Kraft Heinz is launching its first ramen product, Kraft Mac and Cheese Cheesy Ramen, in early 2027, but behind the scenes, the food and beverage giant is preparing to make sure the product, along with the rest of its vast portfolio, appears in searches by AI agents.
Ashley Becker, vice president of Global eCommerce Capabilities at Kraft Heinz, said that as product search and discovery becomes more complex, growing beyond physical stores and traditional search portals, CPG brands need to build more sophisticated systems.
Becker discussed the topic with Lauren Livak Gilbert, executive director of The Digital Shelf Institute, in the panel Tactical Learning: Essential CPG Skillsets for the ‘New’ Digital Shelf at Groceryshop in September.
The move into the ramen space, its first entry into a new category in two decades, is part of Kraft Heinz’s $700 million investment plan to help its struggling brands and maintain relevancy.
Building a system
Becker explained that although AI agent-powered shopping is autonomously making purchases for consumers, there is still a long way to go before all purchases are automated.
In the interim, brands can take prepare to become more agile in a world of increasingly sophisticated technology.
“I think about that in terms of building systems and not just disparate assets, because we really are optimizing all of these different assets in some very large companies,” Becker said. “What we need to be thinking about is how to wire and connect those assets into systems so that they’re scalable and repeatable and agile.”
While the task might seem daunting for brands, Livak Gilbert advised food and beverage manufacturers to “take a deep breath” and realize that preparing for the future does not require starting from scratch on product discovery.
“What’s important for brands is to understand how do you optimize for the agentic shelf?” Livak Gilbert said. “And it’s not a full overhaul of your strategy, but it’s slight tweaks about how you need to think about your content.”
Test case with Amazon titles
Becker said an example of this rapidly changing product discovery can take the form of curveball changes from platforms, such as Amazon’s recent title requirement changes.
Amazon drastically reduced the title size for product listings. “When Amazon changes your title [length requirement] from 200 characters to 75 characters, how quickly are you able to respond and react?” Becker asked.
The days of writing a single, perfect product title are long gone, according to Becker, who said that brands need to view titles and listings as built out of reusable pieces – such as the brand, product name, flavor, package size and other attributes – decide which of those attributes matter most and then use technologies such as AI to quickly assemble the correct version for each retailer.
“Do you have workflows in place, or programmatic modeling that enables you to adapt that title and build it so that you can, in a fairly automated fashion, very quickly shift your portfolio to enable that new requirement or that new capability?” she said.
Human overview still required
Becker said Kraft Heinz has automated approximately 85% of the process needed to quickly respond to such title changes, but human overview remains critical.
“There’s still today 15% where you’ve got legal regulatory review, you’ve got a brand manager or you have a digital shelf leader reviewing to make sure the portfolio still hangs together,” she said.
She urged CPG brands to work with a technical partner that really understands how the data is being structured in the system and how to maneuver it.
“It’s really important to be learning and testing that today, so that you’re ready to look for the daily changes and complexities that are coming,” she said.
