Consumer preferences change faster than most teams can react. The problem isn’t access to data, it’s turning that data into decisions teams can align on, defend internally, and bring to market with confidence.
With Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), staying ahead of market trends and understanding consumer preferences are crucial for sustained growth and success. By utilizing tools like CPG analytics and market research, businesses can gain valuable insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and emerging trends.
Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard is designed to close that gap by connecting real consumer behavior to repeatable execution.
The challenge of turning food & beverage data into tangible results
CPG teams are surrounded by data, yet product, marketing, and commercial decisions still stall. Insights live in decks, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools, making it difficult to agree on what matters now versus what already peaked.
As a result, innovation cycles stretch, launches miss timing windows, and internal conversations focus more on debating the data than acting on it.
The issue isn’t insight quality. It’s that most tools weren’t built to support ongoing decision-making across teams.
Traditional Methods vs. Data-Driven Innovation
Why rely on outdated reports when you can innovate in real time?
| Feature | Traditional market research | Tastewise Consumer Insights Dashboard |
| Data freshness | 6–12 months old, primarily surveys and historical scans | Real-time, based on live consumer behavior |
| Sample size | Hundreds to low thousands of respondents | Millions of consumers, recipes, menus, and social signals |
| Go-to-market speed | 12–18 months from insight to launch | ~30% faster with data-validated concepts |
| Prediction accuracy | Inferred from past behavior | Predictive modeling based on current and emerging signals |
| Decision workflow | One-off reports requiring interpretation | Always-on dashboard reused across teams |
| Cost efficiency | High cost due to manual research and repeated studies | Scalable SaaS model with repeatable evidence |
Why traditional research methods slow execution
Predictive analytics not only improves demand forecasting but also enhances pricing strategies and predictive maintenance. By leveraging data from various sources, such as web searches and social media, companies can gain deeper insights into consumer preferences and market dynamics.
Most food and beverage research workflows rely on historical scans, manual desk research, and one-off reports. These approaches are slow to update and hard to localize. By the time insights are shared, they’re already dated.
They also create internal friction. R&D teams want proof demand exists. Marketing needs clarity on messaging. Commercial teams need a story that buyers will understand quickly.
When each function pulls from different sources, alignment becomes the bottleneck.
How Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard changes the workflow
Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard brings observed consumer behavior into one system, updating continuously across multiple datasets.
It connects:
- The Social F&B panel, showing what consumers are discussing, saving, and engaging with
- Foodservice data, capturing early signals through best-sellers, LTOs, and independent operators
- The Home cooking panel, revealing what people actually use again after purchase
Instead of producing static insights, the dashboard supports ongoing decisions, what to prioritize, when to move, and how to position ideas internally and externally.
Understanding consumer needs before committing resources
The dashboard makes it clear which consumer needs dominate conversation and which are accelerating.
Teams can see how needs like protein, convenience, taste, and vitality compare in discussion share, and which emerging needs are gaining momentum rather than plateauing.
This matters because not every need deserves equal investment. Some drive choice. Others are background noise.
By grounding prioritization in observed behavior, teams avoid over-investing in ideas that look good in isolation but don’t scale in the market.
Knowing when a dish or ingredient is early, peaking, or declining
One of the hardest calls in innovation is timing. Launch too early and education costs spike. Launch too late and differentiation disappears.
Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard maps dishes and ingredients across lifecycle stages like when they are early, emerging, trending, mature, and declining, using real behavior, and not assumptions or noise.
Foodservice data surfaces early proxies through LTOs and independents. The Home cooking panel confirms whether interest translates into repeat usage.
This allows teams to pressure-test whether an idea is worth accelerating, renovating, or shelving before committing development or commercial resources.
Moving beyond popularity to understand what actually drives choice
High engagement doesn’t always mean high impact. The dashboard distinguishes between what’s popular and what truly influences consumer decisions.
Correlation views reveal which needs and ingredients are most strongly associated with engagement, not just mentioned frequently. Consumption moments connect those signals to real contexts across social, recipes, menus, and TikTok.
This gives teams a clearer foundation for product briefs, claims, and messaging that align with how consumers actually behave.
Common execution scenarios teams use the dashboard for
Before diving into customer case studies, it’s useful to look at how teams typically apply the Consumer Insights Dashboard to everyday innovation and renovation decisions.
