ORLANDO, FL: The Campbell Soup Co. is leveraging cutting-edge technology to provide a new service, called Habit, that uses a consumer’s DNA to provide tailored food suggestions.

Carlos J. Barroso, SVP/Global Research and Development and Quality at Campbell’s, discussed this subject at The Market Research Event (TMRE), a conference held by KNect365.

Habit deploys at-home nutrition test kits to collect a sample of a consumer’s saliva and generate their personal DNA results. Customers also drink a beverage in the kit, and use blood tests to examine how their bodies metabolise the liquid.

“With the emergence of technology, it’s not enough to just say, ‘Here’s a diet; it’s good for everybody,’” Barroso said. (For more, real WARC’s in-depth report: Campbell’s reinvents itself with acquisitions, new DNA offering.)

“Habit is poised to lead the personalised nutrition revolution by positioning itself at the intersection of health, technology, and food. Think about Habit as your personal nutritionist, eating coach, chef, concierge, and delivery service of food, all wrapped up into one.”

Campbell’s has tested this service in the Bay Area of San Francisco, including a food-delivery option that complemented the results provided by Habit.

And, Barroso reported, this type of opportunity seemed like a logical fit for Campbell’s given changing consumer tastes and its own focus on health and well-being.

“We said, ‘This is a new world. Is there space here for a good company?’ Nobody was doing it, so we just decided, right then and there, that we would do it,” he said.

Campbell’s, Barroso continued, “already is one of the leading players in health and well-being just based on the percentage of our sales from health and well-being products” – equating to more than $1 billion in annual net sales.

“The reason we may have a right to succeed here is that we’re big enough as a food company; we have a few hundred R&D folks; we have some money to spend,” he said.

“But we’re small enough – way smaller than some of our peers – that we should be able to move faster … We have fewer levels and faster decision-making, [and that gives us] the ability to do something like Habit.”

Sourced from WARC