How Nestlé is using AI + Gamification to reach thousands of customers
A brief case study of practical AI applications in real life
The Challenge
For many years, Nestlé had a big question:
How do we create a sustainable relationship with thousands of culinary micro-entrepreneurs who move the market with passion, but often feel disconnected and undervalued?
These are people who make a living cooking, using ingredients from Nestlé (and from competitors).
At first sight, they’re not loyal — they’ll buy the cheapest / most efficient options.
But at the same time, they are the most recurring customers in the market. They need to buy large volumes of products daily or weekly.
The company already owns some of the largest recipe platforms, helping with great recipes.
The problem, though, is that people will read the recipes… and then buy other brands’ ingredients (often lower quality, but sometimes cheaper).
So the challenge was clear → reach and fidelize these entrepreneurs, giving them incentives to keep buying Nestlé products instead of the competition.
The Idea
Ok.
We can’t force these entrepreneurs to buy Nestlé products. But we can incentivize them, right?
Yes. But how?
The main way is to actually reward them for buying Nestlé products.
Easy, right?
Not really.
Most of these purchases happen in local markets. Nestlé doesn’t have the data. They don’t know who’s buying what, or how much.
One old idea was to ask entrepreneurs to send pictures of their invoices as proof of purchase, and then reward them accordingly.
But we’re talking about Nestlé here, where millions of products are sold every day.
It would require an army of people reading and validating invoices just to spot Nestlé products and reward entrepreneurs. Not an option.
(And for you technical guys out there thinking about OCR → not a good option either. These invoices don’t follow a pattern. Nestlé products are written and coded differently from market to market and region to region, with no clear standards. We needed to train a reinforcement learning model.)
So the idea of reading invoices was never really viable.
Until…
🤖 Here comes AI
When I first saw this challenge, the idea came immediately to mind:
We can train our AI to actually read and identify a huge volume of invoices sent by these entrepreneurs in real time, recognizing every single Nestlé product being purchased.
This isn’t some crazy, revolutionary idea.
It’s a problem that wasn’t easy to solve before.
But that we can now solve thanks to advancements in technology.
The solution
How it works:
Users send their invoices and the AI validates and identifies Nestlé products in real time.
The tech behind it:
Our AI has been trained with more than 30,000 Nestlé SKUs.
We then ran thousands of simulations to predict and identify variations, reaching over 98% accuracy.
It also connects via API to public government databases to ensure each invoice is real (not a fake).
The user experience:
The UI/UX is very intuitive.
Guides users through exceptions
Gives constant feedback while invoices are being read
Shows results and a history of all readings
The rewards:
Once invoices are validated, every dollar spent on Nestlé products becomes fidelity points. Points can be redeemed for:
Discounts and prizes
Higher rankings
New achievements and benefits
For the end user, this is powerful. These are real rewards that make a difference at the end of the month.
The gamification layer (psychology):
Badges, unlocks, incentives, points, and rankings drive behavior in fun, engaging ways.
—
This solution is already live.
The app is available for iOS and Android, any entrepreneur can download it, send invoices, and start earning rewards today.
The results
In just a few months of pilot in a single region, the platform is already going strong:
5,000+ invoices read and rewarded
US$100k+ in invoices processed
46% market share for Nestlé in the main categories of invoices read — a significant increase compared to the average before the program
Thousands of entrepreneurs engaged and actively interacting with the platform
Beyond incentivizing purchases, engaging, and building loyalty, the solution is also giving Nestlé something powerful → a personal “Nielsen Insights” database.
With this, Nestlé can track insights like:
Market share and Share of Wallet
Performance of each product
Main competitors in each category
And much more
The app continues to grow and is now being expanded into new regions to reach a broader audience.
The success has been so remarkable that the launch was even covered by one of the main news portals in Latin America.
What can you learn from this
I love writing about this kind of success case because it’s inspiring and shows the simplicity behind solutions like this.
This is not some multimillion-dollar project that takes two years to deliver.
It’s a great understanding of a problem and an opportunity by the Nestlé team, combined with the right technology to actually deliver results.
And you can create the same kind of impact in your company.
Here’s a very simple 3-step framework to help you achieve similar results:
1. Look around your company and daily processes.
Ask yourself: What are our main friction points? What opportunities would be valuable to tackle? What would make a big difference in our work and generate results?
→ At this stage, don’t try to find all the answers. Just focus on friction points and brainstorm bold opportunities.
2. Map opportunities and ideas.
Once you’ve identified them, you can start thinking about possible solutions and where technology might fit.
3. Apply technology to solve.
There are plenty of simple, innovative solutions available today that can generate results like this quickly. You can even ask some ChatGPT for ideas and which tech to apply to solve your problems.
#KeepSolving #AIinRealLife #ItAllStartsWithAnIdea
💬 And if you’d like to go deeper and want a second pair of eyes on your challenges, I’m always open to a conversation. Send me a DM here or at LinkedIn and I’ll gladly help you direct a plan for applying the right tech to leverage results for you and your company.
I’m always writing about real-world applications of AI that inspire and deliver impact.