The F&B industry faces unprecedented disruption. Brands grapple with surging ingredient prices, shrinking shelf space, and rapidly evolving consumer preferences. Private label market share is growing four times faster than national brands, while 91% of recent menu changes were price increases, averaging over $11. Tastewise, a generative AI platform trusted by over half of Fortune 100 food and beverage companies, addresses these challenges by combining brand data with trillions of real-time food signals to automate marketing and sales execution.
The platform seamlessly integrates into daily workflows, from retail to foodservice, transforming data into sales materials, campaigns, and product placements on shelves and menus. Its GenAI delivers real-time, ready-to-use content, enabling brands to move faster and smarter. Clients have reduced launch timelines by 6–8 months, saving millions in execution costs.
“F&B companies face a perfect storm, from margin pressure and competitive retail space to shifting consumer behaviour and global volatility,” said Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder of Tastewise. “The ability to change course quickly is everything. Our platform doesn’t just uncover what drives consumers; it helps brands act on that insight. This investment allows us to scale globally while continuing to empower our partners to stay agile, relevant, and ahead of change.”
Tastewise announced a $50 million Series B funding round earlier this week. The investment, led by TELUS Global Ventures, with participation from Duo Partners, Peakbridge, Disruptive AI, and PICO, brings Tastewise’s total funding to $72 million.
From personal pain point to industry solution: The Tastewise origin story
Tastewise was co-founded by Alon Chen and Eyal Gaon, both bringing deep expertise in technology, AI, and product innovation.
Alon Chen, CEO and co-founder, told TFN, “As a senior Google executive for nearly a decade, I’ve spent my career leveraging AI and big data across technology, business, and marketing.”
He added, “At Google, I launched the Google Partners channel program in 27 countries, onboarding 60,000 partners worldwide. I also served as Google’s Chief Marketing Officer for Israel and Greece and led the company’s relationship with the World Economic Forum. As Chief Business Officer for Voyager Labs, an AI and cognitive deep learning company funded by Oracle, I developed and led their AI marketing-tech eCommerce solution. Beyond my professional work, I’m a human rights activist for the LGBTQ community and hold a BA in Economics, a Master’s in Law, and an MBA.”
Eyal Gaon, co-founder, said: “With over 15 years of experience building B2C and B2B products using cutting-edge technologies, I’m a self-taught engineer who became CTO of Israel’s Reddit (Tapuz) at 24, implementing big data infrastructures for the country’s largest user content website.” Gaon added, “I later became a technology leader at predictive analytics startup SimilarWeb and have since held CTO roles and founded startups in the marketing technology space.”
The inspiration for Tastewise emerged from a personal experience. “The primary motivation behind starting Tastewise came from a family dinner,” the founders revealed to TFN. “Chen noticed how challenging it had become for his mother to accommodate everyone’s different diets, nutrition plans, and food preferences. She’d make a traditional chicken dish one week, only to find out some family members were now vegetarians. Another time, she served rice, forgetting that others were on a keto diet. The constant need to adapt meals created frustration and highlighted how quickly food preferences evolved.”
“If cooking for a single family had become this complex, the challenge for food and beverage businesses must be exponentially greater. I recognised a clear gap in the industry’s ability to keep up with changing consumer behaviour. That recognition of an unmet market need, combined with my personal experience, ultimately sparked the creation of Tastewise,” added Chen.
Tastewise is proudly LGBTQ-founded and led by Chen. “Diversity is core to our culture,” the company stated. Women comprise 50% of our overall team, including our entire growth marketing team. Additionally, women make up 65% of our middle management.
Solving the gap between understanding consumers and turning that knowledge into meaningful execution
The founders explained, “Tastewise solves a critical challenge in the food and beverage industry: the gap between understanding consumers and turning that knowledge into meaningful execution. ”
“In a market where trends shift rapidly and competition is fierce, brands struggle not just with gathering insights, but with acting on them quickly enough to stay relevant and protect revenue. This delay in execution is a key factor behind the industry’s 90% product failure rate,” they added.
Tastewise bridges this gap by combining real-time, AI-powered consumer intelligence with generative AI tools that help brands move from insights to in-market action faster and smarter. “Our platform analyses trillions of data points from online recipes, restaurant menus, and social conversations to uncover consumers’ wants. More importantly, we empower teams to act on those findings instantly by generating new product ideas, go-to-market strategies, packaging concepts, menu items, and even marketing content on the spot.”
Founders elaborated further, “This executive power is what sets Tastewise apart. Food and beverage teams using our platform report cutting new product development timelines by up to 8 months and saving millions by avoiding costly missteps. With Tastewise, brands don’t just learn faster about their consumers; they launch faster, with content and innovation ready to go in real time. In an industry facing inflation, rising ingredient costs, and tighter shelf space, the ability to go from insight to execution at speed is essential for survival.”
Tastewise’s specialised AI technology for the food and beverage sector
“Tastewise is a vertical AI-powered SaaS platform purpose-built for the food and beverage industry, designed to understand the complexities of food culture and act on them. Unlike generalised analytics or AI tools that serve multiple sectors with limited relevance, Tastewise focuses exclusively on food and beverage. This strategic focus gives us a clear edge: deep intelligence and, more importantly, the power to execute on it,” Gaon emphasised.
Gaon added, “At the platform’s core is a proprietary Gen AI engine trained over seven years on food-specific data. Yet Tastewise doesn’t stop at insight. Our Gen AI tools enable teams to instantly translate these insights into execution: product concepts, marketing campaigns and collateral, sales strategies, packaging ideas, menu items, and more, across both retail and foodservice.”
“This means brands can go from trend to shelf, or idea to menu, faster, more accurately, and confidently. We’re not just identifying what consumers want; we’re helping food companies build, market, and sell it in a way that resonates deeply with real-world behaviour and preferences,” noted the founders.
Tastewise’s main competitors include Datassential, AI Palette, Technomic, and Mintel.
What’s next for Tastewise?
Looking ahead, “Tastewise plans to expand its U.S. operations, particularly in sales and marketing, to meet the growing demand for its services. At the same time, it continues to invest in its technology to further solidify its leadership in applying generative AI to an industry that has seen relatively little innovation in how it understands and responds to consumers. In doing so, Tastewise will not only fill a significant gap in the market but also help redefine how food brands connect with the people they serve,” said the Tastewise founders to TFN.
“Tastewise is redefining how companies navigate ever-evolving consumer demand by turning complex data into revenue-generating action,” said Terry Doyle, Managing Partner, TELUS Global Ventures. “Seeking visionary teams advancing digital transformation, TELUS Global Ventures is proud to support Tastewise in bringing GenAI to the F&B industry — accelerating the adoption of AI-driven marketing and revenue to enhance agility, efficiency, and competitiveness.”
