Taste Engine

Taste Engine is a business intelligence platform for fast-casual restaurant chains such as Chipotle, CAVA, and Sweetgreen that helps culinary and strategy teams identify high-potential menu opportunities at a neighborhood level. It fuses large-scale Google Trends data with localized Google Maps review signals from independent restaurants to detect emerging flavor demand across specific geographic markets collected using the tools provided by Bright Data. The system applies a structured reasoning layer that maps detected demand against each brand’s actual ingredient (LTO ingredients) and SKU pantry, ensuring all recommendations are operationally feasible. Outputs are split into near-term “ship-now” concepts that can be executed immediately with existing inventory, and strategic “gap-fill” opportunities that highlight missing ingredients or capabilities required to meet emerging demand. The result is a decision-support tool for menu innovation, enabling data-driven localization of fast-casual offerings.