Last updated on March 10th, 2024
“What’s in it?” Many customers ask this same question when looking for products and recipes. Kevin Brown, CEO and co-founder of California-based Innit, said his personalized food intelligence platform aims to answer that query.
“We wanted to start with that question,” he said. “And that informs a lot of what we’re doing around our technology, which is looking deep to make sure we’re finding the right foods for the right needs that people have.”
Shelby Publishing’s EVP Bob Reeves recently caught up with Brown to learn more about Innit’s new FoodLM platform. FoodLM, which stands for Language Model, utilizes generative AI to integrate expert validation of diet, cooking and healthy eating that personalizes to each customer, according to Brown.
The platform launched in August. Brown said it was built on providing trusted AI that provides quality dietary recommendations.
“Diet and health [are] so important. Fifty percent of American adults have at least one chronic disease, most of which are diet-related,” he said. “For the last few years, we’ve been building a platform that goes deep on personalized nutrition, on dietary factors, on healthy factors.”
FoodLM gives scores to more than 3 million products to find the best fit for individual profiles. The scores and profiles are then integrated into retailers’ e-commerce offerings.
Innit’s previous system provided features such as nutrition information and shoppable recipes. Now, Innit’s AI can access stores’ real-time inventory and pricing to create personalized recipes that match consumer profiles.
“With one click, the consumer can check out and we can personalize it,” Brown said. “If you’re paleo pescetarian, you’ve got six different allergies, you’re trying to eat more sustainably – people are complicated; food is complicated. And so, we’re doing the matching between those.”
With new language models, pattern matching has become easier and smarter. Many technology providers use AI as a customer offering, but Brown said these platforms need “safety rails.”
“We’ve been working on a lot of that kind of stuff to empower [predictive baskets] for our grocery clients,” he explained. “And as the grocery store starts to pre-populate and pick your items, we’re going and finding the right ingredients. [Retailers] need to think of the consumer as a whole person, and you as a retailer need to get that right to get the basket.”
In most cases, consumers may not realize they are using the Innit platform. The software integrates with the retailers’ branding. Nevertheless, the science behind Innit’s scoring is so sound, Brown said some retailers use it as a marketing tool.
Brands such as Nestle, Mars and PepsiCo have been previous clients. Likewise, Roche Diabetes Care Inc., a diabetes technology and services provider, has partnered with Innit to help provide aid to some 200,000 clients. The company also partners with Google to create private cloud systems that store and protect private information.
Brown gave Reeves a sneak peek of an upcoming feature that will personalize recipes. He said it’s the next step in grocery shopping.
“Meal kits tapped into this early because they chose what’s for dinner. And then they did the shopping for you in the right quantities,” he said. “We’re trying to take all that logic … and now it’s automatically picking those things.
“We can also now start to personalize the recipe. This will eventually get down to the individual, where you’ll say, ‘I like this recipe but make it vegan.’”
Using the platform, he searched for a Mediterranean salad with tomatoes, balsamic vinaigrette and salmon, then put in a gluten-free requirement.
“Here’s my ingredients, here’s my instructions,” he said, showing Reeves the results of the search.
While the feature is not public yet, FoodLM leverages AI to create images of the recipe. Eventually, it will also allow consumers to add the items directly to their carts.
Read more technology news from The Shelby Report.
