Food innovation spans more than new recipes. It includes new products, manufacturing processes, research, equipment, branding, and emerging ways to produce familiar foods. In 2022, 31.3% of U.S. food firms reported product or business-process innovation, compared with 22.9% across all U.S. industries. The figures below show where that activity was concentrated, how emerging categories have been funded, and how consumers and foodservice buyers responded.
Contents
- U.S. food innovation at a glance
- Product innovation versus process innovation
- What companies invest in
- Geographic patterns across U.S. states
- Cellular agriculture and fermentation
- Alternative-protein funding and business conditions
- Plant-based food market signals
U.S. food innovation at a glance
The National Science Foundation’s NSF 26-306 data describes innovation activity reported by U.S. companies in 2022. The food-industry survey frame contained 17,974 companies. Within that group, 31.3% reported product or business-process innovation.
That rate was higher than the 22.9% comparable rate across all U.S. industries, but lower than the 35.6% reported for beverage and tobacco products, 39.4% for chemicals, and 42.4% for pharmaceuticals and medicines. Manufacturing overall recorded a 27.8% rate. These comparisons place food in a relatively active position while also showing that innovation intensity differs substantially among manufacturing categories.
| U.S. industry group | 2022 innovation rate |
|---|---|
| Food | 31.3% |
| Manufacturing overall | 27.8% |
| All industries | 22.9% |
| Beverage and tobacco products | 35.6% |
| Chemicals | 39.4% |
| Pharmaceuticals and medicines | 42.4% |
The survey frames were not the same size. The food frame included 17,974 companies, compared with 9,341 beverage and tobacco companies and 206,906 manufacturing companies overall. The rates therefore describe each group’s reported innovation share; they should not be read as a ranking by the number of innovative companies.
The NSF data also reports broader innovation-related activities across U.S. companies in the 2023 Annual Business Survey. R&D-related innovation activity was reported by 283,217 companies, or 25.1% of all companies. Engineering and design activity appeared at 231,998 companies, or 20.5%. Marketing and brand-equity activity was reported by 371,239 companies, or 32.9%.
Other activities were even more widespread. Employee-training activity was reported by 465,451 companies, or 41.2%. Acquiring machinery, equipment, and other tangible assets reached 381,204 companies, or 33.7%. Software-development and database activity reached 294,330 companies, or 26.0%, while management related to innovation reached 299,273 companies, or 26.5%. Intellectual-property activity was reported by 152,528 companies, or 13.5%.
Product innovation versus process innovation
Food innovation is not limited to something new on a shelf. NSF 26-306 separates product innovation from business-process innovation, which can include changes in production, logistics, organization, or other operating methods.
Among U.S. food firms in 2022, 16.5% reported product innovation. Business-process innovation was reported by 26.2%. The process figure was 9.7 percentage points higher than the product figure. That gap suggests that operational improvements were a more common form of reported innovation than new products during the measured period.
The pattern also matters for creative home cooking. A new ingredient, prepared food, or kitchen product may be visible to a cook, while process innovation can remain behind the scenes in sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, or distribution. Both can affect what becomes affordable, available, or convenient at home.
The NSF series shows lower product-innovation rates in several large-company size groups in 2022 than in 2018. Among companies with 250–499 employees, the rate fell from 18.3% in 2018 to 13.3% in 2022. Companies with 500–999 employees fell from 19.8% to 13.5%, and companies with 1,000–4,999 employees fell from 22.6% to 16.5%.
For companies with 5,000–9,999 employees, product innovation fell from 30.1% in 2018 to 23.6% in 2022. The 10,000–24,999 employee group fell from 34.0% to 23.3%. These are reported rates for the specified size groups and years, not estimates of the reason for the declines.
Historical food-manufacturing research gives another perspective. The USDA Economic Research Service reported that U.S. food manufacturing introduced about 20,000 new food products annually. Only about 10% of those introductions were thought to be true innovations. The same ERS material described the average lifespan of a new food product as relatively short, indicating high churn in food innovation pipelines. Those figures concern annual introductions and a qualitative assessment of lifespan; they do not measure the NSF innovation rate in the same way.
