The work that turns understanding into direction
Opportunity work is the bridge between knowing the category and acting on it. The discovery work tells you what is happening. The ideation work builds what comes next. This is the work in the middle: identifying where the commercial opportunity actually sits, sizing it, prioritising it and turning it into a working strategy that the business can build into.
Most opportunity briefs land when one of three pressures is on the business. Growth has flattened and the next platform needs finding. The innovation pipeline is thin and needs structuring. A category is shifting and a brand needs to know whether to stretch into the new space, hold the existing one, or build a new platform entirely. In every case, the question is the same: where is the commercially meaningful opportunity, and what would it take to own it?
What lands at the end of the work is a prioritised, sized and commercially framed set of opportunities, with a clear point of view on which one to lead with, why, and what the route in looks like. Not a long-list of ideas. A working strategy that the next phase of work can build into.
Two toolkits. One question. Where to play next.
Insight tools sit inside our Strategic Insight capability and are the diagnostic side of the work: they read the current state and surface where the opportunity sits. Innovation tools sit inside our Innovation capability and are the generative side: they turn the diagnosis into a working strategy, a defined platform, or a sequenced pipeline. Most opportunity programmes use both, in that order.
Innovation tools
Designed to turn diagnosis into direction. These tools help convert consumer, category and trend insights into clearly defined opportunities, strategic platforms and innovation pipelines ready for development and investment
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Opportunity Mapping
Strategic mapping of where to play in food and drink.
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Platform & Territory Building
Deep platform development that picks up where opportunity mapping ends and where execution begins.
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Future Food Pipeline Builder
A structured methodology for building credible, sequenced, executable food and drink innovation pipelines.
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i360 Audit & Growth Transformation
A comprehensive growth audit and transformation programme for food and drink businesses.
How we run opportunity work
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We scope around the commercial question
Twenty minutes on a scoping call. You tell us the commercial question on the table. We tell you which combination of diagnostic and generative tools will get you to a usable opportunity set, and whether the work is best run as a single integrated programme or as sequenced phases.
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Diagnose before you generate
Most opportunity programmes start with the diagnostic insight tools to read the current state, surface what is under-served and identify the white space. We do not skip this step. Generative work without diagnosis tends to produce ideas that fit the brand rather than ideas that fit the market, which is how a long-list ends up looking confident on paper and thin in front of a buyer.
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Generate, size, prioritise
Once the diagnosis is clear, the generative innovation tools build the opportunity set. Each opportunity is named, sized and prioritised against fit, feasibility and commercial impact. The output is a defensible point of view, not a brainstormed long-list. We tell you which one to lead with and why.
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A working strategy, not a presentation
We close with a working strategy document the business can act on. Each opportunity carries the evidence, the size, the route in and the implications for the next phase of work. The document is built for the team that has to deliver against it, not for the meeting that signs it off.
If your brief sounds like one of these, you are in the right place
- Our growth has flattened and we need to find the next platform.
- We know the category is growing but we cannot see where to invest.
- Our innovation pipeline is thin and we need to build it out for the next two to three years.
- A category is shifting and we need to decide whether to stretch into the new space, hold the existing one, or build a new platform entirely.
- We have a sense that there is opportunity here, but we do not yet know what it is or how to size it.
- We need a defensible point of view on growth strategy for the next board meeting.
Strategy that survives the meeting it was built for.
Opportunity work earns its keep when the output still makes sense six months later. A lot of strategy decks do not. They survive the leadership meeting that signs them off and then quietly die in a shared drive because no one can remember the logic by the time the next decision lands.
Two things keep our opportunity work alive longer than that. The first is specialism. Food and drink is the only sector we serve, which means the strategy is built on a category read that already lives in the heads of the people running it. The second is the operating bias. Our senior team has worked client-side inside retailers, manufacturers and operators. The strategy is written for people who actually have to deliver it, not for people who only have to approve it.
