AI in the Food Industry: Today’s Applications and Tomorrow’s Innovations

Looking back at how artificial intelligence (AI) has been portrayed in popular media, we see many examples of dangerous machine agents that threaten the well-being of the humans around them. Whether it’s a murderous computer like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 or an automaton based on the Frankenstein complex like Ex Machina’s Ava, they make for great villains in part because of how inscrutable and mysterious they are.

Now that AI is part of our everyday reality, though, we know it as something quite different. It’s your personal assistant, always in the palm of your hand on your phone, listening and ready. It’s the friendly and helpful chatbot that pops up on websites you visit. It’s your convenient research aide, enabling you to explore subjects and find answers faster than ever before.

It’s also powering the businesses that produce and distribute your food. Whether it’s inspiring chefs in the test kitchen, checking to make sure the color of your produce is just right or optimizing routes for delivery trucks, AI technology in the food industry is driving better business outcomes and enriching customer experiences.

What’s so exciting is that this is only the beginning. We’re at the dawn of Industry 5.0, and AI is already helping us reduce food waste, streamline quality control, improve production processes and keep up with consumer preferences. Where this promising technology will take us in the years to come, we can’t say for sure, but there’s good reason to believe it will be mission-critical for every food and beverage company to leverage AI.

To shed light on the topic and demonstrate the benefits of AI in the food industry, we’ve covered the most widespread applications of today, as well as some intriguing possibilities for tomorrow, in this blog post. Then we'll close with some best practices for applying AI at your organization and exciting details about Aptean Intelligence, the AI we're implementing across our solutions now, and AppCentral, our AI-powered all-in-one platform.

Current Applications of AI in the Food Industry

The following are some of the most prevalent and noteworthy uses of artificial intelligence in the food industry. But it’s by no means an exhaustive list, and other applications include flavor pairing, smart warehousing, menu optimization and dynamic pricing, to name a few.

Before we launch in, though, we should cover the differences and relationship between AI and automation. AI is the capability of computers to perform tasks associated with human intelligence—learning, reasoning, problem-solving and so on. Automation is the capability of technology to reduce human intervention in processes, typically using predetermined decision criteria and process relationships to select and perform specific actions.

AI helps us automate a larger variety of processes than ever before thanks to its ability to perceive, learn and reason. By taking in data, making predictions based on that data, deciding what action to take and executing the task automatically, it eliminates the need for human intervention by essentially acting as a stand-in.

Do keep in mind, there are many forms of automation that are not at all related to AI. Timer-based irrigation systems on farms and mechanical conveyor belts in food production facilities are two relevant examples of automation in the food and beverage industry—these are just machines following pre-programmed rules, not exercising intelligence.

Food and beverage leaders in the AI-era will leverage both mechanical and software-driven automations, as well as AI innovations, to maximize efficiency. For many businesses, simpler automations can be implemented as first steps, with AI layered on top as your company becomes more digitally mature.

Agriculture

Farming goes back more than 10 millennia, but we’re still discovering ways to do it better today with AI. We can monitor crops, automate irrigation and administer pest control more efficiently than ever before with AI. It’s also commonly used in vertical farms and greenhouses, monitoring growing conditions and maintaining them optimally to lower water use and increase yield.

Well-known brands that are using AI on their farms include Nestle, Cargill and PepsiCo, among others.

Demand Forecasting

Maintaining supply-demand balance is much easier with AI, as it can use past sales data, weather patterns and consumer trends to inform its forecasts. That helps grocery stores and restaurants know how much of what products to order, and manufacturers can dial in their inventories and production volumes with considerable precision.

Tesco, Walmart and Sysco are among the most notable of the many businesses using AI for demand forecasting.

Our food and beverage enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has AI-driven sales and inventory forecasting capabilities that can help you avoid inventory shortages and streamline replenishment processes.

Supply Chain Optimization

While it remains a very complicated and involved process, transportation and distribution of food and beverage products took a great leap forward with AI-powered routing and scheduling. While algorithms can quickly calculate the shortest and fastest routes, AI takes it a step further by factoring in additional data sources, like weather and driver habits, and making real-time decisions based on live updates. AI can also monitor storage conditions inside vehicles, helping to keep food at ideal conditions.

Companies that use AI to help manage their supply chain include Sysco and US Foods.

Our advanced route optimization software uses AI—specifically, machine learning—to optimize routes to reduce fuel consumption, minimize mileage, ensure delivery efficiency and tailor to customer preferences.

Quality Control

Two AI-powered technologies, computer vision and machine learning, are now considered standard in modern food production facilities. They help spot defects, contamination and mislabeling, as well as potential regulatory violations. Additionally, AI in food manufacturing can track and automatically adjust temperature and humidity to optimize storage conditions or even simulate an audit to ensure your business is prepared.

Rivals on the soft drink shelves, both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have implemented AI for quality control.

Predictive Maintenance

The key to reducing emergency equipment breakdowns is regular maintenance, but keeping up with each of your machine’s maintenance schedules and records is a challenge. Luckily, AI makes it a lot simpler, monitoring the condition of your assets, updating maintenance records and automatically scheduling both regular tune-ups and necessary repairs.

Anheuser Bush InBev, Tyson Foods and General Mills are already reaping the benefits of AI-powered predictive maintenance.

Customer Service

Chatbots on ecommerce websites are nothing new, but they’re the most ubiquitous example of AI in customer service. They save your staff time and offer convenience for shoppers by answering questions, taking orders, suggesting upsells and managing returns. Predicting issues—like order delays or fraudulent transactions—and proactively communicating with customers about them is another customer-facing application of AI.

AI is helping Wendy’s, UK-based online supermarket Ocado and Uber Eats to serve customers better.

