The Reinvention Playbook for Legacy Brands
Food Tech Talk · 2026-05-12 · 30 min
Episode notes
How does a global leader like The Hershey Company navigate the delicate balance between speed to market and the rigorous demands of regulatory compliance in food ? Join host Katy Jones , CEO of Trustwell , as she welcomes Charlie Chappell to discuss why marketing and R&D alignment is the ultimate "secret sauce" for scalable innovation . Charlie reflects on his 25-year career, exploring how clean label trends and the demand for consumer transparency are forcing brands to move away from "hiding" behind technical jargon and instead embrace a strategy of radical honesty that builds lasting trust. The conversation dives deep into the future of food tech AI , specifically the challenge of subjective taste modeling and why an "LLM for the tongue" is the next frontier for the product development lifecycle . Charlie explains how digital twins in food are already optimizing chemical formulations, but why human expertise remains essential when navigating supply chain disruption and consumer insights data .
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