Description of project:

In 2019, seven out of 10 hamburgers and nine out of 10 hotdogs consumed in Mexico were made with Bimbo buns, with street food vendors (dubbed “Special Channels”) representing 33% of the company’s total sales. But as macroeconomic pressures and fast food competition intensified post-COVID, that percentage fell by 8% 

BRIEF: HELP BIMBO CUSTOMERS SELL MORE STREET FOOD 

How could Bimbo help its commercial allies increase sales, while strengthening brand awareness among both food vendors and end consumers alike?  

THE GREATEST GUIDE 

The world’s first fully generative search and signage system designed to put 8,402 of Mexico’s most creative hamburger and hotdog stands on the map. 

CREATIVE FOOD DESERVES CREATIVE DATA 

From octopus to grasshopper, the creativity of Mexico’s street food is staggering. It’s also highly diverse, with each of these 8,402 stands selling unique and local recipes. Our data collection and application of it to mapping and generative AI reflects the variance and creativity of the food while respecting a rich, traditional visual language. The food isn’t generic – neither is our technology solution. 

THE NOT-SO-SECRET SAUCE 

To drive word on the street, we turned to 18 earned television appearances, radio coverage, foodie influencers +340 social media posts, and digital ads to get people exploring local food vendors via the Google Maps API-powered website. 

AUDIENCES 

1) Jocheros and hamburgueseros – the street food vendors Bimbo has sold buns to for more than 78 years. 

2) Street food consumers. 

KNOWN DATA, NOVEL PURPOSE 

We started by collecting data from thousands of street food vendors across Mexico, both directly, and using the IVY and RTM data management tools created by Bimbo’s business analysis center. That data had previously only been used for placing purchase orders for buns. 

NAVIGATING INVISIBLE WALLS 

The commercial application of generative AI at scale is challenging; throughout development, we discovered invisible walls everywhere. For example, generative platforms are likely to render burgers that look like Big Macs, suggesting heavy bias in their training data. Because the street food on our menu doesn’t look like ubiquitous fast food and often uses ingredients not well documented on the Internet, we had to push at the edges of what AI could actually render, through rules-based decisioning.

AUTOMATED ART DIRECTION 

To produce 8,402 data-driven point-of-sale posters we combined Mexico’s rich tradition of sign painting with the scale and efficiency of artificial intelligence – we built up an innovative, iterative workflow between human art directors and our AI models. Rather than bespoke art direction, our approach was rules-based (e.g., the rule of thirds), which we rolled up into a programmatic creative system. For example, our automated drop shadow had to work for both long, wide hotdogs and narrow, high hamburgers. 

SCALE 

National, with 8,402 food vendors served across Mexico’s 31 states.  

BUSINESS IMPACT 

• +12,200,000 impressions across Mexico 

• +77,000 online map visits to date 

• 42,010 unique point-of-sale images generated for hotdog and burger carts, shops, and street vendors. 

• +23% increase in sales among Bimbo’s “Special Channels”