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Redefining Ingredient Selection in the Packaged Food Industry

A venture-building case study for an AI-driven B2B platform helping food companies move faster through ingredient shortages, reformulation decisions, and cross-functional collaboration.

B2B platform AI-driven Food industry Venture building From concept to pilot
Agilitas reformulation platform shown on a laptop
The product concept helped teams quickly evaluate ingredient shortages, compare alternatives, and understand the projected impact on formulation decisions.

Problem Statement

The $3 trillion packaged food industry faces significant challenges in ingredient selection and reformulation due to supply chain disruptions. Traditional methods involve months of trial and error, causing inefficiencies, delays, and financial losses.

Key Challenges

  • Ingredient shortages result in $32 billion annually in missed sales.
  • Reformulations are slow, relying on non-standardized spec sheets and manual comparisons.
  • Current tools like spreadsheets lack the functionality to support collaboration across R&D, procurement, and supply chain teams.

Objective

To design a scalable AI-powered platform that aggregates ingredient data, automates comparisons, and enables teams to rapidly respond to market changes, ultimately minimizing costs and improving time-to-market.

My Role in the Process

As the Lead CX Researcher and Designer, I was responsible for shaping the product vision and aligning discovery insights with business strategy. I collaborated with cross-functional stakeholders to define product scope, conducted high-impact research to inform MVP prioritization, and led the end-to-end design process. This included facilitating synthesis sessions, validating value propositions, and producing decision-making artifacts for executive alignment.

Quotes describing reformulation as trial and error
Product developers described reformulation as a restart-heavy process, often taking months to find an acceptable replacement.
Product development journey map
The solution targeted a complex product-development journey with multiple decision points, handoffs, and go/no-go moments.

Research Approach

Conducted 181 interviews across senior R&D scientists, product developers, and executives. Designed and executed a mixed-methods research strategy to uncover cross-functional pain points, reformulation workflows, and decision-making gaps.

Key Insights

  • Manual reformulations take months, causing project bottlenecks.
  • Collaboration gaps across teams lead to redundant efforts and inefficiencies.
  • Non-standardized ingredient specs complicate sourcing and comparisons.

Solution

Agilitas introduced a centralized platform to revolutionize the ingredient reformulation process. As lead designer, I designed the landing page, MVP, and product concepts, ensuring the platform met both user needs and business objectives.

R&D product developers are always scrambling to complete mission-critical projects they did not have the week before.

In fact, product developers like Jane need to reformulate around margin pressure emergencies and ingredient shortages on a regular basis.

Jane, PhD, R&D product developer persona
40%

Daily or weekly reformulation around margin pressures

100%

Monthly reformulation around ingredient shortages

IngredientBank storyboards and usability testing with a 9.2 average rating
Prototypes showcased how the AI tool aggregates ingredient data, highlights key differences, and supports quick decision-making. Testing process helped us define a centralized digital workspace for managing ingredient specifications, comparing alternatives, and collaborating with stakeholders.

Key Features

  • Centralized Ingredient Database: Standardizes disparate spec sheets into a uniform, searchable format.
  • AI-Driven Recommendations: Provides real-time alternative ingredient suggestions based on specs, availability, and cost.
  • Collaboration Tools: Simplifies team workflows by replacing emails and shared drives with a centralized hub for reformulation projects.
  • Time-Saving Automation: Reduces reformulation time from months to days.

Impact

  • Achieved funding and moved the project to pilot stage, collaborating with product designers and engineers to ensure smooth handoff.
  • Reduced reformulation timelines by 75%, enabling faster time-to-market.
  • Received a 9.2 usability rating from enterprise users, validating the platform’s alignment with both user needs and business KPIs.
  • Increased collaboration efficiency among R&D, procurement, and supply chain teams.
Agilitas MVP replacing tribal knowledge screen
The MVP will replace tribal knowledge at these companies with a centralized way to learn from past projects.
Agilitas MVP aggregating and standardizing ingredient specs
It will aggregate and standardize ingredient specs, automatically turning dozens of different PDFs into a single, easy-to-compare document.
Agilitas MVP comparing and evaluating ingredient alternatives
Agilitas will support comparing and evaluating ingredient data, matching potential alternatives and providing insights against the ingredient that the developer needs to replace.
Agilitas MVP sharing and collaboration modal
It will be easy to share and collaborate with stakeholders across the organization, with no more dropping dozens of files onto shared drives or emailing specs back and forth.

What’s Next?

Scaling the AI tool to broader use cases beyond reformulation.

Agilitas reformulation vision shown on a laptop
The vision: a product that could intelligently reformulate for the lecithin shortage.
Chocolate bar formulation impact chart
Clients will be able to see what the impact would be on a chocolate bar if there was no lecithin.
Xanthan Gum match rating screen
Customers will be able to see which alternative ingredient would be best in matching the properties of lecithin.
Agilitas reformulation vision shown on a laptop
They will be able to see where they could source that alternative ingredient from and what the predicted effect of that alternative ingredient is on the chocolate bar.

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