What companies invest in
Innovation can require capabilities that consumers never see directly. The 2023 ABS figures from NSF 26-306 show a broad infrastructure around innovation: training, equipment, software, marketing, design, management, intellectual property, and research.
Training was the most common of the listed activities, with 41.2% of companies reporting employee-training activity. Equipment acquisition reached 33.7%, and marketing and brand-equity activity reached 32.9%. These categories matter in food because innovation must move through kitchens, factories, packaging lines, retail channels, and customer communication before it becomes a usable product.
The ERS report estimated that U.S. food manufacturing accounted for 13.5% of total U.S. manufacturing shipments in 2009. In 2007, global food-manufacturing R&D reached $11.5 billion, with $3.1 billion attributed to the United States. U.S. food-manufacturing R&D intensity was about 1.5% in 2007, compared with about 10% for total U.S. manufacturing.
Those ERS measurements are from 2007 and 2009, so they provide historical context rather than a current estimate. They also illustrate why product counts alone can be misleading: a food sector may introduce many products while devoting a smaller share of activity to formal R&D than other manufacturing sectors.
Geographic patterns across U.S. states
NSF 26-306 reported 4,937,279 companies in the combined U.S. state ABS frame in 2022, including 1,130,039 product or business-process innovators. The reported national innovation share was 22.9%.
Selected state figures show a fairly narrow range around that national share. Washington and Oregon each reported a 24.4% innovation share. Texas reported 24.2%, as did Virginia. Nevada reported 24.1%, while Arizona reported 23.4% and New Jersey 23.2%.
| State | Companies in frame | Innovating companies | Innovation share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | 341,660 | 82,666 | 24.2% |
| Washington | 130,226 | 31,783 | 24.4% |
| Oregon | 80,176 | 19,577 | 24.4% |
| New York | 305,692 | 67,346 | 22.0% |
| Wisconsin | 96,714 | 20,681 | 21.4% |
| West Virginia | 18,454 | 2,958 | 16.0% |
New York’s reported share was 22.0%, compared with 21.4% in Wisconsin and 20.5% in Alabama. Alaska reported 21.1%, Nebraska 20.8%, and West Virginia 16.0%. Other reported shares included Massachusetts and Minnesota at 22.8%, Michigan and Tennessee at 22.5%, Ohio at 22.3%, Pennsylvania at 21.6%, and North Carolina at 21.8%.
The state counts are useful for scale, but the dataset does not establish why one state’s share was higher or lower than another’s. Geography, industry mix, and company size can affect the composition of a state’s ABS frame; the reported figures should therefore be treated as descriptive comparisons.
Cellular agriculture and fermentation
Emerging food-production methods show a different innovation profile from the broad company statistics. USDA Economic Research Service reporting places cumulative invested capital in cell-cultured meat and seafood at $3.1 billion between 2015 and 2023. Precision fermentation reached $2.1 billion over the same period. By 2023, more than 200 companies had major commercial interest in cellular agriculture, and more than 100 patents had been filed as of 2024.
The USDA summary also said that several million dollars in government research funding had been provided to the sector by 2024. In a USDA FSIS advance notice of proposed rulemaking survey summarized by ERS, 83% of respondents thought cellular meat and poultry should be labeled differently from conventional counterparts. “Lab-raised” was the most suggested label phrase.
GFI’s later industry reporting describes continued expansion in the cultivated-food ecosystem. Its 2026 cultivated-meat report says the sector had grown to more than 140 companies, with at least 138 additional active companies by the end of 2025, and more than 1,500 patents had been published by 2025. The report notes that the first cultivated meat product was made in 2013 and that company numbers expanded from a handful in 2015 to more than 140 by 2025.
Fermentation financing was more modest in the latest figures supplied by GFI. Companies operating primarily in fermentation raised $357 million in 2025, down from $632 million in 2024. In the first quarter of 2026, fermentation companies raised $121 million.
