Mattson is an employee-held company with 45+ years of insights and innovation experience in the food and beverage industry. Our services include conducting consumer, operator, and professional research for our clients, who span the industry from CPG to foodservice operators to commercial ingredient suppliers. With upcycled products capturing the public’s imagination, and even more headlines since the Upcycled Certified® release in 2021, Mattson dives into three critical areas with this presentation: (1) channel and category: who is and is not using upcycled ingredients?; (2) supply chain access: how and where do I find them?; and (3) conceptual fit: do they fit my brand? To answer these questions, we will share learnings from industry expert interviews to understand if, when, and how professionals in marketing, R&D, culinary, innovation, and commercialization roles approach sustainable formulation, and where upcycled ingredients can fit in. While some name brands are already making news, we’ll be sharing a review of categories and channels with the most traction in new upcycled products as well as notable items seen at recent conferences. We will explore how brands go about finding upcycled ingredients, or search and do not find them. We’ll learn about how they use upcycled ingredients to create successful products. To start, we will identify barriers to upcycled ingredient usage in product concept and development. Then we’ll address procurement challenges with sourcing upcycled ingredients, whether working with external suppliers or exploring their internal operations to valorize byproducts. Mattson will provide case studies where we’ve partnered with companies to produce successful upcycled solutions for both B2C and B2B companies highlighting how we addressed the above challenges. Lastly, Mattson will share learnings from our proprietary research looking at consumers behavior around sustainable products and how your brand can leverage upcycled ingredients to make a compelling selling story for your product. Speaker: Jaime Reeves, PhD, MS