Field note · Food and beverage
Scale or hold: the new product decision
A Swiss food and beverage brand launches more innovations than it can scale. Deciding which ones deserve full production and commercial backing is a recurring bet.
The situation
A Swiss food and beverage brand has a healthy innovation pipeline. A few new products deserve national scale across channels. Most should stay niche or be retired.
Early sales signals are noisy, and production and commercial resources are limited.
The decision that matters
After launch, leadership decides which products, in which formats and channels, receive production scale and commercial investment, and which are held back.
How we approach it
AI combines sell-through by channel, repeat-purchase signals, production constraints and margin by format, and compares each new product with the trajectories of earlier launches.
The category owner sees which launches are behaving like past successes and which are not, early enough to act on it.
Impact
The approach targets a single-digit million improvement in annual revenue from the innovation pipeline.