Starday Foods Positions As Service Provider With ‘Innovation’ Platform

Food brands will do anything to find white space in the grocery aisles, and one company is leveraging its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) platform to streamline the process.

Starday Foods is launching a new business arm, Innovation, that brings its AI technology to the product development process, reducing the time it takes to strategize and formulate new products while homing in on target consumers.

After teasing its “intelligence platform” in April, Starday had initially only offered the AI platform to select retail partners. With its official launch today, the tool will be available “across the food and beverage value chain,” said Starday founder and CEO Chaz Flexman, from “pre-launch and early-stage startups navigating go-to-market to co-manufacturers, distributors and retailers.”

The end-to-end platform uses predictive AI software to learn where there is pent-up demand through consumer content analysis, skimming retail product databases and accumulating purchasing trends in real-time.

“We track upstream consumer signals that show how ideas form, spread, and solidify, so brands can act months before trends show up in sales data,” Flexman explained. “We’re measuring momentum, acceleration, peak distance (time spent as ‘trending’) and volatility. We have a fad flag threshold and even classify trends as Nascent, Emerging, Growing, Mainstream, Mature, or Declining, giving teams a clear picture of where to play and when.”

Launched in 2021, Starday Foods has used the platform to bring four snack brands representing 16 SKUs to market: All Day chickpea protein seasoning, Gooey hazelnut cocoa spread, Cozumi ow-FODMAP seasoned rice blend and Habeya allergen-free, sweet potato crackers.

Prior to founding Starday Foods, Flexman previously worked in the finance and technology industries. The company has raised about $20 million in total funding to date, garnering support from high-profile investors like entrepreneur Tristan Walker, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo and Instacart founder Max Mullen.

Starday has also received investment from Equal Ventures, Slow Ventures, Haystack, Great Oaks Venture Capital, XFactor Ventures, ABV, Revolution and Vinyl Capital, among others.

After raising $11 million in a Series A round in April, Starday announced it had begun consulting with specific retailers, using its AI-powered tool for private-label product formulation. The launch of Starday Innovation repositions the company as a service provider with Starday’s current portfolio of products representing a proof-of-concept.

While it is not abandoning the potential to launch new products under the Starday Foods umbrella, “our main focus is collaborating closely with F&B companies to bring them AI-powered tools, expert guidance and tailored support to accelerate the product development process,” Flexman said. “However, partnerships can take many forms and down the road we may pursue a more blended partnership model to launch products for F&B companies.”

AI-powered CPG tools are becoming more prevalent in food and beverage. SPINS recently integrated AI-tech into its research and sales tracking capabilities. Last week, NotCo announced it had partnered with Unilever spinoff The Magnum Ice Cream Company, bringing its AI-driven innovation technology to frozen desserts.

The use of AI tools is going beyond data-tracking and product development. In order to expedite the arduous task of finding manufacturing partners, Keychain has used AI-powered algorithms to streamline the process. Food delivery companies like Gopuff and Instacart are relying on machine learning tools to personalize shopping experiences online. Venture capital and private-equity companies are embracing AI’s ability to snuff out safer investments.