Sweet Earth — Building an Idea 4 Years Before Its Market Existed
In 2017, the plant-based snack category was a niche curiosity. Meat-based jerkies dominated portable protein. Our Nestlé incubator team was asked to run a 6-month blue-sky exploration: find the next breakthrough in savory snacking. I was part of the innovation team tasked with this mission — with no predefined answer and no guaranteed launch. The brief was to identify an opportunity and build a business case compelling enough to survive corporate scrutiny.
The Challenge: Convince the Business When You're 4 Years Too Early
Being right about a market trend is not enough in a large organization. You also have to be convincing — and timing-proof. In 2017, the flexitarian boom had not yet arrived. Internal skepticism about plant-based jerky was high. The challenge was not just to develop a great prototype, but to build a business case so solid it could survive deprioritization, budget reallocation, and market timing uncertainty — and still be actionable when the moment came.
My Approach: Blue Sky Exploration + Conviction MVP
The first phase was genuine blue-sky exploration: mapping the future of portable protein, analyzing emerging consumer trends, and identifying the white space where plant-based could credibly compete with meat-based snacks. The insight was precise: consumers wanted the chew, the savory intensity, and the on-the-go format of jerky — without the meat. Seitan offered the right functional base.
Rather than developing a market-ready recipe, I focused on building what I call a “Conviction MVP” — a prototype designed specifically to prove the business case to internal stakeholders, not to launch tomorrow. This meant ruthlessly prioritizing the 2–3 sensory proof points (texture, Teriyaki flavor profile, protein content) that would make the concept undeniable, and documenting the consumer evidence in a way that would remain usable years later.
When the project was initially deprioritized in the US, I supported a structured knowledge transfer to the Chinese market — ensuring that none of the R&D or consumer insight was lost. Even after our team moved off the project and it went dormant a second time in China, the full documentation remained intact and usable.
Results
Validated Prototype delivered
secured initial corporate buy-in for a brand-new savory plant-based category
4-year asset shelf-life
the MVP documentation remained the reference for the US reactivation team in 2021
Sweet Earth plant-based jerky launched in the US in 2021
built on the incubation foundation from 2017
“The hardest part of innovation is not building the product — it’s building the conviction that survives budget cuts, leadership changes, and market timing. A well-documented MVP is not a prototype. It’s an organizational memory.”
Amandine Devergies
