Food Solutions takes real-world sustainability challenges faced by the food industry and supports multi-disciplinary teams to find innovative new solutions with the potential to transform the food system.
Mentoring by industry experts and teaching delivered by our academic partners equips teams with the specialist knowledge they need to tackle their challenge. This is paired with a thorough course on innovation and entrepreneurship, led by world experts, to take students through their entrepreneurial journey from scoping out a potential market to pitching their final concept to industry at the end of the programme.
Teams from previous Food Solutions cohorts have gone on to establish their solution as a start-up venture!
“[Food Solutions] gave me the opportunity to challenge myself in completely new ways, while trying to turn an idea into reality.”
– 2021 Food Solutions student
Take a look at some of the highlights from Food Solutions 2020 in the video below:
In 2021, over 130 Food Solutions students are working to tackle the following industry challenges:
- ‘Empty All‘: How can we reduce unintended food and packaging waste by improved packaging design and technology?
- ‘FoodFE‘ (Food for the elderly): Can we design novel food products for the elderly that address the issue of loss of taste, palatability, and efficiency of nutrient uptake?
- ‘GrOAT‘: The challenge is to design an innovative, healthy and sustainable product using an oat-based ingredient
- ‘DIG-it‘: Can we identify gaps and opportunities across the food value chain to apply state of the art digital technologies to create new innovations?
A previous Food Solutions cohort were provided a challenge by Colruyt Group to create new, innovative food products from residual materials. Read more about the students’ work and how they tackled that challenge here!
Would you like to know more about Food Solutions? Are you interested in getting involved? Get in touch with us at food.solutions@eitfood.eu.
Our Previous Students’ Experiences
“I [learned] a lot in [taking] part in the program and the insights I gained help me a lot in finding orientation for what I want to do in the future. Thank you!”
“Brilliant experience all round. Opened up [the] opportunity to collaborate with other faculties and local business as well as further afield.”
“Combining theoretical interests with the challenges a startup has to face was a very interesting and fun experience”
“For me, EIT Food Solutions was a great chance to learn about the challenges in building up a business (e.g. planning, milestones, partners).”
“Thank you for offering this opportunity to us and giving all the effort to find interesting talks and [representatives] from the food industry!”
“[Food Solutions] made me realize how many challenges have to be faced from a first product idea to having a prototype”
“I really like this project and hope that students from many other universities also have the chance to participate”
Why Join Food Solutions?
- Build your professional skills
- Develop your entrepreneurial mindset
- Network with food industry professionals
- Chance to win financial prizes
- Gain specialist food industry knowledge
- Access technical facilities and visit industry sites
- Receive mentoring from industry and academic experts
- Opportunity to pitch to the food industry
What You Will Achieve
- Analyse the food system and identify a problem that can be addressed by a sustainable solution
- Collaborate with a multi-disciplinary team and mobilise resources to develop a solution to a food system problem
- Evaluate a target market and competitors in order to assess the commercial potential for a product innovation
- Critically assess alternative product concepts to craft and communicate a sustainable value proposition
- Iteratively design a prototype using MVP (minimum viable product) principles
- Adopt technologies and techniques to deliver an innovative product and viable business case
How To Apply
Are you interested in joining a Food Solutions project?
Get in touch with us at: food.solutions@eitfood.eu!
Details of the 2022 Food Solutions programmes will be available soon.
Check back here for more information or send us your questions at food.solutions@eitfood.eu.
Project Leadership: Dr Karen Miller, University of Cambridge
Contact details: food.solutions@eitfood.eu
Participating organisations:
