Turning Consumer Noise into Clarity
How Danyel O’Connor and Alloy’s Umami Are Redefining Food & Beverage Innovation with AI
The food and beverage industry has never been short on ideas. From the rise of plant-based proteins to the explosion of functional beverages, consumer tastes shift constantly, and brands scramble to keep up. But in today’s hyperconnected world — where TikTok recipes can make or break a product overnight — the traditional consumer packaged goods (CPG) innovation cycle is simply too slow.
Enter Umami, a new AI-powered product development platform designed to transform how food and beverage brands bring products to market. Incubated within Fieldbook Studio, the venture studio of Alloy in Bentonville, Ark., Umami aims to replace guesswork with clarity, speed, and scalability.
To lead the charge, Alloy has appointed Danyel O’Connor as Entrepreneur in Residence. With more than two decades of CPG leadership experience, including senior roles at Cravings by Chrissy Teigen and Good Foods Group, O’Connor is now channeling her expertise into building Umami from the ground up.
In an interview with MoveTheNeedle.news, she shared why she made the leap from running commercial teams at household-name brands to spearheading an AI-driven venture, and how she sees the future of food innovation unfolding.
From CPG Leadership to Entrepreneur in Residence
For O’Connor, joining Alloy was less of a career pivot and more of a natural progression.
“I’ve been fortunate to spend my career leading product development and commercialization at some of the most exciting brands in food, from scaling plant-based innovation at Good Foods Group to building beloved lifestyle-driven products with Cravings by Chrissy Teigen,” she said. “Across each role, what’s energized me most is the intersection of consumer insight, brand storytelling and breakthrough product design that truly meets people where they are.”
That passion for innovation and storytelling made Alloy’s venture studio model appealing. Unlike the long cycles and risk-averse culture of large CPGs, Alloy emphasizes speed, experimentation, and scale.
“With Umami, I saw the opportunity to channel my background in transforming portfolios, scaling distribution, and leading cross-functional teams into creating something totally new and needed within the landscape.”
The Bridge Between Traditional CPG and AI
O’Connor’s background in traditional CPG isn’t just a credential — it’s the foundation for how she’s approaching AI-powered product development.
“My experience in traditional CPG taught me the discipline and discernment needed to build brands and products that win by deeply understanding consumers, orchestrating cross-functional teams and balancing creativity with commercial viability,” she explained.
At Good Foods Group and Cravings, she launched SKUs, revamped packaging, and secured national distribution by translating consumer insights into scalable strategies. Those lessons, she believes, make AI tools even more powerful.
“AI doesn’t replace the fundamentals; it accelerates them,” she said. “Where in CPG we relied on stage-gate processes, focus groups and long innovation cycles, AI allows me to compress timelines, pressure-test multiple concepts simultaneously, and generate insights at a pace that mirrors how fast consumer preferences now shift.”
Pain Points in Today’s Innovation Cycle
O’Connor highlighted the industry’s reliance on traditional research methods. Brands have always had access to data — but not necessarily the right tools to interpret it.
“One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen in food and beverage innovation is how difficult it is to separate the signal from the noise when it comes to trends,” she said. “Traditional processes often treat all trends equally, without accounting for attribution back to product formats, consumer demographics or purchasing behaviors. That leads to reactive innovation that can feel slow to connect with the right audience.”
For her, AI is the missing piece: the ability to weigh consumer data against product attributes and commercial feasibility in real time. “Instead of spending months narrowing down which insights matter most, we can quickly identify which ideas have both cultural momentum and commercial viability,” she said.
Why Speed Matters
Today’s consumers move faster than ever. Social media can catapult a trend to global awareness in weeks, leaving brands scrambling. Traditional CPG cycles, which once stretched to three years, are hopelessly outdated.
“Traditional innovation cycles were built for a slower era, when trends took years to unfold,” O’Connor explained. “Today, consumer tastes shift in real time. Brands have to navigate through which trends have staying power and those that will fizzle before development work can be completed.”
