Every day your kitchen loses time searching for the insights that matter—and your menu development suffers. Givaudan's Taste & Wellbeing Marketing & Consumer & Sensory Insights (CSI) team faced the same bottleneck. Their research spanned beverages, dairy, sweet goods, savory, snacks, and healthcare categories, but valuable consumer and sensory data was scattered across multiple platforms, external providers, internal systems, shared folders, and individual teams. The result: slower product launches, duplicated work, and missed menu opportunities.
The Data Bottleneck Cost Them Time and Money
Givaudan's challenge mirrors yours. When responding to a customer brief—or developing your next signature dish—employees had to know not only where information was stored but also who might have access to it. Valuable insights existed somewhere within the organization, yet locating them consistently required significant time and effort. Projects moved more slowly, existing research was sometimes duplicated, and teams occasionally relied on inference when relevant evidence could not be found quickly enough. Rather than generating more research, Givaudan needed a way to better leverage the knowledge it already possessed by creating a single, searchable destination for trusted insights.
The Platform That Changed Everything
After evaluating several knowledge management platforms, Givaudan selected Stravito to serve as its centralized insights platform. The decision was based on several factors, including the platform's intuitive user experience, rapid implementation, ability to integrate with existing research providers, strong customer support, and overall business value. The goal was to create a solution that employees across marketing, sensory, technical, and commercial teams could begin using with minimal training while making trusted research significantly easier to access. Internally, the team named its Stravito platform "Genie," reflecting its ability to surface relevant research quickly and simplify access to existing knowledge across the organization.
Real Numbers: 3–10x Faster Product Development
The impact was measurable almost immediately. According to Givaudan, many projects now move three to ten times faster than before implementation, with research that previously required days—or even weeks—to locate becoming accessible in minutes through Stravito's AI-powered search capabilities. For menu operators, this means faster turnaround on customer requests, quicker response to market trends, and the ability to test and refine concepts before competitors do.
Easier access to existing insights has also reduced duplicated work, allowing the CSI team to support more customer briefs while directing research resources toward genuinely new opportunities rather than recreating work that already exists. Translation: your suppliers and ingredient partners can focus on solving your unique problems instead of rehashing old questions. That's ROI you can measure in weeks, not months.
Collaboration That Strengthens Your Menu Strategy
The platform has strengthened collaboration throughout the organization as well. Whether supporting proactive innovation initiatives or responding to customer requests, marketing, sensory, and technical teams now work from a shared foundation of consumer and market intelligence. Regional teams are also able to better understand unfamiliar markets by accessing centralized research instead of relying solely on local expertise, leading to more informed internal discussions and greater confidence in customer conversations. For operators managing multi-location concepts or expanding to new markets, this shared intelligence means smarter menu decisions backed by real data—not guesswork.
More Time for What Matters: Innovation and Strategy
Beyond measurable productivity gains, Givaudan views the platform as a way to create more time for higher-value work. By reducing the time employees spend searching for information and synthesizing research, teams can focus more attention on strategic thinking, creativity, and developing new ideas that ultimately benefit customers. In your kitchen, that means your chefs and menu developers spend less time chasing down flavor trends and more time crafting dishes that drive covers and margins.
What's Next: Broader Expansion and Competitive Edge
Today, Stravito is available to Givaudan's regional and local Marketing and Consumer & Sensory Insights teams across Europe, with plans to extend access to additional commercial and technical stakeholders. As the company continues evaluating broader global expansion, leadership views faster access to trusted insights as an increasingly important competitive advantage in an industry where consumer preferences, product development cycles, and innovation timelines continue to accelerate. For operators relying on ingredient suppliers and flavor partners, this means faster access to consumer data, category trends, and innovation pipelines—putting you ahead of the curve when the next menu window opens.
For Givaudan, the value of Stravito extends beyond organizing research. It has transformed existing knowledge into a more accessible business asset, enabling teams to make faster, better-informed decisions while creating more capacity for innovation. In today's food and beverage landscape, where speed and confidence are becoming just as important as creativity, that ability may prove to be one of the company's most valuable competitive advantages—and yours too when your suppliers can move at the pace your business demands.
