How Thinking Forks Is Baking AI, Sustainability, and Tech Into Food Innovation

In a conversation with CiOL, Rinka Banerjee, Founder & Director of Thinking Forks Consulting, shared the incredible journey as a food tech entrepreneur and building a company that started in her kitchen in 2014—with just two people and a pantry full of ideas.

Today, Thinking Forks operates out of a 14,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility with a team of 40, having partnered with over 150 brands worldwide.

From early collaborations with Yoga Bar, Licious, and 24 Mantra to working with giants like Unilever, Tata Consumer, Amazon, and PepsiCo, Thinking Forks has played a key role in bringing cutting-edge food and nutrition ideas to life. Its full-stack services cover everything from product development and scale-up to safety, packaging, and tech-driven innovation.

The company’s footprint now extends across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Southeast Asia, and Africa—supporting clients like Dole, Danone, Heineken, Americana, and emerging disruptors like Rootless and Better Dairy.

As Rinka puts it, “Our mission has always been to enable, energize, and excite the food industry—and that’s exactly what we continue to do.”

What started as a kitchen experiment is now a global consulting organization helping food brands innovate, differentiate, and scale with purpose. Excerpts from the interview.

You emphasize that technology is not a support function but at the core of everything. Can you elaborate on how this philosophy influences and blends with your product development approaches?

At Thinking Forks, technology is integrated directly into our core operations to digitize and standardize processes that are traditionally dependent on manual expertise. We are working on a cloud-hosted knowledge and workflow management system, which will enable seamless data capture and structured workflows. It makes our work scalable and repeatable, which wouldn’t be possible in traditional consulting. It also ensures that we are able to deliver with speed and accuracy. Product development, when embedded with all the peripheral understanding of other dependencies such as regulatory, sensory, or manufacturing, is a ground-up approach.

Your solutions cover AI-driven recipe formulation, real-time inventory tracking, and nutrition validation. Can you give an up-close view of how AI intersects with food tech?

The intersection of AI with food tech at Thinking Forks primarily revolves around making complex tasks simpler, faster, and more accurate. For instance, in AI-driven recipe formulation, algorithms are trained to analyze ingredient databases, nutritional profiles, regulatory standards, and sensory attributes to suggest optimized formulations. AI tools assist in predicting ingredient interactions and suggesting formulations based on desired attributes—e.g., flavor, texture, nutrient concentration.

AI is utilized in nutrition validation, where algorithms cross-reference input data with standardized guidelines (e.g., FSSAI, USFDA) to quickly validate claims. Real-time inventory is about bringing operational efficiency, which ultimately results in delivering projects at speed. We employ highly skilled food scientists and food technologists, and their time is best utilized by simplifying and automating the non-food-tech tasks.

Your Goodness Meter tool facilitates brands to showcase their product’s safety and quality. How has the market responded to this, and do you see it evolving into an industry standard?

The Goodness Meter tool has been positively received by industry experts and brands that we are evaluating. It is a single accreditation logo signifying the three most important aspects of a ‘good food’—i.e., ingredients, nutrition, and safety. It generates a QR code that consumers can scan to look at the product quality. It adds a layer of transparency that builds trust and also acts as a marketing tool for brands to highlight their commitment to quality.

While it is still in the early stages, we foresee the Goodness Meter tool evolving into an industry benchmark, especially as regulatory bodies and consumers demand greater transparency and accountability.

What’s next—how do you see the food-tech space shaping up in the coming years?

The food technology sector is undergoing significant advancements with three large themes: integration of artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology and sustainable practices, and health & nutrition.

AI is revolutionizing various aspects of the food industry—from enhancing customer experiences to optimizing operations and delivering with speed. For instance, Melbourne's Chadstone shopping center has introduced an AI-powered Food Concierge to assist customers with meal planning and ingredient sourcing, reflecting a broader trend of AI applications in retail food services.

Biotechnology is going to play a very important role in reducing food waste and enhancing product longevity—like precision fermentation to create alternate protein sources. Tropic Biosciences has developed gene-edited bananas that resist browning, extending their shelf life and potentially decreasing waste. An Indian company, Greenpods, has a solution to slow down the ripening of fruits to increase their shelf life and reduce waste.

We at Thinking Forks have valorized banana and pineapple waste to create plant-based fiber—creating value and enabling a circular economy. Products are being designed as we speak for customized nutrition targeting specific health conditions. For example, people in the US on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic now have options for food products tailored to their nutritional profiles.