NotCo introduces Giuseppe, the AI chef behind its plant-based milk, meat and chicken

NotCo's AI formulates plant-based products that mimic animal ones by searching molecular space at a scale no human lab could: it found pineapple and cabbage for the creaminess of cow's milk and strawberry notes for chicken. But food R&D by algorithm reads as cold, and consumers, partner brands and investors were being asked to trust outputs they could not feel or picture.

Give the food algorithm a chef's identity — name, face, voice and AI-generated visual world — so people, brands and investors trust it with dinner

R/GA Argentina and NotCo redesigned the platform end to end and introduced it publicly as Meet Giuseppe: identity, interface and behaviour crafted so the AI communicates like a chef rather than a black box, with an AI-generated universe of colours, shapes and textures showing how plant data becomes a finished food idea.

The entrant reports the redesigned platform drew attention and investment conversations from Kraft Heinz, Domino's, Dunkin', Shake Shack and Burger King, with over 19 million kilograms of carbon kept out of the atmosphere through sales of its products, and R&D timelines compressed from years to months. The work won a Pioneer Pencil for Creative AI Pioneer at The One Show 2026 and a Silver Cube at the ADC 105th Annual Awards.

NotCo, the Chilean food-tech company behind NotMilk and NotMayo, never built its products the conventional way. Its AI — named Giuseppe — searches trillions of plant-based molecular combinations to replicate the taste and behaviour of animal products: pineapple and cabbage extracts to reproduce the creaminess of milk, strawberry components standing in for chicken. What took food R&D years now took months.

The problem was not capability, it was credibility. An algorithm is, as the award entry puts it, cold and inhuman — a collection of ones and zeros that will never understand why a burger matters. Getting people, partner brands and investors to trust an algorithm with something as intimate as food meant making that algorithm legible and, above all, human.

So NotCo and R/GA Argentina did something unusual for a deep-tech asset: they treated Giuseppe's identity as the product. Every aspect — how he looks, how he speaks, the visual world that shows his thinking, rendered with AI-generated colours, shapes and textures — was crafted so that explaining the science became telling a story about a chef with an impossible palate.

The industry noticed. Meet Giuseppe took a Pioneer Pencil in the new Creative AI Pioneer category at The One Show 2026 and a Silver Cube in AI-Driven Experiences at the ADC 105th Annual Awards, with the entrant reporting interest from Kraft Heinz, Domino's, Dunkin', Shake Shack and Burger King.

The insight went at the real bottleneck: plant-based adoption was not limited by formulation quality but by trust, and trust in food is emotional before it is rational.

Giving the AI a single coherent identity turned an invisible technical advantage into a character journalists, partners and consumers could repeat.

The redesign was dual-purpose — the same interface that charms consumers made the platform 'more marketable to brands', opening a B2B licensing layer on top of NotCo's own products.

Using AI to visualise how Giuseppe thinks let the company show its secret sauce without revealing the recipe.

Abstractions do not earn trust; characters do. When your product is an algorithm, design its personality with the same rigour as its accuracy — the interface to an AI is a story people can believe.

Per the award entries, the platform's redesign drew attention and investment conversations from Kraft Heinz, Domino's, Dunkin', Shake Shack and Burger King, and products developed with Giuseppe have kept over 19 million kilograms of carbon out of the atmosphere through sales. NotCo says healthcare and beauty are next. The wider effect is the precedent: an industrial AI treated as a brand asset — named, designed, and given screen presence — is now the template the Creative AI Pioneer category exists to reward.