AI Helps Food Brands Spot Viral Trends Before They Peak

When Dubai chocolate went viral on TikTok in 2024, several major confectionery brands didn’t launch competing versions until after the trend had already peaked. That lag from trend signal to store shelf is the central operational problem for large consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in the social media era. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms are now closing that gap, spotting signals earlier and setting durable demand apart from short-lived novelty.

Tastewise, an AI platform that analyzes billions of food and beverage data points across social media, restaurant menus, retail activity and home cooking, said it is used by 80% of the world’s leading food and beverage brands, including PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, Mars and Kroger. For example, Tastewise identified banana matcha, with social mentions up 218% year over year, and Malatang, a Sichuan street food dish with consumer interest up 88% year over year, as trends showing signs of sustained growth rather than short-term novelty.

“The challenge for most companies today isn’t a lack of data, but the abundance of it. Businesses have more data than they can effectively synthesize,” Alon Chen, founder and CEO of Tastewise, told Retail Insider. “What’s often missing is the ability to connect signals across sources and determine whether they are statistically meaningful and consistently growing.”

Gen Z Discovers Food on TikTok Before Brands Can Respond

Eighty-four percent of Generation Z consumers have tried a food trend they discovered on social media, according to Food and Beverage Magazine. About 70% of Gen Z respondents identified TikTok as their most valuable platform for food recommendations.

British CPG company Unilever uses AI to compress its response window. Its research and development (R&D) teams use AI to explore thousands of recipe variations in seconds instead of testing ideas individually, the company said in a May post. “For our scientists in Foods, AI isn’t just a time-saver. It’s changing how we discover, collaborate and innovate,” said Heike Steiling, chief R&D officer of foods at Unilever. Unilever noted that its Knorr Fast and Flavourful Paste was developed in roughly half the usual time using AI-assisted formulation.

Unilever Food Solutions feeds the expertise of 250 chefs across 75 markets and a library of 35,000 chef-authored recipes into its AI systems to provide real-time analysis for foodservice operators, Unilever reported.

AI Helps Brands Separate Durable Demand From Short-Lived Hype

Tastewise CEO Chen distinguished between micro-trends that fade quickly and long-term shifts that build steadily across social content, menu adoption and retail orders. “If consumers try something once and move on, it usually means the format itself is not sustainable, but the underlying need still exists,” Chen told Retail Insider.

Nearly 50% of AI search users use those tools to inform food and beverage purchase decisions, according to research cited in a Unilever report. With 29,000 questions asked per second on ChatGPT alone, according to OpenAI data cited by Unilever, food brands are increasingly competing to appear in AI-generated recommendations rather than just search results.

The data claims from AI food platforms are not all independently verified. Brian Chau, a food scientist who has tested platforms in this category, told CNBC: “I think all the AI companies coming out are, to some extent, overstating what they can do.” The platforms generating the most commercially useful signals are those with the broadest underlying datasets, a competitive advantage that is difficult to assess from the outside.

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