At Harlan Foods, we understand that innovation is about finding new things. However, we believe that 'new' isn't enough. So we focus our efforts on 'better'. At its basic building blocks, food is about chemistry and physics. Concepts we understand and work with each day.

Because of this, we have come to understand and embrace the fact that data can hide-or illuminate-virtually anything you can imagine, if you have enough of it that is. We used to pull our hair out when receiving downloads of 'dirty data', which would need to be scrubbed. But, with the advent of certain species of AI and access to 1,000x more data than we could have dreamed of only 10 years ago, this problem is diminishing.

In developing new replacements or alternatives to existing products, it's helpful to identify what makes up that item (or even the intended item's) Digital DNA. When you plot this DNA in an n-Dimensional graph and introduce the Digitial DNA of other products, both alike and dissimilar and introduce entropy, along with some other more advanced mathematical tools, what shows up can be pretty amazing and powerful.

These product characteristics and attributes, when assigned a universal value in the graph, form strong and weak bonds with each other. The greater number of strong bonds, the more alike those products are (ok, there is more to it than that, but you get the picture).

This model is nothing new. It's been around for about 4 billion years, at least here locally. It's what drives molecular biology.

At Harlan, we are using these new tools alongside our tried and true ones to create food products that are better for you, more enjoyable, more sustainable, more affordable and more exciting.

Because while we have always delivered delicious, we feel it is important to ensure that what we innovate on is not just delicious but also products that are better that what was available yesterday.