There’s a subtle revolution unfolding across the UK’s food and beverage landscape. While boardrooms remain focused on margins and supply chains, the real transformation quietly reshaping the sector is happening within digital product teams; those cross-functional groups blending strategy, tech, and consumer insight to meet expectations head-on.
Executive Summary
UK food and drink companies face intensified pressure: consumer tastes are shifting fast, digital channels are redefining convenience, and supply chains remain fragile. To keep pace, businesses are moving away from occasional digital projects and instead investing in integrated, agile teams capable of pivoting operations, delighting consumers, and proactively growing market share.
Why the Pressure Is Increasing
Three developments are changing the rules:
- Changing Tastes Outpace Traditional PlanningA 2025 report reveals that 33% of UK food and drink manufacturers identify shifting consumer preferences as their biggest external challenge, surpassing inflation and regulation.
- Margin Squeeze Meets Digital ExpectationGrocery sales may be up 5% in early 2025 – but that gain comes from inflation, not volume. Consumers demand swift, affordable experiences. Asda’s £1 billion “Project Future” IT overhaul underscores this urgency, enhancing digital ordering, search, and delivery tracking. But it’s also caused temporary disruptions that highlighted just how mission-critical a reliable digital infrastructure has become.
- Digital Visibility Remains a BottleneckAlthough cloud and purpose-built systems promise agility, many F&B firms are still navigating legacy ERP landscapes. The shift to cloud – as a foundational, not accessory, strategy – is crucial.
Four Pillars of Digital Maturity in F&B
Across leading businesses, four pillars are forming the backbone of modern food and drink commerce:
- Digitising from Production to Plate
Moving ERPs to the cloud is table stakes; modernising every workflow – from ingredient forecasting to omnichannel fulfilment – is what real transformation looks like.
- Removing Friction from Delivery Experiences
Online grocery innovations like real-time tracking and predictive replenishment are nothing short of battlefield tactics in 2025, especially post Project Future.
- Staying Ahead of Food Trends
Fast-moving brands are tapping AI and trend analysis tools to turn social media’s next big food craze into swift test-and-scale campaigns.
- Operationalising Sustainability and Traceability
Consumers now expect to trace their food back to its origins. For example, seafood ventures led by chefs like Mitch Tonks jumped from boat-to-door digital platforms during Covid. And, even now, continue growing through traceability and direct engagement with end consumers.
What This Means for Consumers
Transformation isn’t about flashy tech, as with most things, it’s about experiences:
- Trend hits hit shelves in days, not months
- Next-level delivery reliability, even amid peak demand
- Meal suggestions picked up from browsing habits or diet preferences
- Traceable, sustainable labelling visible right at checkout
These experiences are the result of long-lived product teams working across supply chain, tech, marketing, and compliance, not isolated IT projects.
The Business Case for Product-Led Teams
Modernising food and beverage through product-led structures isn’t about chasing the latest technology fad; it’s about creating tangible commercial return. Agile planning gives companies the ability to adjust production in near real time, cutting down waste and squeezing better margins from leaner operations. Trend-responsive teams, plugged into live data and social signals, are seizing market share by capitalising on consumer fads before they fade. And the brands that can demonstrate traceability and sustainability throughout their supply chains are building not just loyalty, but also premium positioning in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
More than ever, food and beverage CEOs are recognising that fast, product-focused commerce isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s the engine of resilience and growth.
The People Behind the Transformation
None of this is driven by platforms alone. The real shift comes from people; the product leaders agile enough to launch a TikTok-inspired promotion in days rather than months, and the engineers who can weave together POS systems with supply-chain APIs to make it happen. Data scientists are taking centre stage too, modelling spoilage rates, predicting demand spikes, and even optimising delivery routes to reduce costs and emissions. Alongside them, UX designers and sustainability specialists are shaping customer journeys that don’t just make buying easier, but also foster trust through transparency and purpose.
These multi-disciplinary squads are no longer judged purely on whether they hit deadlines; they’re measured by impact. From higher conversion and larger basket sizes to stronger retention and reduced waste. In a sector where margins are tight and consumer loyalty is fleeting, those outcomes matter far more than the delivery of any one project.
What’s Next (2026–2028)
Looking ahead, the innovations on the horizon feel less like science fiction and more like inevitable extensions of what’s already in play. Generative AI systems are being developed to suggest recipes based on the contents of your fridge, linking meal planning directly to commerce platforms. Smart packaging is emerging that can detect spoilage and trigger a discount or replenishment order automatically. E-commerce dashboards are evolving too, moving beyond price and promotions to surface carbon footprints, provenance, and ethical sourcing data alongside product details. And the very idea of “food as a service” is gaining traction, with subscription-based models, recipe-driven commerce, and flash-sale meal kits entering the mainstream.
These innovations won’t come from isolated R&D labs. They’ll be delivered by agile product teams iterating daily on user feedback, translating technology into experiences that resonate with consumers and generate measurable business value.
Final Thoughts
At Simply Commerce, we know that transformation isn’t about installing new software — it’s about assembling the teams that make commerce seamless. Whether you’re a heritage coffee brand modernising operations or a fast-growth meal-kit business competing on convenience, digital product capability is no longer optional. It is the competitive edge.
The question for leaders is simple: do you have the right mix of product thinking, technical expertise, and commercial focus within your teams? Because in food and beverage, those who can shape commerce at pace, on trend, and with purpose won’t just keep up with consumer demand. They’ll define the future of the sector.