Alternative-protein funding and business conditions
Investment data shows both long-term scale and short-term pressure. GFI reported that alternative-protein companies raised $15.7 billion from 2014 to 2023 in the plant-based segment alone. In 2020, alternative-protein companies raised $3.1 billion, compared with $1.0 billion in 2019 and $694 million in 2018. Plant-based meat, egg, and dairy companies raised $2.1 billion in 2020.
Public support has also accumulated over time. Newly announced global public funding for alternative proteins totaled $523 million in 2023, bringing all-time public investment to $1.67 billion by the end of that year. Of the 2023 total, $190 million went to R&D, $162 million to commercialization, and $170 million to mixed initiatives. In 2024, governments announced about $510 million in new committed support, bringing cumulative commitments to around $2.1 billion.
GFI’s 2024 global policy estimate said mature-sector potential could require $10.1 billion in annual government investment and could be linked to up to 9.8 million jobs and $1 trillion in economic value. GFI estimated that the 2024 public investment gap covered less than 6% of that annual need. These are estimates and policy scenarios, not observed outcomes.
The January 2024 GFI industry survey included 533 respondents: 161 food manufacturers, 56 investors, 17 restaurant and foodservice companies, 9 retailers, 133 suppliers, and 157 service providers. Among surveyed alternative-protein manufacturers and suppliers, 40% said they had more than a year of financial runway, while 45% of surveyed companies had raised less than $1 million in all-time funding. Among respondents at companies involved in alternative proteins, 68% said revenues increased or held steady in 2023, but 63% said their products performed below expectations. Forty-one percent said their alternative-protein investments decreased in 2023, and roughly half of already-invested respondents said they had passed on an alternative-protein deal after diligence during the prior year.
Plant-based food market signals
GFI’s 2026 plant-based report says U.S. plant-based food retail sales totaled $7.9 billion in 2025. The same report gives an $8.0 billion SPINS-based market value and says the market was still about twice the $3.9 billion level recorded in 2017. Dollar sales declined 2% in 2025 and unit sales declined 3%.
Plant-based foods were purchased by 60% of U.S. households in 2025 and represented 1.1% of total U.S. retail food-and-beverage dollar sales. Among households that bought plant-based meat and seafood, 96% also bought animal-based meat. This indicates that, in the measured year, the two categories frequently appeared in the same household rather than operating as completely separate markets.
Category-level figures show different trajectories. Plant-based milk dollar sales reached $2.8 billion in 2024, while plant-based meat and seafood reached $1.2 billion. The total plant-based category’s average retail price increased 1% in 2024, and plant-based meat and seafood’s average retail price increased 4%.
In 2025, plant-based meat and seafood represented 1.4% of packaged meat dollar sales, or about 0.7% of the total meat category when random-weight meat was included. GFI estimated the U.S. plant-based meat and seafood retail market at $1.0 billion in 2025, up from $682 million in 2017. Yet 2025 dollar sales were down 10% and unit sales down 11%, while distribution fell 8% in both conventional multi-outlet and natural channels.
Foodservice added another signal: plant-based proteins generated $291 million in broadline-distributor sales in 2025, down 7% in dollars and 5% in pounds. Analog plant-based meat and seafood represented 54% of plant-based protein pound sales in foodservice, and pork analogs reached a 10% pound share. Grain, nut, and veggie products increased 6% in 2025 after declining every year since 2021.
Globally, retail sales of plant-based meat, seafood, milk, yogurt, ice cream, and cheese totaled $28.9 billion in 2025. Plant-based meat and seafood alone reached $6.6 billion, and global retail sales in that segment had tripled since 2015. In U.S. foodservice, plant-based milk pound sales grew 14% in 2025 and plant-based creamer pound sales grew 3%.
For home cooks, the combined picture is clear but mixed: food innovation remains broad, process change is more commonly reported than product innovation in U.S. food firms, and emerging categories continue to attract research and investment. At the same time, 2025 plant-based retail and foodservice figures show that growth, pricing, distribution, and repeat demand do not move in one direction at once.