Food experience

Food experiences extend to the environments in which we eat and socialize. Concepts include restaurants that offer customizable dishes and 3D printers as a home appliance. Social media helps drive innovation, particularly through the new category of ‘Instagrammable foods’ that can quickly put a restaurant on the map. This also opens up promotional opportunities for businesses such as retailers: 3D printers in stores offer a unique approach to shopping. New data platforms for recipes and tips allow end-users to create communities that can sustain these products commercially.

Unlocking new sensations

A notable aspect of personalized food is how consumers can play an active production role. An example is the collaboration between TNO, WFBR and German home appliance company, which has developed a 3D printer for customizable pastry snacks. This creates shapes, textures, structures and flavors that are impossible to achieve through traditional processing, such as biscuits with different levels of crunchiness depending on the type of bite.

Building up business opportunities

DFPI partners have stimulated food experiences through support for Barilla’s app that allows users to design their own pasta shapes, as well as its pasta design competitions with Desall. Another project has identified business cases for SMEs, which can benefit from access to the fundamental research facilities of TU/e and WUR and the applied knowledge of TNO and Wageningen Food & Biobased Research.

If you’re interested in joining this collaboration ecosystem, get in touch with us today.

DFPI is a collaboration of: