What Food & Beverage Leaders Really Say about Winning the Shelf
Gain unfiltered insight into what’s actually slowing NPD, technical, and packaging teams today.
When senior leaders from NPD, technical, packaging, and operations teams were given the opportunity to speak openly, the message was remarkably consistent.
The challenges facing food and beverage companies are not isolated. They are interconnected, widespread, and becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
This report captures the themes that emerged across industry roundtable discussions and explores the deeper patterns driving operational friction across modern food and beverage organisations.
These discussions were led alongside Amy Wilkinson from Fearless Foodies, bringing decades of industry experience and an independent, practitioner-led view of the challenges facing NPD teams today.
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What leaders said in every session
Across four Food Matters Live roundtables, the same six themes emerged, regardless of company size or category.
Even if you couldn’t be in the room while the discussion unfolded, know that senior leaders agreed. Today’s challenge isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s the friction between teams, systems, and processes that slows products from source to shelf.
The six challenges raised in every single discussion:
- Why F&B teams remain misaligned despite shared goals
- The hidden cost of data that isn't trusted
- How pace has overtaken process across product development
- Where AI is creating opportunity and uncertainty
- Why securing senior buy-in remains difficult
- The impact of stretched teams on innovation and execution
The issue isn’t lack of awareness.
“Senior resource is being wasted just connecting dots between departments. That’s not a good use of resource when tech already exists that could be doing the same thing.”
So if it’s not awareness, what is it? Teams know where the problems sit. They see the bottlenecks. They experience the rework. They feel the pressure to move faster.
What’s holding them back is the way the work is still set up: outdated processes, disconnected technology, and handovers that were never designed for today’s pace.
Why download this report?
These challenges don’t just slow teams down.
They lead to:
- Delayed launches
- Increased rework and operational cost
- Reduced confidence in decision-making
- Safer, more incremental innovation
Over time, that becomes a competitive disadvantage.
See the patterns for yourself
Explore how your challenges compare to the wider industry, understand where friction is actually coming from, and identify what needs to change so your team can move faster with less rework.
