a few days and recharge the batteries. And if I’m honest, I hadn’t quite realised just how tired I was until I stopped.
A bit of sunshine, sea air, good food, long chats and doing very little was exactly what I needed. I came home feeling re-energised — and just in time for a very different kind of battery recharge on Wednesday!
I joined almost 180 people from across Northern Ireland’s food and drink industry at the Invest NI Food & Drink Consumer Insights Conference – Powered by Insight, at the Armagh City Hotel. The programme moved through three really useful themes — Inspiration, Innovation and Activation — looking at everything from future food trends and changing consumer behaviour to GLP-1, shopper insight and how to make a stronger pitch to retail buyers.
I had the pleasure — and slight terror! — of standing up to talk about a subject I certainly never thought I’d be presenting on: What AI Can – and Cannot – Do for Food Product Development.
My message was pretty simple. AI can be brilliant in NPD — but only when we are clear about the problem we are asking it to help solve.
A few of my key takeaways:
1. Use AI as a hypothesis generator, not an answer generator.
It can scan, summarise, generate territories, challenge assumptions and give you lots of possible starting points incredibly quickly. But a plausible-looking answer isn’t necessarily the right answer.
2. AI can accelerate the process; it cannot replace the judgement.
It hasn’t tasted the product. It hasn’t watched a shopper hesitate at the fixture. It doesn’t know whether something will actually run down a factory line, hit the margin or convince a buyer. Human judgement still matters enormously.
3. Start with the problem, not the technology.
Rather than asking, “Where can we use AI?”, ask “What slows us down? Where are we missing insight? What could we challenge harder?” Then decide whether AI is genuinely the right tool.
AI should give NPD teams more time to do the things humans are particularly good at — tasting, observing, questioning, connecting ideas and making decisions.
There was plenty for me to scribble down from the rest of the day too.
Seven things I came home thinking about
Charles Banks from thefoodpeople always manages to put structure around what can feel like a mountain of trends. One phrase that really stuck with me was “my new reality” — consumers looking for ways to make everyday life that little bit better. Yes, people still want joyful escapism and discovery, but alongside that is a very clear return to brilliant basics, made well.
His opportunity areas were particularly useful. “Just enough for a changing appetite”, food with meaningful nutrition, familiar dishes with something new to discover, vegetables people actually crave, and food that works around increasingly fragmented meal occasions.
Perhaps the simplest takeaway: good food needs to fit the day people actually have, not the day we imagine they have.
Jason Winstanley – Pilgrim’s Europe: Jason's session was a great reminder of the danger of building category strategies around the loudest trend rather than the biggest opportunity. One statistic illustrated it perfectly: while veganism represents a relatively small part of the market, the pool of people who have historically described themselves as meat reducers is vastly bigger. But that behaviour is shifting again. One of the forces potentially changing it? GLP-1. Healthy eating is increasingly becoming associated with protein, satiety and nutrient density, rather than simply eating less meat. Another reminder that consumer behaviour rarely moves neatly in a straight line.
John Stapleton – His session provided a nice counterbalance to all the data and insight. For founders and innovation teams, that ability to back an idea — with evidence, but also with conviction — is hugely important. Sometimes you simply have to decide what you believe in and go for it.
Morgan Griffiths – Lumina Intelligence: talked about how GLP-1 is about far more than smaller portions. This was probably one of the sessions that generated the most conversation. Morgan's data showed a typical GLP-1 user skewing towards women, Gen X and Millennials and ABC1 consumers, with 62% looking for food with added benefits and 74% happy to pay more for quality. Even more interestingly, 52% reported that their spending on premium or higher-quality food had increased.
So the opportunity isn't simply make everything smaller. Think nutrient density, protein, quality, food-to-go, smaller satisfying formats and drinks designed for sipping rather than gulping. Morgan highlighted businesses such as LEON, Pret and itsu, as well as smaller burger formats, as examples of where existing propositions may naturally suit this changing consumer.
Brian McDermott – session brought the conversation back into the NPD kitchen and the people responsible for turning consumer understanding into actual products. My big takeaway was the importance of giving teams the right coaching and mentoring tools and asking some simple questions: What are we trying to achieve? What is my role? And how do we work better together? We can have all the trend reports and consumer data in the world, but ultimately innovation gets delivered by people and teams.
Jeremy Garlick – Insight Traction: I loved the simplicity of Jeremy's three questions for brands: Are you instantly recognisable? Are you easy to process? Are you the obvious choice?. His examples were great — from Bonne Maman's instantly recognisable packs to messaging that solves a very clear consumer problem without making the shopper work too hard.
