In the world of food science, Rochelle Hua once followed what many would consider a “textbook success path.” She graduated with First-Class Honours in Food Science in Singapore, worked in R&D at Nestlé and Abbott, and became one of the fastest-promoted food scientists within the organizations. She later joined McKinsey & Company, where she worked on several high-intensity, results-driven business projects.

By her early thirties, she had already reached a seven-figure annual income. At 37, she got married and became a mother. It was also during this period that she began to revisit a deeper question:

When professional capability has already been fully proven, must one continue to remain within the same model of success? After leaving the corporate world, Rochelle chose a path that appears “smaller” but deeply intentional: opening a soup shop in Shenzhen and becoming its owner, while also sharing insights as a personal blogger—using the lens of food science to explain the everyday yet essential act of eating.

During his nearly two decades at JD.com, Yishen Tang witnessed and shaped many of the defining moments of China’s e-commerce and retail evolution. From telecommunications and automotive to fresh food, he led businesses from 0 to 1, managed large-scale teams, and operated at a billion-RMB scale — gaining deep experience in platform efficiency, scale, and supply chain integration.

Yet at the peak of his career, he made an unexpected “reverse choice”: leaving the platform to start from scratch and build a highly focused low-GI food brand, Detective 55.

Since its founding in 2022, from launching its first low-GI oat bran product to gradually expanding its portfolio, building an integrated supply chain, and introducing its 2.0 brand upgrade with the concept of “intelligent glucose control,” Detective 55 is not a business driven by rapid scale. Instead, it represents a long-term commitment to health, patience, and sustainable value creation.

In May 2025, a new standard on Coloring Foods (clean label colors) went into effect in China, stating that coloring foods must come from fruits, vegetables, plants, or algae, ensuring transparency and safety.

• In a visual-first market, food & beverages must stand out, and plant-based colors deliver vibrant, eye-catching appeal.

• The new regulation aligns perfectly with Chinese consumers’ growing demand for natural, clean-label ingredients, moving away from artificial ingredients and colors.

• For beverage manufacturers, this is a strategic opportunity to capture attention with bright, natural hues that resonate with modern consumer values.

• Plant-based colors help brands differentiate, build trust, and thrive in a highly competitive beverage industry.

Advanced inspection technologies are no longer merely quality control tools, but key enablers driving product innovation. They help enterprises break through the constraints of traditional formulations, realize complex packaging designs, and optimize new production processes, thus opening up new horizons in the fierce market competition.

Today, consumption is being redefined by younger generations. They look beyond functionality, seeking attitude, aesthetics, and emotional resonance. They prefer simplicity over excessive packaging, value sustainability, and embrace personal expression—shifts that are reshaping the direction of packaging design.

This session connects changing consumer mindsets with emerging design trends, exploring how minimalism, lightweight formats, emotional appeal, and interactivity have emerged in response. Packaging is no longer just a container; it has become the first language through which brands communicate with young consumers.

Competition in the food and beverage industry has shifted from simple product differentiation to a more comprehensive contest of experience and cultural relevance. Relying solely on formulation, packaging, or isolated market insights is no longer sufficient to sustain long-term brand growth.

Drawing on real-world practices across China and the broader Asia-Pacific region, this session explores how food brands can leverage sensory and semiotic research approaches to uncover the deeper cultural drivers behind consumer behavior in diverse market contexts. It will examine how cross-market insights can be translated into actionable local innovation strategies that resonate authentically with consumers.

The presentation will also address the practical challenges Chinese brands encounter as they expand into the Asia-Pacific and global markets. It will share perspectives on how to maintain a nuanced understanding of Chinese consumers while incorporating multi-market viewpoints—ultimately building a more resilient and forward-looking pathway for food experience innovation.