These scenarios reflect how brands move from signal to shelf using observed consumer behavior.
Predicting the next seasonal flavor before competitors
A beverage team preparing for summer planning was relying on focus groups conducted the previous year. While awareness was high, the data lacked timing and confidence around what consumers were actually gravitating toward now.
Using Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard, the team saw consumer interest in citrus flavors grow +45% quarter over quarter, with yuzu and blended citrus accelerating across social discussion and foodservice menus. Rather than waiting for another research cycle, the team moved directly into development.
The result was a Yuzu-infused sparkling water launched three months ahead of competitors, delivering a 15% lift in seasonal sales and validating the timing decision early.
Revitalizing a stagnant snack category with faster validation
A snack brand facing declining sales in a legacy potato chip line needed a way to innovate without repeating slow, high-risk launches. Historical sales data showed erosion, but didn’t explain what direction consumers were moving in.
The Consumer Insights Dashboard revealed rising engagement with “swicy” (sweet + spicy) flavor profiles, particularly among Gen Z consumers, across social and menu behavior. Instead of commissioning lengthy concept testing, the team validated the idea directly against live consumer signals.
A new SKU was approved and launched in weeks, resulting in a 30% faster go-to-market timeline compared to previous launches, while giving commercial teams a clearer story tied to consumer behavior rather than intuition.
Real-world use cases: how teams turn insight into measurable outcomes
These examples show how teams use Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard to solve concrete business problems. Each case connects consumer behavior to execution speed, internal alignment, and commercial results. This is not always about finding the best ideas, it’s about moving them forward faster and with fewer resets.
Accelerating customer-ready storytelling: Givaudan
Givaudan’s EMEA team faced a familiar problem. Flavor ideas moved faster than their research process. Manual trend tracking took days, local relevance was inconsistent, and customer presentations often relied on static data that quickly aged.
Using Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard, the team began pulling real-time, localized consumer insights in 10–20 minutes, while technical development was still underway. Instead of rebuilding research for every conversation, teams reused the same evidence across customers and markets.
The result was a measurable shift in execution speed. In three months, Givaudan created 162 customer presentations, saving over one hour per presentation and securing engagement from 15+ stakeholders. Consumer evidence became part of the selling motion, not a bottleneck.
Turning consumer occasions into a $10MM product: Crunch Pak
Crunch Pak wanted to expand into adult snacking but struggled to innovate beyond historical sales data. Seasonal updates lacked direction, and the category was crowded with similar “better-for-you” claims.
Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard revealed that celebrations and family bonding were driving purchase behavior across consumer discussions, menus, and home usage. Instead of chasing abstract health trends, the team focused on an occasion consumers were actively engaging with.
That insight led to the Charfruiterie Tray, a charcuterie-inspired fruit product designed for sharing. The outcome was concrete: $10MM in annual sales and a product that reached market 6–8 months ahead of competitors, anchored in consumer behavior rather than hindsight.
Reducing research time while increasing confidence: Kroger
Kroger’s innovation teams relied heavily on backward-looking scan data and expensive concept testing. While they could see what sold, they lacked clarity on why products succeeded or failed, slowing validation and increasing costs.
Tastewise’s Consumer Insights Dashboard delivered validated consumer insights in as little as one minute, allowing teams to pressure-test ideas before committing resources. Instead of commissioning repeated studies, teams revisited the same live evidence as ideas evolved.
The impact was both speed and clarity. Kroger reduced time spent on desk research and concept testing, improved alignment across innovation teams, and stayed ahead of shifting consumer demand with decisions grounded in observed behavior.
FAQs about Consumer Insights Dashboard
It’s a centralized product that connects social, foodservice, and home cooking behavior into a single view, helping teams prioritize, validate, and execute food and beverage decisions faster.
Traditional tools rely on static, historical data. Tastewise updates continuously using observed consumer behavior, allowing teams to make decisions based on what’s happening now.
Yes. The dashboard combines growth signals, lifecycle stages, and post-purchase behavior to help teams assess timing and demand before launch.
Yes. The Social F&B panel enables granular, country-level analysis while maintaining consistency across markets.
Teams use dashboard outputs to show demand signals, timing justification, and consumer relevance in a format buyers can understand quickly.
Yes. Many teams validate ideas earlier using dashboard evidence, reducing reliance on expensive external testing.