You can streamline order processing and fulfillment with Aptean Food & Beverage ERP’s AI-powered sales line suggestions based on past customer behavior.

Personalization

By using past behavior to predict which items will interest the consumer, AI is able to serve up purchase recommendations that increase online sales and customer satisfaction. Beyond that, AI has the ability to customize products based on preferences, nutritional needs and weight management goals, creating unique, individualized offerings that suit both desires and requirements.

Starbucks and meal delivery service Hungryroot both offer personalization enabled by AI.

Emergent Innovations in AI in the Food Industry

As AI is always collecting data and learning, it has incredible potential for adapting to novel situations and developing new skills. What’s more, food and beverage businesses have shown a serious willingness to invest in this technology, so you can bet that we’ll see more and more use cases for AI as time goes on. The following are already in the works.

First, though, it’s worth noting quickly that generative AI—a distinct form of the technology that has the ability to not just analyze existing content and make decisions but also to create new content—enables several of the following applications. We’ll make sure to be clear when this kind of AI is involved.

Product Development

One of generative AI’s most exciting possibilities is helping to develop products and recipes based on consumer trends, dietary requirements, business goals and any number of additional parameters. But that’s just the beginning, because AI’s also capable of analyzing molecular structures to create entirely new flavors and textures—foods and drinks that no one has ever tasted before.

Sustainability

AI will soon help us track and minimize food waste for supermarkets, restaurants or even an entire supply chain. By monitoring what food is thrown out when, it can help stores dial in their inventories and kitchens adjust portion sizes. It can also identify losses at the farm, factory and distribution stages, and then suggest and implement corrective actions.

Marketing

Tracking consumer trends and sentiment with AI is just one of the many use cases in marketing. Generative AI can produce advertising material, hyper-realistic menu images and packaging designs that are optimized for your audience and application. It can even generate full marketing campaigns based on the latest in customer behavior and purchasing patterns.

Food Preparation

Robotic kitchens powered by AI could soon be preparing your meals out. AI can not only automate cooking processes but also assemble a meal of multiple items and plate it. This could bring a whole new meaning to the term “fast food” by reducing the time necessary to prepare meals while also freeing up staff for other key tasks.

Cultivated Proteins

AI’s capabilities include simulating meat textures and optimizing fermentation processes, which is opening new doors for producers of cultivated meats and alternative proteins. Just as intriguing, AI could also help lab-grown meat operations scale affordably so that they can be more cost-competitive with traditional meat.

Basic Best Practices in Applying AI for Food Businesses

AI is evolving fast—and figuring out how to put it to work in your organization isn’t always straightforward. Maybe you're thinking long-term, or maybe you're just focused on tackling today's priorities. Either way, building an AI roadmap can raise more questions than answers: What’s realistic? What’s required? And how do you get your team on board?

That’s where we come in. As an AI-first company, we’re not only helping businesses across industries move from uncertainty to action, we're also implementing AI-driven tools across our own teams. So we’ve distilled what we’ve learned into a few simple best practices to help you get started—and get results.

1. Start with a clear goal. Identify what problems you want to solve with AI and decide how it can aid you by automating processes, predicting trends, optimizing delivery routes or reducing food waste.

2. Use high-quality data. The old phrase “bad data in, bad data out” still rings true, even when AI is involved in the process. Because AI learns from data, it’s essential that what you share with it is accurate so that its analysis will be valid.

3. Ensure AI use is ethical and transparent. Keep in mind that AI can develop a bias—do your best to prevent this by using diverse training data, conducting regular audits and maintaining human oversight.

4. Identify any AI you already have access to, as well as that which can be unlocked in your existing systems. It’s not always necessary to buy or build a new AI tool. There may be opportunities to leverage AI with the technology you currently have.

5. Integrate additional AI gradually and optimize for your situation. Start by deploying AI on a small scale, perhaps within one department or for one function, gauge the impact and let that inform your approach going forward.

6. Remember that AI is an assistant. It can’t replace humans in making important decisions. Your employees should always critically evaluate the performance and recommendations of AI, then use their own best judgment.

7. Keep your AI model updated. Considering that the food and beverage industry undergoes constant change, your AI needs to continually evolve as new trends emerge and information comes to light.

While there may be some additional guidance to add to these practices depending upon how you want to apply AI, the above are generally beneficial and will set you down the right path.

Aptean: Enabling Our Customers To Leverage AI With Trusted Solutions

There’s no doubt that AI is already having a tremendous impact on the food and beverage industry, and its potential to make even more of a difference going forward is an exciting prospect. If your business is to stay competitive, you need to take advantage of it—but it's best to go about that with the right technology partner in your corner.

Aptean can be that ally for your organization. AI is at the very core of what we do, deeply embedded in our solutions, and we’re proud to empower companies around the world with cutting-edge tools enabled by our own AI, Aptean Intelligence. We’re always exploring new ways it can bring value to food and beverage businesses, and our customers become raving fans when they experience our software and see immediate improvement.

But we haven’t stopped at adding AI tools to our individual systems—we've built an all-in-one platform powered by Aptean Intelligence in the form of AppCentral. This first-of-its-kind offering ties all your business software together, synchronizing data across them to enhance efficiency and accuracy while automating routine processes with minimal human intervention.

We’re bringing more and more of our products to AppCentral all the time, and soon food and beverage businesses will be able to use it to access their ERP and other Aptean solutions all within one user-friendly and AI-enhanced interface.

Your business can count on us as a long-term technology partner committed to mutual success, supporting you from the implementation planning stages to go-live and beyond, ensuring you get maximum return on your investment. Let us help you take that next leap forward in your digital transformation with AppCentral and the rest of our next-generation technology powered by AI.

Want to learn more about Aptean’s AI-enhanced software? Contact us today or schedule your personalized demo at your convenience.