An interview with Johan Langenbick, Peter Coucquyt and Bernard Lahousse, founders of Foodpairing, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet Johan, Peter and Bernard, the dream team behind Foodpairing, a business intelligence company offering AI for personalization & predictive NPD to increase sales & brand equity. Let’s see what the founders had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Johan, Peter and Bernard: We are a food tech company grounded in the notion that flavor might just change the world. It is no secret that the current food system is out of balance. The present food value chain meets several global obstacles including climate change and major health issues – such as obesity and diabetes – directly related to our everyday diet. We have to realise that while food itself is part of the problem, it is also the solution. As a consequence of these effects we need to make changes, we need to eat differently. But people don’t like to change habits and they simply won’t unless the food tastes really good. Flavor is the entry point to convince people to shift habits and eat new, healthy and sustainable foods repeatedly. By combining food digitization and algorithms for personalisation, we help chefs to find new surprising pairings, food companies to develop the right new product and recommend the right product.

How is tech central to your business?

Johan, Peter and Bernard: Digitization of food and AI is central for Foodpairing. To predict the new successful products food companies should launch or which products to recommend, we rely on data: our proprietary database of chemically analyzed ingredients (the largest in the world) and a portfolio of algorithms from pairings to recipe creation to product recommendations.

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Johan, Peter and Bernard: To speed up the NPD process, to reduce the product failure, to eliminate trial and error, to increase brand equity via data-driven processes and not gut-feeling.

Want to know more? Check out Foodpairing’s full profile here.

Congratulations again to Foodpairing for ranking 3rd in the “Food Processing” category of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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