FlavorLab.aiTry the copilot

AI reformulation copilot for food & beverage R&D

Narrow 50 bench trials down to 3.

FlavorLab turns a reformulation brief (“replace Red 40”, “cut sugar 30%”, “mask pea protein”, “use less cocoa”) into a cited, constraint-aware bench plan in minutes, not weeks of trial and error.

Free during beta · No exact percentages required · Built for R&D professionals

Next binding deadline: California's four-additive ban takes effect, January 1, 2027. 4 months away. A reformulation runs 12 to 24 months from bench to shelf.

Every formula on the US shelf is being rewritten.

Four industry-wide pressures share one shape: “we changed an ingredient, and now it tastes wrong.”

01

January 2027

The next binding dye deadline

The FDA wants Red 40, Yellow 5 & 6, Blue 1 & 2, and Green 3 out of the US food supply, and the binding dates run through 2028: Red 3 out of food, California's bans, then West Virginia's full retail ban. Natural replacements fade, shift with pH, and change flavor.

02

30% less sugar

Reduction that breaks products

Sugar carries mouthfeel, bulk, browning, and flavor release. Cutting it collapses the eating experience, and every sweetener system brings its own off-notes and legal limits.

03

GLP-1 era

Protein that tastes like chalk

Appetite-suppressed consumers want compact, protein-rich nutrition. Protein loads bring bitterness, grit, and beany or metallic off-notes that need deliberate masking.

04

2-3× cost

The cocoa cost crisis

Cocoa still trades at multiples of historical norms. Teams are cutting cocoa loads and pushing flavor systems harder to keep the chocolate promise. Vanilla and coffee are next.

How it works

01

Describe the brief

Product category, the relevant ingredients, your goal, and the constraints that decide everything: process heat, pH, packaging, shelf life, target markets. Exact percentages never required.

02

Get a bench-note report

Options A and B with starting dosage ranges, taste and stability impacts against your stated constraints, a masking matrix, risks, and regulatory status with citations, each labeled rule, state law, or pledge.

03

Validate at the bench

The report ends in a test plan: what to run, in what order, with which sensory checkpoints. FlavorLab narrows 50 trials to 3. Your lab makes the call.

Free public data

The Dye Ban Tracker

Pledges are not labels. We measure what US products actually say: how many still list each dye, which categories are furthest behind, and which products change month to month. Updated monthly from public label data, alongside the dates that are genuinely binding.

See the numbers →

And what to do about them. Our reformulation guides take each dye and each category and screen the natural replacements against that category’s real process (a 190°C bake, a pH 3 soda in clear PET, an opaque snack bag), including which of the usual recommendations are not even listed for use there in the US.

Browse the reformulation guides →

Built to be trusted at the bench.

Ideation, not formulation

FlavorLab is an accelerator for professional R&D teams. Every report is a starting point for bench work, never a shelf-ready formula, and never a safety claim.

Citations or silence

Regulatory statements come only from retrieved legal text (eCFR sections, EU regulations, state laws) with citations, status labels, and verification dates. If it isn't in our sources, the report says so.

Your formulas stay yours

Exact percentages are never required, briefs are never used to train models or shared with third parties, and you can ask us to delete your stored briefs at any time.

Be first at the bench.

The Color Transition module opens first, ahead of the binding dye deadlines. Join the waitlist and we'll email you the moment your module is live.