Japanese food giant using AI to make snacks nutritious and delicious. Will it bear fruit, or should it stick to Pocky?
- 100-year-old Japanese firm Glico is famous for its indulgent snacks. As customers grow more health-conscious, it is changing course and enlisting AI’s help
- Machine learning will identify healthy ingredients faster, but it’s expensive and, in a low-margin industry, critics say the brand should stick to what it knows
Junichi Hasegawa has made a career of tackling tough problems, from connecting PlayStation 3 users for online play to researching self-driving cars. Now he wants to invent healthier food ingredients with the help of artificial intelligence.
The 61-year-old built up Japan’s top AI start-up, Preferred Networks (PFN), by striking deals and partnerships with the country’s industrial giants, from Toyota Motor to Eneos Holdings. Now at century-old snack food maker Ezaki Glico, he’s set his sights on adapting those skills to the notoriously cost-conscious food sector and revitalising the Osaka-based maker of Pocky chocolate sticks.
Personally recruited by Etsuro Ezaki, the 49-year-old great-grandson of Glico’s founder and recently appointed chief executive officer, Hasegawa’s primary job is to help find the perfect blend of taste and nutrition through massive data harvesting and machine learning.
He’ll also be instrumental in linking up Glico’s internal research with outside AI firms like PFN to accelerate the development of healthier foods.
It’s the first leadership transition at the company in four decades, and the new CEO’s mantra is that there’ll be no Glico snacks sold that don’t contribute to people’s well-being.