UST Global Makes Strategic Investment Into Tastry, the World’s First AI-Driven Sensory Sciences Company
UST Global is announcing a strategic investment into Tastry, a sensory sciences company that uses advanced chemistry, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to match consumers to products they will love. UST Global and Tastry will bring this innovative technology to clients to help them identify shopper preferences.
Tastry has accurately taught a computer how to taste. The company has unleashed the barrier from direct-to-consumer selling by its sought-after technology that analyses products chemically to determine what flavors are present, even in tenuous forms. The cutting-edge technology introduced by Tastry matches the preferred flavors and combinations with its chemical analysis of products and swiftly identifies the flavors present in them. Considering this algorithm, it offers recommendations to the customers to which products to buy.
With patent-pending artificial intelligence we identify shopper preferences. Our consumer-friendly technologies, analytical chemistry and machine learning provide the most accurate product recommendations available anywhere. Retailers use this information to optimize product mix, which increases sales, margins and store loyalty. Tastry technology also provides science-based insights for product development and a variety of business improvement strategies.
Sunil Kanchi, Chief Investment Officer, UST Global said, “The CEO of one of our clients – a global top retailer – told us this is one of the best innovations that he had recently seen.”
Americans didn’t have the same cultural history of growing up with wine in the household that Europeans did. Like many things that washed up on our shores, we recreated it in our own image. Early on we disrupted the wine industry by turning it from an elite experience into a democratized one graded on a 100-point scale.
It’s been only two generations since the first Americans of drinking age competed with the rest of the world to challenge a revered tradition. Two generations later, however, we’ve also seen the greatest shifts in how we consumers choose to select products and purchase them. The overwhelming selection available at our fingertips has resulted in both analysis paralysis and fickle brand loyalties.
So Tastry set out to disrupt the wine industry again.
We changed the perception of wine as an elite product that discouraged consumers. Instead of being judged for not appreciating products rated highly by someone else, we exposed them to wines they would love, based on ratings by their individual preferences.
We recognized that younger generations are often inclined to prefer other, more contemporary beverages to wine, so we created our experiences to make their first exposure to wine as good as it could possibly be – we match them to the wine we know they will love a unique feature to this industry that increases wine trials.
We saw a need for a less overwhelming shopping experience. Since shoppers prefer personalized interactions, we created in-store and online services that demystify and guide selection based on recommendations that align with their unique individual tastes.
In partnership with producers, we provided a marketplace for wines where advertising dollars and marketing teams don’t define a winery’s success. Consumers connect to wineries around the United States based only on how well they will appreciate the wine align with products they love.
We found that small and medium-sized producers struggled to be seen among the corporate giants who dominate distribution and digital channels. We also saw producers who didn’t have the resources to fine tune their wines for the public’s palates, so we advanced the craft of winemaking by complementing the artistry of individual winemakers with flavor chemical analyses that predict how successfully wines will perform in the market.
https://www.winemag.com/2019/04/04/katerina-axelsson-tastry-on-teaching-computers-to-taste-wine/
Tastry is based in San Luis Obispo, CA.
More details about the company – https://tastry.com/
