From ginger to carrot to garam masala – we ran a workshop in our brand new kitchen to work on product innovation for the food start-up I Like Tofu.

As mentors of the Copenhagen-based start-up accelerator Growth Train, we recently hosted a two-day workshop with Anja Korenc and Matic Batagelj, the founders of I Like Tofu, one of Growth Train’s start-ups. I Like Tofu is a Slovenian start-up which offers a selection of organic, flavored tofus.

They asked us to help them expand their product portfolio. We set two goals for the workshop:

• to identify a viable NPD (New Product Development) strategy; and
• to develop a few ideas within this strategy.

The core team included Anja, Matic, Federico Casotto, who leads our Food Lab, Service Designer Daniela Duran, and Food Technologist Enrico Giavon. We were joined by Paolo Palomba, CEO of Expertise on Field (EOF) and the former commercial director for several Italian grocery chains; and Stefano Ghetti, partner at EOF and an experienced retail advisor, who brought in the retailers’ point of view and helped us understand the rationales behind the retailers’ choices to include products in their selection.

During the two days, we ran a range of different activities, from communication strategy and ideation sessions to tasting to user tests. We also engaged our multicultural team in a user testing that gave the I Like Tofu team insights for future developments. Anja and Matic prepared a demonstration for us, showing us how to use the products in dishes ranging from risotto to burritos.

This was also the first time we tested out our brand new Food Lab Kitchen – it’s not entirely ready yet, but we’ll show you more soon so stay tuned. If you’d like to hear more about our Food Lab and how we develop food products, get in touch.

For more images from the workshop, head over to Facebook. Thank you for a great workshop, everyone! Until we meet to eat tofu again!