Kraft Heinz has officially unveiled its latest development, a customizable sauce dispenser with more than 200 sauce combinations. The machine was created with the help of Microsoft in six months.
“We are very, very clear that away-from-home and food service gives us an opportunity to test, to learn, to understand and to build trends much earlier than we have historically done,” said Peter Hall, Kraft Heinz’s head of its North American food service division. The unit will be installed in restaurants and food service facilities to study consumer habits and test new products.
With the launch of the dispenser, the company also aims to target the “out-of-home” segment, working to increase sales. Kraft Heinz has previously expanded its own distribution in airports, redesigned Lunchables to serve in schools and launched a deluxe version of its mayonnaise for chefs. The company’s sales in the U.S. and Canada increased by a quarter in the first quarter of 2023.
The new device will allow consumers to make a custom sauce using a touch screen to select a ketchup base, ranch dressing, sauce 57, or barbecue sauce. The next step will involve adding “enhancers”-jalapeño, smoky chipotle, buffalo and mango; and setting one of three intensity levels.
“We’ve been on this journey to make innovation the number one growth driver across our business,” Kleinerman said. “To do that, we knew we needed to operate differently than we had in the past, to think bigger, to be more consumer-centric.”
