Turn taste into customer loyalty and revenue with AI solution "TasteIndex".

By Artem Zakomirnyi

Taste is often described as just one of many factors influencing consumer choices, alongside health, sustainability, and price. In reality, it remains the decisive driver in food and beverage decision making, yet it is still managed more as an art than a measurable business asset. Companies continue to invest heavily in reformulation and innovation, but without a structured approach to taste, many critical questions remain unanswered – like why some products thrive while others fail, even when they appear similar in nutrition and price.

Turning taste management from subjective into measurable business intelligence

Today, advances in data science and sensory research are changing this. Managing taste is no longer left down to intuition or expert judgment; it is being transformed into a measurable, predictable, and scalable solution. This shift makes it possible to capture hidden consumer insights and translate them into concrete answers that guide product development and assortment management.

TasteIndex: Making taste management actionable

At the forefront of this change is TasteIndex, a science-based, AI-powered algorithm that makes taste management actionable. TasteIndex works from both sides: It can match a product to the most relevant consumer segment, and it can also recommend product directions based on the preferences of a given target group. In doing so, it allows companies to close the gap between consumer perception and product properties, creating a direct link between taste and market success.

In one example of how TasteIndex was used by a leading wine and coffee retailer in Europe, a simple 30-second TasteIndex questionnaire on the retailer’s website mapped each customer’s taste profile. This triggered dynamic landing pages with personalized recommendations and “your taste match” wines, which delivered a 20% uplift in conversion. These insights were then translated into in-store activations and live events with retail partners, further reinforcing the personalized experience across channels.

Unlocking value growth through data-driven taste solutions

Roland Berger, together with TasteIndex, is helping retailers, foodservice players, and FMCG companies unlock this potential. By connecting taste to consumer segments and emerging market trends, they support businesses in building stronger portfolios, optimizing assortments, and designing go-to-market strategies that resonate more deeply with customers. The result is a new way of working: faster testing at scale, deeper insights into consumer drivers, and data-driven decisions that reduce uncertainty. With richer taste data available, companies can shorten time-to-market, improve the precision of their innovations, and ultimately achieve tangible commercial results, e.g. revenue growth. What was once an art can now become a science - bringing both creativity and certainty to the future of food.

Roland Berger’s service offering to turn taste into a competitive advantage and drive value growth

Building on this foundation, Roland Berger integrates TasteIndex across four core levers of growth in retail, foodservice, and FMCG:

• Assortment excellence: balancing breadth, depth, and price ranges to maximize relevance and sales
• Freshness: ensuring freshness and consistency across the value chain to protect brand trust
• Go-to-market precision: shaping portfolios, pricing, and segmentation strategies with greater accuracy
• Consumer loyalty: driving satisfaction, brand preference, and personalization to deepen long-term relationships
• Together, these pillars show how taste, managed systematically, can be turned into a strategic advantage that directly impacts business performance

With contributions from Viktor Mirovic (Founder, COO - TasteIndex)

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