Unilever Food Solutions Introduces New AI Tool for Foodservice Professionals
© Photo: Unilever Food Solutions
(eap) The Unilever Food Solutions (UFS) business unit of Unilever has presented its “Future Menus Report 2026” and developed its own AI tool to support the creative integration of the identified F&B trends into foodservice operations.
According to the company, the key trends outlined in the report are once again based on the expertise of more than 1,100 culinary professionals from 20 countries, as well as 250 chefs from Unilever Food Solutions worldwide. This year, the trends “Street Food Couture”, “Borderless Cuisine”, “Culinary Roots” and “Diner Designed” are once again highlighted as particularly relevant, the latter referring to interactive dining experiences (for further information on the individual trends, see also our EAP news of April 23, 2025).
As René-Noel Schiemer, Culinary Advisor at UFS, explains, many businesses still face challenges when it comes to integrating current trend developments into their own foodservice concepts: “Many businesses today know that they need to engage with trends, but not how to meaningfully translate them into their own concept.” UFS has therefore developed its own AI-supported tool, which provides restaurant operators and chefs with tailored inspiration.
It is not comparable to applications such as “ChatGPT”: “The tool combines chef expertise with artificial intelligence and delivers individually tailored recommendations instead of general advice. […] We trained our AI using the collective expertise of our global culinary advisory network. The quality and quantity of experience brought together in this way cannot be compared to generic internet content,” Schiemer explains.
Obtaining individual recommendations is designed to be just as simple: interested users merely enter the name of their restaurant into the application, after which the tool analyses the current status. Based on this, it develops suggestions for strategies and recipes that reflect the latest trends from the Future Menus Report and are tailored to the respective restaurant concept.
More about further current developments relevant to foodservice offerings and operations in leisure venues can be found in our feature “Food Stories”, which will appear in the upcoming EAP May/June issue. ■
