1. Helping small food producers launch new products with consumer evidence

Background

When a large food company like Danone or Valio  launches a new product, it runs consumer taste panels, preference tests, and concept validation studies before a single product reaches the shelf. These studies tell them whether people actually like the product, what the right price point is, which packaging resonates, and what health claims are most persuasive. Small and medium food producers across Estonia and Europe — artisan cheesemakers, plant-based startups, craft fermenters — cannot afford this process. They rely on gut feeling, friends-and-family feedback, or simply put the product out and hope. As a result, many small producer innovations fail not because the product is bad, but because it was never properly tested with real target consumers before launch.

Problem

There is no accessible, affordable, and structured way for small European food producers to collect meaningful consumer feedback on new products — covering taste, packaging, price acceptance, and purchase intent — before committing to a full production run or retail listing.

Expectation

• A digital platform that allows a small food producer to design a simple consumer test (product concept, sensory preference, price sensitivity) and distribute it to relevant target consumers — without needing a research background or a large budget.
• The platform should guide the producer step-by-step through what to ask, how many responses they need, and how to interpret the results in plain language.
• Bonus: a community or marketplace element where consumers sign up to test new local food products in exchange for samples or discounts, creating a sustainable panel of engaged food testers across Europe.

2. The hidden cost of food choices: making the true price of food visible to European shoppers

Background

A chicken breast in a European supermarket might cost €3. But that price does not include the cost of the greenhouse gases emitted during production, the water consumed, the impact on biodiversity from feed crop cultivation, or the long-term health costs associated with antibiotic use in industrial poultry farming. These are called “externalities” — real costs that are paid by society and the environment but are invisible at the point of purchase. Researchers at Wageningen University and other EU institutions have developed methods to calculate these “true costs” for food products. Studies suggest that if environmental and social externalities were priced in, cheap meat would cost 2–4x more, while locally grown vegetables and legumes would become comparatively much better value. The EU Farm to Fork strategy explicitly calls for food prices to better reflect true costs, but no practical mechanism exists yet to surface this information to consumers in a shopping context.

Problem

European consumers make food purchasing decisions almost entirely on visible price, convenience, and habit — with no practical access to the environmental or social cost embedded in what they are buying. True cost research exists in academic papers but has never been translated into a usable, real-world consumer tool that is honest, non-preachy, and works in an actual shopping context.

Expectation

• A consumer tool — app, browser extension for online grocery, or shelf-label concept — that surfaces the estimated true cost of food products alongside the retail price, covering at minimum one or two environmental dimensions (e.g. carbon, water) in a way that is immediately understandable.
• A framing and design approach that presents true cost information as genuinely useful context rather than moral pressure — empowering the shopper rather than guilt-tripping them.
• Bonus: a “swap” feature that suggests an alternative product with a lower true cost at a comparable or lower retail price, showing the shopper that making a better choice does not always mean paying more.

3. Grocery receipt as a health mirror: turning what people already buy into personalised dietary feedback

Background

Every time a consumer shops at a supermarket, they generate a detailed record of their food purchases — a grocery receipt or loyalty card transaction log. This data already exists and already captures product names, quantities, frequencies, and spend. Yet this information is almost never used to give consumers any insight into their own dietary patterns. Supermarkets use it to optimise their own promotions; consumers throw the receipt away. Meanwhile, dietary recall studies — where researchers ask people what they ate — consistently show that people have poor memory of their own eating habits and tend to underreport unhealthy choices. Purchase data sidesteps this problem entirely: it is objective, longitudinal, and already collected. A growing number of Estonian and European retailers (Coop, Selver, Rimi, Maxima, Tesco, Carrefour, Albert Heijn, Lidl) have digital loyalty programmes that could in principle provide this data to consumers in a usable format — but no one has built the insight layer on top of it.

Problem

Consumers have no practical way to understand their own dietary patterns over time without manually logging food, which most people will not sustain. Their grocery purchase history — the most accurate proxy for what they actually eat — sits unused in supermarket databases. There is a significant opportunity to turn this existing data stream into personalised, actionable dietary feedback without asking consumers to change any behaviour at all in order to generate it.

Expectation

1. A service or app concept that allows consumers to connect their existing supermarket loyalty account (or upload a receipt) and receive a plain-language summary of their dietary patterns over the past month — covering food group balance, variety, ultra-processed food share, and similar indicators.
2. A feedback design that is based on patterns across time rather than individual meals, avoids calorie framing entirely, and focuses on simple, positive nudges: “you bought almost no legumes last month — here are three easy products to try.”
3. Additional value: a privacy-respecting data aggregation model that could — with user consent — contribute anonymised population-level purchase patterns to public health researchers, creating a continuously updated picture of European dietary habits far richer than any survey.

4. Fermentation as a kitchen skill: rebuilding Europe’s lost culture of home and community fermentation

Background

For most of human history, fermentation was a household skill. Bread was leavened with sourdough starters. Vegetables were preserved by lacto-fermentation. Dairy was cultured into yoghurt, kefir, and cheese. Beer and wine were made locally. These practices preserved food, enhanced its nutritional value, supported gut microbiome diversity, and formed the backbone of food culture across every European region. Over the past 50 years, industrial food production has almost entirely displaced these practices from everyday life. The knowledge has not been formally transferred — it has simply been lost as older generations passed away and convenience food took over. Today there is a growing consumer interest in fermented foods — kombucha, kefir, kimchi, and sourdough all saw significant sales growth across the EU in the past five years. But this interest is largely passive: people buy fermented products rather than making them. The barrier is not motivation but knowledge, confidence, and the fear of doing something wrong with live microorganisms.

Problem

The practical knowledge needed to ferment food safely and successfully at home — starter cultures, temperature ranges, salt ratios, signs of healthy versus harmful fermentation, troubleshooting — is scattered across books, YouTube channels, hobbyist forums, and word of mouth. There is no structured, trustworthy, beginner-friendly digital resource that guides European consumers from zero knowledge to confident home fermenters, adapted to local food cultures and locally available ingredients.

Expectation

• A digital platform, guided learning experience, or community tool that teaches practical home fermentation to complete beginners — covering at least two or three ferment types (e.g. sourdough, lacto-fermented vegetables, kefir) with clear, science-backed safety guidance built in.
• A community layer that connects local fermenters to share starter cultures, troubleshoot batches, and exchange regional fermentation traditions — rebuilding the social infrastructure that traditionally carried this knowledge.
• Additional: a connection to the microbiome science behind fermented foods, presented accessibly — so users understand not just how to ferment but why it matters for their health, reducing fear of live cultures and increasing confidence in the process.