Nestlé Food Tech Week
INSPIRATION, CREATION & FEEDBACK
Nestlé commissioned us to reinvent the format of their yearly innovation day. We developed the Nestlé Food Tech Week, a week of conferences and workshop to inspire Nestlé’s leadership teams to innovate in the field of food and tech.
12 food tech creators talks
100+ case studies
31 food tech trends
10 workshops with 10 business units
53 participants
100 ideas
31 prototypes
3 winners
3 prizes to develop projects
For one week in October 2017, we turned the auditorium of the Nestlé HQ in Barcelona into the stage for 12 food innovators from the US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Basque Country and Barcelona. Under the umbrella of the farm to fork food tech value chain, they deep dived into specific trends in their industries, shared learnings from their startups and offered a vision for the future and potential opportunities for Nestlé.
Each day was dedicated to a different vertical of the food tech value chain. Food Republik presented the 2017 Farm to Fork 5c Trend Report with more than 100 case studies across 31 trends offering insight into the future of farming, the future of retail, the future kitchen, future foods and the future of health through food. The audience could see, touch and try new food products in an exposition with innovations from the US, Germany the Netherlands and the UK.
After the inspirational morning talks, we worked with 10 business units - from Nestlé Waters, Bonka, Nesquik, Cereal division, Buitoni to Health Care - to solve their challenges with Food Thinking workshops. Our methodology is inspired by design thinking combining inspiration with creation, rapid prototyping and pitching. More than 100 ideas were developed of which 31 were prototyped and tested in online panels with consumers.
After 4 days of food tech talks and workshops, on Friday during the closing event, Nestlé’s GM Laurent Dereux awarded 3 winners with economic investment to further develop their ideas.
DAY 1, FOOD TECH INTRO
Monday 16th October 2017
Monday was kicked off with an introduction to food tech by Nestlé Innova and Food Republik. Cecilia Tham, founder of MOB and Singularity University alumni, inspired through her talk “Metamorfosis 2.0” - a vision of a collaborative future, exponential technologies and new Machine to Machine business models. Victoria Albrecht, founder of London Food Tech Week and Head of Sales at the German AI startup Rasa, explained how food companies like Nestlé can leverage conversational AI to create more customer engagement and drastically reduce costs. Jon Etxeberria, director of Culinary Action!, the Basque Culinary Center’s startup incubator and investor in several spanish food startups, talked about food tech investment trends and how to take a product to market in less than 6 months.
DAY 2, THE FUTURE OF RETAIL
Tuesday 17th October 2017
Tuesday was dedicated to the future farm and future of retail. Daniel Kats from the German hydroponic startup Infarm that is offering fresh produce grown directly at the supermarket at Metro and Edeka in Germany talked about the future of farming and a new standard of freshness in the vegetable segment. Héctor Paz from the creative technology studio Imascono in Zaragoza working with clients like Disney and Ferran Adrià explained the opportunities to develop products, communication and shopping experiences across Virtual, Augmented and Mixed reality. Tech Food Magazine’s editor founder and chief editor Beatriz Romanos, presented Food Republik’s Retail Trend Report with a deep dive into 7 retail trends.
DAY 3, THE FUTURE OF FOOD
Wednesday 18th October 2017
Wednesday kicked of with Umahro Cardogan’s talk about the future of health and the future of food with a talk packed with insights about how genetics, the microbiome and personalized nutrition will revolutionize the way we eat. Alex Rodríguez took the health trends a step further and presented his guide to become a superhuman. The audience learned the meaning of biohacking and the different strategies to improve themselves beyond normal through food, supplements, exercise, meditation and wearable technology. Malwine Steinbock presented The Future of Food trend report offering insight into new food product categories and trends to watch out for.
Day 4, THE FUTURE KITCHEN
Thursday 19th October 2017
Thursday was dedicated to the future kitchen. Pedro Nuñez, founder of Eskesso, a connected sous vide device, talked about the opportunities at the intersection of IoT, cooking solutions and market places for food. Followed by 3D food printing pioneer Marcio Barradas, founder of Food Ink and MoodBytes, who explained his vision from completely 3D printed restaurant to novel kitchen appliances for personalized food. Victor Fortunado gave an inspirational talk about trends entering home and professional kitchen.
DAY 5, NESTLÉ FOOD TECH AWARDS
Friday 20th October 2017
We concluded the Nestlé Food Tech Week on Friday with a summary of the week with what we’ve learned from the speakers and the more than 100 case studies with 5 big learnings.
Learning #1: Cities are the new farms: hydroponic systems are now producing fresh foods in warehouses, homes and supermarkets turning true freshness into the new standard.
Learning #2: No Supermarket is the new supermarket. The combination of new technologies and direct producer to consumer models are enabling us to shop for our favorites foods without ever entering a supermarket. Consumers are increasingly looking for solutions, not just products.
Learning #3: Robots are the new chefs. You will have help to prepare your next meal. From outsourcing your kitchen to having a personal robot, cooking will become more convenient and less time consuming.
Learning #4: Alt Food is the new food. As our hunger for protein is unsustainable and inhumane, we are seeing A LOT of new companies mimicking or substituting meat, eggs and dairy - a.k.a. Alternative or Alt Food.
Learning #5: From generic to genetic. It’s common knowledge that one size fits no one. Now more than ever food is evolving from tribe specific (paleo, vegan, cross-fit, …) to adapted to your genome.
The three winners of the online consumer panel were awarded prizes ranging from 5,000€ to 10,000€ to further test and develop their ideas.
Nestlé’s Innovation Director Jesús Alonso titled the first edition of the Nestlé Food Tech Week as “brutal” and a game-changing.