Trendspotting tech sees what people want on their plates

Have you ever tasted – or even heard of – zhoug, Spam musubi or ube? Have you ever topped pizza crust with hazelnut-and-cocoa spread? If you're in the $5.75 trillion food business, you need to know about these and other up-and-coming trends if you want to give your customers what they crave. A new Israeli startup, Tastewise, leverages the power of data to bring fresh info on food trends to the folks responsible for determining which dishes or products to serve next. "When I started talking with executives in the food-and-beverage industry, both large brands and restaurant owners, I found a huge gap of data and tools to help make decisions based on data," says Tastewise CEO and cofounder Alon Chen, formerly Google's chief marketing officer for Israel and Greece.