From Test Kitchen to Top Table: Hot Pickle Innovation Lab Turns One

Nov. 05, 2026

Award-winning experiential agency Hot Pickle is celebrating the first anniversary of Hot Pickle Innovation Lab, the division it launched to help food and drink brands navigate an industry in unprecedented flux, and a year on, it’s perfected its recipe for success.

Built on nearly two decades of Hot Pickle’s insight and innovation work for the likes of Hello Fresh, Diageo, General Mills and Unilever, the Lab launched under co-founder Rupert Pick, alongside Head of Innovation Ollie Lloyd and Innovation Director Louise Forster-Smith. While its original brief was to help brands respond to the pressures reshaping food, including HFSS legislation, concerns over ultra-processed foods, the shift to regenerative agriculture and the rise of GLP-1s… the issues facing the food industry are mounting and support is needed more than ever.

In its first year, the Lab delivered year-long innovation programmes, foresight projects, concept and brand architecture work, menu development, retail and foodservice innovation, culture programmes with a focus on bringing brands and customers closer together and immersive retailer workshops.

The team has also taken its trendspotting on the road, visiting global food fairs and meeting clients and partners from APAC to the US and across Europe, acting as the ‘eyes and ears’ of brand clients who often don’t have the time to travel. A collaboration with the UK’s largest chef network, The Staff Canteen, on a survey of over a hundred chefs nationwide uncovered findings that have gone onto shape wider discourse – “today’s menus shape what we’ll see on tomorrow’s supermarket shelves” (Rupert Pick). The launch of the new Restaurant Award at the Future of Food, the competition backed by the government’s former food tsar Henry Dimbleby, is currently in progress to help scout the UK’s boldest kitchens.

Rupert Pick, Co-Founder, Hot Pickle and Hot Pickle Innovation Lab said:

"We launched the Lab to help even the biggest brands think and act like challengers. A year on, and following hundreds of meetings with f&b brands, it's clear that they want more than a trend report. They want foresight, ideas and real-world testing in one place, which is no small order! That's what we've built and we’re seeing appetites grow for more and more of this kind of specialist consultancy."

 

While the food innovation division continues to flourish, Hot Pickle is maintaining momentum. The creative experiential agency has long contributed towards some of the world’s leading branded retail environments. Major milestone projects include creating, designing and sustaining the Magnum Pleasure Stores pop-ups for over a decade, helping bring the Guinness Open Gate Brewery to life in London earlier this year, and working with Mars Petcare to bring the first-of-its-kind pet wellness centre for dogs to town, Pawra.

But the proof is in the pudding…

One client has described them as "an outstanding innovation partner" and a second as “the best agency on our roster”. Another who has brought the team into three different businesses praised its "passion, energy, versatility and commercial acumen".