Turning Plant-Based Snacking into a Scalable Growth Platform

Case Study

Turning Plant-Based Snacking into a Scalable Growth Platform: Within a large and growing Better For You market, a global food company needed to define the future of healthy snacking by moving beyond nutrition claims and building a platform people would choose again and again.

Background:

We reframed veggie snacking from a nutrition challenge into a food experience challenge. Instead of leading with health claims, the work started with how people actually snack and what they expect from flavor, texture, aroma, feel, and overall satisfaction. Behavioral insight was translated into clear food design and sensory principles that R&D and brand teams could execute at scale. This shifted innovation away from one-off launches and toward a platform built around desirability, feasibility, and repeat behavior.

Approach:

Within a $30B+ global savory snacks market and a $1.5B Better For You segment, veggie snacks were easy to try but hard to repeat. Trial was strong, but repeat was weak. Most products were framed as nutrition solutions, not food experiences, which limited their relevance in everyday snacking. For a business built on repeat behavior at scale, the challenge was not whether veggie snacks could attract attention. It was whether they could become a credible, scalable platform people would come back to.

Impact:

• Established a new platform for vegetable-based snacking

• Contributed to six launched SKUs within a global business exceeding $600M in annual revenue

• Expanded the role of design from concept generation to food experience strategy

• Gave teams a repeatable way to connect consumer behavior to future product opportunities