Ahead of this year’s Natural Products Expo West (NPEW) trade show in Anaheim, California, US (March 13 – 16), Nutrition Insight catches up with the CEO and the chief marketing officer at Rivalz Snacks, a company looking to shake up the healthy snacking space with AI-powered and nutrient-rich indulgence.

According to Peter Grant Barrick, Rivalz’ CEO, when the company launched its research and development (R&D) project, it established fundamental criteria prioritizing high protein, high fiber, a low glycemic index and minimal carbohydrates, alongside a focus on both macro- and micronutrient needs. Additionally, the quality and digestibility of protein were central to its objectives, presenting a complex challenge to overcome.

“Our overall mission and vision is bringing great tasting affordable nutrition to the markets worldwide and rolling back the 50-year pandemic of malnutrition, insulin resistance, diabetes and obesity with a snack that tastes better, feels better and does better,” says Barrick.

However, he reveals that trying to include all of these principles into a snackable format presented some problems.

“When we started trialing it, it didn’t work. The cell structure, the small expansion rate and the high bulk density made it hard to eat and undesirable to the consumer — it was just a very significant cost accumulator — and so we asked ourselves, was there a better way?”

This led the company to become one of the first companies in the snack category to incorporate AI into the R&D process, with immediate and valuable results.

AI to the rescue
Barrick points out that AI is a buzzword, adding that many companies have used tools like ChatGPT to gain insights into ingredients. Yet, he states that it is completely different from Rivalz’ approach.

“We’re one of the first companies to actually take this powerful tool and apply it to the cornerstone of our business,” he explains. “We rapidly gained predictive insights on how to produce this product quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. We like to say that this is ‘AI you can taste.’”

“The great thing about this team is that we have subject matter experts in every position. We have the global R&D chief from Mars Global, a 30-year extrusion expert from some of the top companies, experts in patenting and when you bring the concept of AI to the table, great things happen. We challenge ourselves and we’re solving some of the category’s hardest problems.”

Barrick underscores that Rivalz wanted to create a snack quickly and effectively and that actually tastes good and says the company was able to accomplish that in its first iteration of AI. Moreover, he states that the benefits to using the tool include a decrease in yield loss, an improvement in asset returns and insights which led to the use of a ubiquitous extruder. Furthermore, he also says that the company’s productivity saw a huge boost.

“We were able to do that professional level and strategic level work with only 1.7 employees on our R&D team,” he stresses. “We launched that product within six months when the minimum viable product for a typical product design timeline is 18 months — that leads to capturing revenue and several marketing benefits.”

Quicker to market
According to Erica Pattni, the company’s chief marketing officer, the team scrutinized key performance indicators , particularly focusing on customer acquisition costs, which she says are crucial for gauging the effectiveness of marketing strategies, especially in the early stages of driving awareness and conversion.

Upon introducing the AI-optimized product, Pattini says she observed a notable reduction in customer acquisition costs, coupled with a significant increase in customer retention rates, which she says essentially doubled.

“Those two things you don’t usually see happening at the same time, especially in the early stages of building a brand,” she explains. “We attribute it to the power of AI.”

“In terms of just the speed at which we were able to optimize and to bring to market and then to bring better to market. I’ve built 20 to 30 brands in this space and I have never seen this before.”

Conceptualizing AI-powered R&D
Though Barrick says, for obvious reasons, he cannot give the full detail of how AI was employed, he can offer a conceptual example of how the tool works.

“This product should not exist in the market,” he underscores. “It shouldn’t, it’s that difficult.”

“Essentially, we started with absolute failure. There are hundreds of variables involved in the extrusion process. Ingredients behave differently under stress. Then you have the dosing levels that impact the nutritional and sensory output and you have the nutritional and sensory benchmarks themselves. It’s a multi-dimensional problem and we assessed that there were over 500,000 meaningful experiments that we would have to do to make this product.”

“With AI predictive analytics, we were able to funnel that down to 71 impactful experiments. That’s how we improved the texture, improved the flavor and made this great tasting affordable nutrition product. Can you imagine if we had had to trial and error 500,000 experiments and all of the R&D costs associated with that? If you want to talk about the power of AI, that is the power.”

Using AI for good
According to Barrick, the true significance of AI isn’t just that it exists or its ability to expedite tasks like essay writing or video production — the true significance of AI lies in using it for positive advancements that can move humanity forward. He adds that while many companies might see AI as a mere technological advancement, Rivalz represents a case wher AI is utilized meaningfully, leading to a beneficial outcome.

“You can use AI to create a poem or write a quick essay, or do a video or create deep fakes, but we’re really the first company that’s using it for good and we have solved a major category problem,” Barrick reveals. “There are companies out there and food vendors that are using it on the periphery, like marketing analytics, chatbots or for identifying ingredients, profiles for sensory and the like, but those are fringe problems.”

“In the market right now you can pay $25,000 and access a ubiquitous data set and get a fringe answer. What we’re doing is completely different from that. Luckily, we teamed up with a great company — one of the best AI companies in the United States — and we have a pretty robust partnership wher we can challenge them and they can challenge us.”

“One of the novel things about AI, in and of itself, is that, as we’re innovating, they’re innovating. Just this week we had a call wher we were challenging them to do things that we wanted to do, but they didn’t have the capability yet, and so now both sides are creating that.”

Filling the “better for you” snacking gap
Pattni emphasizes that, when considering “better for you” snacking options, traditional snacks prioritize taste, while healthier alternatives focus on nutritional benefits but often lack in flavor and convenience.

Moreover, she says that a closer inspection of labels and ingredients between healthier snacks and traditional ones sometimes reveals minimal differences in nutrient density, questioning the perceived advantage of healthier options.

“What we’ve done at Rivalz is gotten a taste that is craveable and snackable and that people want to eat — not have to, want to,” she concludes. “Then we also have nutrient density with protein, fiber, micro- macronutrients that are plant-based and vegan and free from all that you could imagine.”

“The last really big piece that goes directly to our mission is accessibility and we were able to create something that is not just for 1% of the population but that the mainstream consumer, the Wal-Mart shopping consumer can experience as well. What we’re doing is completely eliminating those trade-offs — whether it’s taste, health or accessibility — that have always been apparent.”