The cost of getting it wrong isn’t just financial — it’s reputational. “Consumers reward companies that anticipate and inspire, not just follow,” she said. “When brands consistently lag behind or deliver irrelevant innovation, they become less culturally resonant — and once you lose that connection, it’s incredibly hard to win back.”
How Umami Works
So what exactly does Umami do? O’Connor describes it as a platform that makes consumer-driven innovation tangible.
“Our mission is to be the heartbeat of consumer-driven innovation — shaping brands that lead with clarity and confidence,” she said. “Right now, most developers are slowed down by siloed information, costly data tools, and snail-paced execution. Umami changes that by turning consumer confidence into CPG clarity.”
The platform operates through a set of guiding principles:
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Clarity → Currency: weighing opportunities by product attributes, demographics, and competitive context.
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Foggy → Frictionless: sharpening market opportunities with segmentation that cuts through noise.
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Uncertainty → Unstoppable: giving teams dashboards that ground innovation in current performance data.
Behind the scenes, Umami processes signals from retail scans, e-commerce reviews, and nearly 90% of U.S. retail feedback. The system links consumer sentiment directly to product formats, flavors, claims, and demographics, allowing teams to see not just what’s popular, but what’s viable.
“In practice, Umami takes in signals from what consumers are searching and buying, then weighs them against real commercial factors,” O’Connor explained. “That means instead of guessing which trend to chase, you see which concepts connect, resonate and are built to last.”
Reducing Risk and Cost
Launching a new product has always been risky, with millions tied up in R&D, packaging, and distribution before the first sale. O’Connor believes Umami reduces those risks significantly.
“Our access to consumer feedback data prevents our teams from getting bogged down in siloed data, expensive research, and slow execution,” she said. “That clarity lets developers see which concepts have both cultural momentum and commercial viability, so brands move faster with a much higher chance of hitting the mark.”
Avoiding the Trend Trap
One of the criticisms of AI-driven tools is that they risk amplifying noise — rewarding what’s loud rather than what’s lasting. O’Connor says Umami avoids this by tying every recommendation back to product attribution and feasibility.
“Instead of treating a viral trend as equal to a long-term shift, our AI sifts through mountains of consumer feedback and ties it back to specific attributes,” she explained. “Then we weigh those signals against feasibility factors like ingredient costs and channel dynamics. The result is clarity: concepts that aren’t just trendy, but relevant, scalable, and built to last.”
Who Will Use Umami?
The platform is designed to scale across the industry, from startups to global multinationals.
“Umami is relevant to any consumer brand that needs to innovate to stay relevant — it’s less about size and more about having a culture of innovation,” O’Connor said.
For enterprise users, Umami offers subscription models that integrate directly into ongoing innovation pipelines. For startups and challenger brands, it provides smaller packages and targeted reports to help them “punch above their weight.”
The Future of AI in Food Innovation
When asked how AI will reshape the role of human product developers, O’Connor was clear: the human element remains indispensable.
“AI turns noise into clarity and clarity into confidence — but the crave-ability still comes from human judgment,” she said. “The winning orgs will embed AI in the front end, keep humans at the finish, and build a culture that moves from insight → concept → market with discipline and speed.”
A Career-Defining Moment
For O’Connor, Umami isn’t just another chapter — it’s the culmination of her 23-year career.
“What excites me about leading Umami is that it encompasses my entire career in food and beverage: building brands, leading commercial teams and driving innovation,” she said. “I’ve experienced both the magic of breakthrough launches and the frustration of slow, costly cycles. With Umami, I get to take that hard-earned CPG discipline and fuse it with AI to make innovation faster, clearer, and more successful. At this point in my career, the chance to transform how the industry innovates — not just one brand — is what energizes me most.”
Conclusion
In an industry defined by shifting tastes and fierce competition, Umami represents a bold attempt to rewire how innovation happens. By merging the rigor of traditional CPG with the speed of AI, O’Connor and her team are aiming to give brands the confidence to lead, not just follow.
For companies weary of chasing trends and wasting resources on products that miss the mark, Umami’s promise is simple: clarity, confidence, and crave-worthy growth.