We are not a generalist strategy consultancy that takes food and drink briefs occasionally. We are not a creative agency that wraps a strategy in a brand idea. We are the team that does the strategic and commercial work specifically for this sector, with senior people who recognise the operational reality of what they are recommending.
Found the opportunity. What comes next?
Opportunity work sits in the middle of the lifecycle. Once the strategy is clear, the brief usually moves in one of three directions, depending on what the work has surfaced and where the business is in its planning cycle.
Built for every sector in food and drink
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FMCG and branded manufacturers -
Grocery, retail and own label -
Food service -
QSR and high street -
Hospitality
View our case studies
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Domino's
Domino's needed a long-term research partner to support continuous product validation, supplier benchmarking and innovation pipeline development. FIS Group has delivered years of rigorous consumer testing and strategic insight, acting as an extension of the Domino's team across every stage of menu development.
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Starbucks
Starbucks needed cross-market ideation around iconic bakery platforms for EMEA, with a focus on winning with Gen Z. FIS Group facilitated a structured innovation workshop with trend-led platforms, generating ten big concepts refined into illustrated, testable briefs now entering NPD pipelines across multiple markets.
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Biotiful Gut Health
Biotiful Gut Health needed three potential ambient territories validated before committing development resource. FIS Group investigated and defined each territory, developed concept iterations, ran quantitative consumer testing and built a DVF prioritisation model – giving Biotiful a clear, evidence-based view of where to focus first.
FAQs
Not necessarily, but it does help. Strong opportunity work needs to be grounded in a clear read of the category, the consumer and the trends shaping both. If you already have recent decode or insight work, whether completed with us or in-house, we can use that as the foundation. If not, we will need to build that understanding with you before developing the platform. We cannot create strong opportunity platforms from no data, so on the scoping call we will agree which route is right.
Two things. Specialism: food and drink is the only sector we work in, which means the team already knows the categories, the buyers, the operators and the rhythm of the trading year. Operating bias: our senior team has worked client-side inside retailers, manufacturers and operators, so the strategy is built to be deliverable rather than only defensible. A generalist consultancy can write a strategy that survives the board meeting. We write strategy that survives the meeting after.
A working strategy document. Each opportunity carries the evidence, the size, the prioritisation, the route in and the implications for the next phase of work. The document is built for the people who have to deliver against the strategy, not for the people who have to approve it. We can supplement with board-ready outputs separately if the brief requires both.
Single-tool projects (a needs landscape, an opportunity map) run from four to eight weeks. A full opportunity programme that runs diagnostic and generative tools end to end typically takes ten to sixteen weeks. The biggest variables are the number of markets, the depth of diagnostic required, and whether the work has to land in time for a specific commercial moment.
Yes. A lot of our opportunity work runs alongside an internal team rather than in place of it. We can act as the senior strategic lead, as the diagnostic engine, as the external challenger or as the workshop facilitator, depending on where the gap is in the internal capability. The scoping call is where we agree the working model.
Yes. Each opportunity in our output is sized as well as named. Sizing draws on category data, internal sales data where available, comparable benchmarks from analogous launches and volumetric modelling where the brief calls for it. Sizing is at the centre of how we prioritise, not a footnote to it.
Most clients move into ideation (Challenge 03) to generate the concepts that build into the opportunity, or directly into launch and scale (Challenge 05) if the opportunity is already a defined proposition that needs commercialising. We scope the next phase as the strategy lands, so the momentum carries through.
Yes. Our head office is at Mission Kitchen in London and we deliver projects across mainland Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates. International opportunity work is run with senior FIS Group oversight throughout, using trusted local partners on the ground where the brief requires them.
Need to find your next growth platform before the competition does?
Tell us the commercial question on the table. We will tell you which combination of insight and innovation tools will get you to a usable opportunity set, what the timeline looks like, what it will cost, and who will run it. Twenty minutes on a scoping call with a senior strategy specialist.