Sharon Yourell Lawlor – My biggest takeout: A deceptively simple distinction. The person who consumes your product and the person standing at the fixture deciding whether to buy it aren't always behaving in the same way. Winning with today's modern shopper means understanding what is happening in the actual shopping environment— missions, channels, visibility, ease, interruption and all the little decisions that determine whether something ends up in the basket. I also have Sharon's Behind Retail YouTube series firmly on my watch list.
Thea Alexander from Young Foodies: A fitting session to finish on. For challenger brands in particular, it's easy for a buyer pitch to become a passionate story about the founder, the product and why you love it. The buyer needs something different. They need confidence that you've understood their category, their shopper, the commercial opportunity and what your product is going to do for their business.
Five GRATE finds this week - And rather nicely, almost every product that caught my attention this week connects back to one of those conversations in Armagh.
RICK STEIN X WAITROSE
This is one I'll be watching closely. Waitrose has just launched Rick Stein's first ever supermarket food range: nine fish and seafood dishes built around responsibly sourced British seafood. Products include British Hake en Papillote, Scottish Loch Trout en Papillote, Panko White Fish Gratin and Monkfish & Whiting Indonesian Curry. What interests me isn't simply the celebrity collaboration. It's the way they've translated what Rick Stein stands for — seafood expertise, coastal provenance and great fish simply cooked — into products that remove some of the barriers consumers have around cooking fish at home.
ODLUMS AIR FRYER BAKES
This one made me smile because it is such a clever example of a heritage brand refusing to stay in its lane. Odlums has been part of Irish baking since 1845, but its Air Fryer Bakes range takes the brand into one of the most important shifts in how people are cooking today. The range includes products such as an Original Style Bagel Mix, which makes up to four bagels, requires Greek yoghurt to be added and is designed to cook in the air fryer in around 15 minutes, alongside a Multiseed Bread Roll Mix. That's what makes it interesting to me. Rather than saying, “We're a flour company; how do we sell more flour?”, the opportunity becomes: “We're a baking brand. How are people baking now?” And that's a much bigger innovation question. Its great example of using existing brand credibility to move into a new format, new behaviour and potentially a younger consumer.
OATLY FIBRE
Protein has dominated the nutrition conversation for what feels like forever, so I'm fascinated to see fibre moving much more firmly into the spotlight. Oatly has launched Fibre Barista Edition and Fibre Low-Cal Edition, each delivering 5g of fibre per 250ml serving. The Barista version contains 20g per litre, while the Low-Cal edition combines the fibre proposition with no sugar and low calories.What I find clever here is that they're not asking consumers to adopt an entirely new habit. They're effectively saying: have the coffee you were going to have anyway — but get something more from it. This is a great example of meaningful nutrition added to an established behaviour. And after years of protein dominating food innovation, keep watching fibre and gut health.
KUDOS EGG BITES
This one particularly interested me. Noble Foods has launched Kudos, a new food-to-go brand that puts free-range British eggs into snacking occasions. Its first products include Feta & Tomato Egg Bites and a Shakshuka Saucy Egg Pot, launched into Sainsbury's in September and included in meal deals. And there is a proper consumer need behind it. Noble Foods says its research found 55% of consumers wanted more variety in egg snacks and 50% wanted greater flavour choice. More variants, including Ham Hock and Jalapeño Chilli Egg Bites, are already planned. As we know, eggs are a familiar, naturally protein-rich ingredient being taken into a completely different occasion — portable, chilled, food-to-go snacking. That's exactly the sort of format innovation I think we're going to see much more of.
KINGS BILTONG & JERKY
Another timely one following all the GLP-1 discussion. Kepak-owned Kings has just undergone a major repositioning designed to take biltong and jerky beyond a niche, functional protein audience and into mainstream everyday snacking. Perfect timing for the GLP1 trend. The new packs feature stronger flavour cues, product photography and clearer descriptions, while protein and calorie information have moved to the front of pack. But the most interesting bit for me is the strategic shift. BrandOpus describes the new positioning as “irresistibly good grazing” — deliberately broadening the proposition beyond the traditional hardcore protein-snack consumer. As appetites and meal occasions fragment — whether that's driven by GLP-1, busy lives, fitness or simply changing eating habits — we're likely to see a much bigger battleground around small, satisfying, protein-rich food.
I came away from Wednesday thinking that perhaps the biggest opportunity in food innovation right now isn't another completely new trend. It's understanding how the way people live and eat is changing. Smaller appetites. More fragmented meals. More desire for protein and meaningful nutrition. Fibre and gut health. Convenience without compromise.
Familiar foods presented in new formats. And shoppers increasingly wanting to understand exactly what they're buying. And somewhere in amongst all that sits AI — an incredibly useful new tool for helping us make sense of it.
But thankfully, the tasting, debating, creating, challenging and occasional arguing around the NPD table still needs us humans.
And I'm rather pleased about that!
As always, enjoy the read,
Annie x
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