The low-GI market is experiencing rapid growth, yet a key industry challenge remains: products are perceived as healthy but difficult to consume consistently. Many formulations meet glycemic index requirements at the expense of taste and overall eating experience, resulting in low repeat purchase rates. This session will focus on glycemic control mechanisms, formulation design, and industrial implementation, combining experimental data and practical case studies to explore how to achieve both low GI and great taste — driving healthy carbohydrates from function-oriented development toward comprehensive experience enhancement.

Dr. Meng Li previously served as a Product Director at a Silicon Valley-based food unicorn valued at approximately $1 billion, where she led a product that scaled to around $400 million revenue over six years. Through years of hands-on experience, she came to believe that the United States represented the ceiling in food innovation, brand marketing, and scale-up.

In 2024, she returned to China as a senior advisor. Expecting to “bring back advanced experience”, she instead encountered a sharp reversal in perspective. Chinese companies, she observed, are now operating at a different level in terms of product iteration speed, supply chain responsiveness, and ingredient and process innovation. At the same time, she noticed a subtle but meaningful shift in the U.S. market: in the city where she has long lived, more China-made food products are appearing on retail shelves, and American consumers are becoming increasingly open to “Made in China”.

In this talk, Meng will not focus on tactical “how-to” strategies for Chinese food exporting. Instead, she will reflect on the moments that challenged her assumptions and reshaped her thinking, and explore a more fundamental question: as China’s capabilities in the food industry continue to advance, when and how, will their true global value be fully recognized?

While most brands are still asking what the next viral ice cream should look like, NiCEME starts with a simpler—but harder to quantify—question: Is it fun?

NiCEME calls its R&D philosophy “Joyful Food Play.” Instead of reverse-engineering products from flavor parameters or cost targets, the team develops them forward from a complete themed world: “NiCEME’s Fried Chicken Shop,” “NiCEME’s Farm,” and more. Chicken legs, burgers, fries, carrots—symbols usually found in fast-food restaurants or markets—are transformed into ice cream products that live inside convenience store freezers, designed to be photographed, shared, and talked about.

Founder Daniel, who previously worked in the luxury and retail sectors, approaches branding not as the creation of a single viral product but as the ongoing construction of a participatory content universe for young consumers. Under his leadership, a post-90s founder and post-00s R&D team have turned the convenience store into a creative stage. As a result, NiCEME hasn’t just produced one hit product—it has become a brand that consumers repeatedly “discover” and share again and again.

Global dairy products are becoming increasingly homogenized, while consumers are showing growing demand for traceable origins, functional health benefits, and clean-label formulations. Sacco System, with over a century of expertise in microbial cultures, offers a portfolio of origin-certified strains and comprehensive solutions ranging from classic yogurt to functional fermented dairy products, including:

- CRL1505, a hexagonal functional probiotic strain originating from one of the world’s longevity regions

- Yogurt cultures inspired by Italian dairy traditions, fermented with strains associated with cheeses from Naples

- A “treasure box” of six Greek yogurt strains, validated by Agricultural University of Athens

- A clean-label yogurt solution delivering a pure taste profile with smooth, creamy texture and natural sweetness, without additives

Each solution is designed to help brands develop distinctive and competitive new dairy products.

In the food industry, design is often dismissed as a “last-mile” polish. But for Lu Yuyang and the Shudao team, an aesthetic background is merely the entry ticket; true design thinking is embedded deep within the supply chain. Refusing to be just another “asset-light” brand, they chose the hard path: building their own factories. What kind of product vitality erupts when design thinking is held accountable not just for visuals, but for flavor consistency, flexible manufacturing, and scalable delivery?

In an era of abundance, the food industry's growth engine has shifted from functional benefits to emotional resonance. While ordinary biscuits are trapped in supermarket price wars, “Blessing Biscuits” achieved a breakthrough—selling 10,000 tins monthly at a premium price of 38 RMB—by leveraging the unique context of temple blessings. Today’s consumers are no longer just buying food; they are investing in “experiential value.” This session will deconstruct how Scene Reconstruction and Cultural Embedding allow products to break free from cost-based pricing and exponentially amplify brand value.