For restaurant and dining professionals working with ingredient suppliers and flavor developers, speed matters. When customers demand new menu innovations, updated flavor profiles, or rapid responses to emerging food trends, the ability to access consumer insights and sensory research quickly can mean the difference between capturing a market opportunity and missing it entirely. At Givaudan, a critical challenge emerged: as research and consumer intelligence accumulated across multiple systems, platforms, and teams, the insights that could inform better menus and faster product development became increasingly difficult to locate.
The Bottleneck: Scattered Intelligence Slows Innovation
Givaudan's Taste & Wellbeing Marketing & Consumer & Sensory Insights (CSI) team supports categories spanning beverages, dairy, sweet goods, savory, snacks, and healthcare—the full spectrum of what restaurant and foodservice operators source from. The team relies on consumer, category, and sensory research to inform flavor development and innovation strategies that ultimately reach the plate. However, valuable research was dispersed across multiple platforms, external providers, internal systems, shared folders, and individual teams. Responding to a customer brief often required employees to know not only where information was stored but also who might have access to it.
The result was slower project timelines, duplicated research efforts, and teams sometimes making decisions based on inference when relevant evidence existed somewhere in the organization but 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 Answer: A Centralized Insights Hub
Givaudan selected Stravito as its centralized insights platform based on several key factors: intuitive user experience, rapid implementation, ability to integrate with existing research providers, strong customer support, and overall business value. The platform was designed so employees across marketing, sensory, technical, and commercial teams could begin using it 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. By consolidating internal and external research into a single point of entry, Givaudan reduced the time employees spent searching for information and increased the time available for analysis, collaboration, and innovation—activities that directly impact the quality and speed of innovation delivered to restaurant and foodservice customers.
The Impact: Faster Menus, Stronger Partnerships
The results were 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 dining professionals and menu developers, this translates to quicker responses to trend requests, faster flavor validation, and speedier time-to-market for new menu items.
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. 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—critical advantages when partners depend on Givaudan's expertise to guide menu decisions.
Scaling Insights for Global Dining Innovation
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 restaurant and dining professionals sourcing from Givaudan, the value of this platform extends beyond internal efficiency. By transforming existing knowledge into a more accessible business asset, the platform enables faster, better-informed decisions that ultimately benefit menu innovation and strategic planning. In today's competitive foodservice landscape, where consumer demands shift rapidly and speed is essential, partnering with suppliers who can respond quickly with confident, research-backed solutions may prove to be a distinctive competitive advantage.
