For food industry professionals, timely research on topics such as shopper trends, retailer strategies and workforce development can be critical for success. Until now, however, access to such research came in the form of pages and pages of PDFs that required a significant time commitment to comb through.
This year, FMI – The Food Industry Association has introduced FMIResearch.ai, a generative AI research assistant designed to help FMI members navigate the association’s extensive library of research reports and insights. The tool, created in collaboration with OpenAI, allows users to interact with FMI’s research library by answering questions about consumer survey data, industry benchmarks and trends. The assistant can respond to a range of prompts – from grocery spending figures to employee retention strategies – helping users quickly access relevant data and download reports, enhancing business strategy development across the food industry.
SmartBrief’s testing
SmartBrief had the exclusive opportunity to go behind the scenes and test out FMIResearch.ai and what it is capable of. An example of one of our many queries presented to the platform was “How much has the foodservice at retail segment grown over the last five years?” The assistant quickly responded with not only research stats, but a comparative analysis across multiple reports, with links to those reports:
Over the last five years, the foodservice at retail segment has shown significant growth. From a post-COVID rebound, sales reached $56 billion in 2025, marking a 39% increase in dollars and a 15.3% increase in units compared to pre-pandemic levels (Source: The State of Fresh Foods 2025). This continued growth reflects rising consumer demand for convenient and ready-to-eat options, with sales increasing by 1.2% to roughly $18.7 billion in recent years (Source: Seasonal Shopper Insights & Retail Foodservice Trends).
Another query was, “What does the 2026 Power of Meat report say regarding what types of meats are in highest demand right now?” The assistant responded with:
From the FMI material currently in our research collection that summarizes The Power of Meat 2026, the highest demand story is clearer by protein type than by specific cuts. Types of meat/protein showing strongest demand signals: Beef is driving the most dollar growth in the meat department. (Source: What The Power of Meat 2026 Reveals About Today’s Shopper) Chicken continues to drive strong volume (i.e., shoppers are buying a lot of it). (Source: What The Power of Meat 2026 Reveals About Today’s Shopper) The same summary notes that shoppers are making deliberate choices across channels, pack sizes and cuts as they balance value and quality. (Source: What The Power of Meat 2026 Reveals About Today’s Shopper)
The “why,” “how” and “why now”
To dive a little deeper into why the tool was developed and how it can be a game-changer for food industry executives, SmartBrief sat down with FMI’s Vice President of Research and Insights Steve Markenson and Senior Director of Digital Communications Kelli Windsor.
Tell me a little bit about what spurred the creation of FMIResearch.ai. What was the specific catalyst that made you realize that this was necessary for bringing your insights to your members?
Markenson: We conduct so much research, and we have so much data and information and we get a lot of questions from our members. It was time to do something like this and provide this service to our members and empower them to quickly and easily access the data and get the answers they need, when they need them.
How do you think this access can change the way a category manager or retail executive interacts with the data, as opposed to how they would previously just download a PDF of a report?
Markenson: Well, when you download a PDF, then you’ve got to search through a lot of data over a lot of pages to find specifically what you’re looking for. That’s a lot of work for our members who are balancing so many different things at every moment of time. So, anything we can do to make that process smoother and easier for them helps. It’s just going to make their knowledge and their awareness so much more powerful, and just make them think about things differently, too. And it is so easy to use. Just type the question in and then you instantly get an answer. If you want to dig deeper, then, it offers you the resource where you can do that.
How often is the brain behind the engine updated?
Markenson: Constantly. Anytime we release a new report that’s on the FMI store and then the FMI homepage, it’s available in FMIResearch.ai. We’ve released nine or 10 reports already this year, so it’s a constant stream of information that keeps getting updated. And, with a lot of it, especially trends, having the latest information is obviously really important this day and age. That’s the world we live in these days – you’ve got to stay up to date with things. You’ve got to have most current data. Things are just changing so quickly – whether it’s inflation, tariffs, wars in the world, pandemics. We’ve dealt with it all over the last five or six years. So having as much up-to-date information as possible is important for our members to be able to make the decisions they need to make, when they need to make them.
Windsor: It’s also being updated anytime we blog about research, so it’s not just generating responses from the reports, but also from our thought leadership insights and commentary on the research.
How far back does the engine search?
Windsor: We tried to include research as far back as possible that we were able to find digitally, so we were able to go back, around 14 years on the research. In terms of the blog content and our webinar content and insights, we found that we had to put a cap on it of the last two years, because otherwise it was pulling content from around 2019 that just isn’t as relevant now because that was pre-COVID-19 pandemic. So that’s where we fine-tuned our prompt and make sure it’s bringing the most recent data to the forefront and putting the current perspective on it.
Now that it’s live, what features do you plan to add next?
Windsor: We’ve gotten some feedback on making it easier to copy and paste the results and also on adding some branding, so that when you do copy and paste the results, they get some FMIResearch.ai attribution. AI continues to evolve very rapidly and this tool is built using OpenAI, so as their platform progresses and improves, so will the tool. We have to keep updating, testing and improving it.
How do you hope that small, independent grocers use this tool?
Markenson: I think those are the members that this can benefit the most. Because, you know, the big players of the world, they have in their own research, they have their own research teams, and a lot of the smaller guys, you know, it’s just them. They don’t have the people to analyze research from NIQ or Circana. For them to spend a half hour going through a report trying to find something, when they can spend 30 seconds querying FMIResearch.ai, saves a ton of time for them. Hopefully, it will be a great asset to them.
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