CHICAGO, February 10, 2026 — Datassential, the leading food and beverage intelligence platform, today announced expanded AI capabilities within Datassential One: an AI-powered semantic agent for consumer intelligence, alongside a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enabling clients to bring core Datassential data and insights into their own environments. Both capabilities advance Datassential’s vision for an industry accelerated by AI across menu innovation, product development, and go-to-market decision-making.

Together, these capabilities enable food and beverage teams to move faster from questions to answers, and from ideas to action, than ever before. The new AI experience introduces an agent-based approach to exploring Datassential’s proprietary consumer preference data, allowing users to interact with trusted insights through natural language questions.

Built to power Consumer Preferences within Datassential One, the AI experience allows users to ask plain-English questions about consumer awareness, trial, and affinity. Powered by Datassential’s proprietary and longitudinal consumer data, every AI-generated answer shows its work, making insights not only fast, but defensible, whether teams are shaping new menu concepts, refining product portfolios, or aligning stakeholders around a strategic direction. The result is an even more intuitive and credible way to explore consumer demand, uncover opportunities, and accelerate innovation with confidence.

“Food and beverage teams are under pressure to move faster while making higher-stakes decisions,” said Jim Emling, CEO at Datassential. “AI should make that easier, not more complicated. Our AI strategy is focused on acceleration with accountability, using AI to speed up insight discovery and innovation while keeping the data, logic, and outcomes clear and trustworthy for the teams relying on it.”

The AI experience analyzes verified consumer survey metrics and automatically applies built-in food and beverage context, ensuring every insight reflects real consumer behavior.

Often described as an “API for AI,” MCP enables customers to securely connect their internal AI and large language model systems directly to Datassential’s proprietary food and beverage intelligence, data, and tools. This allows teams to access trusted insights across consumer, menu, operator, and market data inside their own AI tools and workflows, accelerating innovation without duplicating data, retraining models, or compromising governance.

Datassential’s MCP enables customers to use their own AI environments or agents to access Datassential’s intelligence, bringing domain-specific context directly into the systems where menu, product, and strategy decisions are made. Consumer Preferences AI, the new AI-powered customer intelligence, and MCP are both available beginning today to all Datassential users. For more information, visit Datassential.com.

About Datassential

Datassential is the global authority for food and beverage intelligence, helping brands, operators, and retailers make confident decisions in a complex and fast-changing industry. Founded in 2001, the company delivers trusted food intelligence through its all-in-one platform, Datassential One, which brings together menu, consumer, and sales intelligence alongside advanced AI-powered analysis.

With a long history of applying artificial intelligence to food industry data, Datassential continues to invest in next-generation AI — including generative AI search and natural-language insights — to transform vast, complex data into fast, clear actionable intelligence. More than 90% of the leading foodservice and consumer packaged goods companies rely on Datassential to understand market change and stay ahead of what’s next.

Media contact

media@datassential.com

This article originally appeared on PRNewswire.