Function before format: The future of food innovation

The food industry has become exceptionally good at launching products. New flavors, formats and claims appear constantly. Yet launch volume is a poor measure of progress, because a productive pipeline can still be pointed in the wrong direction.

Too many projects begin with what the business already knows how to make: a bar, yogurt, drink, snack, or supplement. The team then looks for a trend, ingredient, or nutritional claim that can be bolted on to make that format feel new. It is operationally comfortable and easy to benchmark against existing competitors.

Consumers begin elsewhere. They start with the end result they want – a boost of energy, better gut health, more protein or support for muscle growth, healthy aging – and work backwards. They shop for products that can do a job and choose whichever product appears best equipped to do it.

This is the gap in the innovation pipeline. Demand is becoming outcome-led and increasingly cross-category, and businesses that still rely on development systems that remain insular and product-led risk falling behind. The result is an industry capable of creating endless variations, but at risk of missing the needs that create genuine growth.

Consumers are shopping for ends, not means

The 2024 Innova Lifestyle & Attitudes Survey found that 28% of consumers purchase functional food and beverage products for gut health, 27% for weight management and 26% for energy and stamina. Around one in five had bought products supporting healthy aging or bone and joint health.

But people can’t really be viewed as stats on a spreadsheet. These goals can overlap. Someone looking to improve gut health may also want more energy, better appetite control, and support for long-term wellbeing. And priorities can change across a day or life stage. The next generation of functional food cannot be understood through single benefits and product categories, it demands a more holistic view of consumers as complex beings with overlapping, and sometimes even conflicting, needs.

Look at protein, one of the most in-demand nutrients on shelves. Research by Ocado Retail and Savanta in 2025 found that 43% of UK consumers had increased their protein intake in the previous year. Their motivations cut across several demands: 52% wanted more energy, 49% wanted to feel fuller for longer, and 44% were thinking about weight management^[1].

External trends, like the rapid growth of GLP-1 weight-loss treatments^[2], add another layer of complexity. Consumers eating smaller portions may need nutrient-dense products and sufficient protein to help preserve muscle mass. Satiety, muscle health, portion size, taste, and digestibility are all crossing over and ultimately converging into one big, combined challenge for formulators. Ultimately, it boils down to what it always has: give the people what they want.

"The businesses that win the next decade of food innovation will not be those that defend product categories. They will be the ones that understand consumer outcomes better than anyone else."  -Karsten Smet, CEO at ACI Group

Yesterday’s structure can kill tomorrow’s innovation

What they want is genuinely useful innovation. Functional food that really functions. Delivering on this demand increasingly requires a combination of the science, ingredient, and production expertise taken from several food segments.

The unlikely viral return of cottage cheese^[3] demonstrates how quickly a familiar product can find new relevance when consumers connect it to a desired nutritional outcome. Protein may dominate the headlines, but it remains one tool among many. The commercial opportunity lies in applying it to solve a specific consumer job better than the alternatives.

For example, a product designed for sustained energy might borrow protein expertise from sports nutrition, fiber technology from bakery, portion control from weight-management products, and sensory cues from indulgent snacking. A healthy-aging proposition, on the other hand, might sit in a yogurt, beverage, biscuit, or compact meal format. It can be a complex innovation process, but the value proposition for consumers ends up being appealingly simple. They get the nutrition they need in a format they want.

Simple as that message is, many businesses still struggle to get it. They aren’t set up to deal with the awkward questions that can sometimes arise when crossing category boundaries. Which budget funds it? Who owns the project? Which factory makes it? Which brand does it sit under? Where does it sit on the shelf?

All of these questions are valid. And they’re important, but they need to be asked at the right time and by the right people. That requires a degree of ingredient expertise and operational flexibility to ensure promising projects aren’t diluted and crowbarred into an outdated but familiar process. This is a good way to solve yesterday’s problems, but those aren’t the solutions that drive business growth.

Function before format

A stronger process begins with the consumer job, the consumption occasion and the desired experience. The team can then define the required nutritional profile and supporting evidence before selecting the format, ingredients and processing route. Do not decide to make a cereal bar and stitch together a Frankenstein product of random ingredients simply to place nutritional claims on the packaging.

This changes the formulation conversation. Instead of asking which fiber belongs in a bakery product or which protein belongs in a shake, teams can ask which combination will deliver satiety, texture, stability, taste and cost efficiency within a convenient real-world format. The formulation has to maintain that performance throughout processing and shelf life, not merely satisfy a specification on launch day.

At ACI Group, this wider view of the industry is what has informed our diverse food ingredient portfolio. It’s why, to return to the example of protein, we supply many different kinds of protein in multiple formats. This is because soy and pea proteins offer different nutrient profiles, but they also offer different tastes, textures, and allergen risks. This gives formulators the freedom to explore crispies, nuggets, powders, and more, delivering nutrition that can be tailored to create different mouthfeel and flavor experiences across multiple categories.

That doesn’t mean forcing one ingredient into every product – far from it. Working with expert ingredient suppliers enables formulators to target specific nutritional claims when developing products, creating recipes that deliver benefits consumers actually look for on-shelf.

And in the e-Commerce age, consumers can open a retailer’s storefront on their phones and search for terms like ‘high protein’, ‘gut friendly’, or ‘energy’. With a broad portfolio of ingredients on hand, producers don’t have to be limited by the boundaries of a specific category when developing products to meet that demand.

The businesses that win the next decade of food innovation will not be those that defend product categories. They will be the ones that understand consumer outcomes better than anyone else.

^[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20zk35ypxno

^[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/09/fears-whey-protein-shortage-weight-loss-drugs-global-demand

^[3] https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/analysis-and-features/the-cottage-cheese-comeback-and-why-demand-is-in-overdrive/714278.article