Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a customer-centric framework that shifts the focus from who the customer is to what the customer is trying to achieve. Instead of targeting broad groups like “Gen Z snackers” or “office workers,” JTBD looks at the underlying reasons people seek out and use food and beverage products in real-life moments. These specific goals or "jobs" reveal what really drives behavior, which is critical to successful product development.

Understanding JTBD in Simple Terms

In this framework, a 'job' is not a person's occupation – it's the progress they're trying to make in a particular situation. For example, someone might “hire” a smoothie to quickly refuel after a spin class. Another person might turn to a high-protein snack bar because they didn’t have time for lunch but still need to stay energized for meetings. These are entirely different jobs driven by different circumstances and motivations, despite both products being “snacks.”

Why JTBD Fuels Better Food Innovation

Traditional segmentation methods in the food industry often rely on static demographics or sweeping lifestyle personas. While useful at the top level, these approaches can overlook why consumers make certain food choices in specific moments. That’s where JTBD creates real value – by revealing unmet needs and moments of friction that often go unnoticed.

With clear, contextual JTBD insights, food and beverage companies can:

• Design products tailored to meaningful situations – not vague consumer types
• Uncover whitespace opportunities by exploring jobs that current products don’t fully serve
• Improve market segmentation by focusing on use cases and needs instead of age or income brackets

JTBD in Action (Fictional Example)

Let’s say a brand is looking to innovate in the breakfast category. A generic persona might suggest launching a new cereal for "health-focused millennials." But by applying the JTBD framework, a more specific need emerges: people looking to “eat something warm and satisfying without waking up the whole household.” This insight could lead to developing a microwaveable breakfast that’s quiet to prepare, has real ingredients, and feels homemade – a much more targeted and emotionally resonant solution.

At SIVO Insights, we believe that innovation grounded in real human context leads to stronger product strategies. JTBD helps companies go deeper, revealing why people make food choices in the moment – a perspective that opens the door to differentiated innovation rooted in true customer needs.

In an effort to understand their audiences, many food and beverage companies still rely on personas like “working moms,” “young professionals,” or “active Gen Z consumers.” While these archetypes can help marketers paint a broad picture of a group, they often miss the situational drivers that truly affect food choices. In short, personas tell you who someone is – but not why they’re reaching for a particular product in a specific moment.

The Limits of Traditional Personas

Personas are typically built using generalized demographic data – age, gender, income – alongside a few lifestyle markers. While there's value in these snapshots, food behavior is far more nuanced. The same individual might choose an indulgent treat one evening and a low-calorie snack the next morning. Context, not just identity, drives these shifts. Relying too heavily on static personas risks oversimplifying consumer motivations and overlooking key drivers of food innovation.

Here are a few ways broad personas can miss the mark in product development:

• They assume consistent behavior across all contexts, which rarely reflects real life
• They overlook job-based motivations, such as emotional comfort, performance, or convenience
• They can lead to "safe" product ideas that try to appeal to everyone – and end up resonating with no one

JTBD: Designed for Contextual Segmentation

When you shift from persona development to segmenting food customers by job context, you uncover highly specific and actionable insights. Instead of designing for “Millennial snackers,” you might address the job of “holding hunger over during the car ride home from work.” Suddenly, form factor, portion size, ease of use, and flavor take on new meaning – all anchored in the end user’s situation rather than just their label.

For example, a persona might tell you someone is a 35-year-old parent. Useful. But a JTBD lens tells you they need a healthy, single-handed snack they can give their toddler while pushing a stroller with the other hand. This is where meaningful brand innovation happens – at the intersection of context, need, and function.

Why Moving Beyond Personas Unlocks Growth

Food and beverage innovation requires more than ideas that sound good on paper. The real magic happens when products fit naturally into consumers’ lives. By focusing on customer needs and jobs to be done, teams can:

• Launch products with clearer, more differentiated positioning
• Address emotional and functional jobs with precision
• Improve product-market fit by solving specific problems in specific situations

At SIVO Insights, we often help brands step beyond broad personas to get closer to the moments that matter. By applying the JTBD framework for product marketers and innovators, companies can generate food concepts that connect deeply with the right target audience – because they’re built from the inside out, not the label in.

Traditional market segmentation often clusters audiences by broad demographic traits like age, gender, and life stage. But in food innovation, these high-level groupings usually fail to reveal the deeper reasons why people choose one product over another. That’s where the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework shines – by helping teams identify the specific jobs people hire food and beverage products to do in their daily lives.

Why Contextual Segmentation Works Better

Unlike personas such as “health-conscious millennials” or “busy parents,” the JTBD approach focuses on real-world circumstances. These include the physical, emotional, and social backdrop of consumption moments. In other words, it asks: What is the customer trying to achieve right now, and what role does the product play in getting it done?

For example, the job isn’t “a healthy snack for a female in her 30s,” but instead something more actionable like “something filling and mess-free I can eat one-handed while commuting.” These job contexts cross age, gender, and lifestyle lines – offering clearer direction for product development.

Key Advantages of Contextual Segmentation in Food

• Reveals unmet needs: By understanding what consumers are trying to solve for in a given moment, you spot opportunity gaps existing segmentation misses.
• Promotes clear innovation criteria: Context-based jobs give development teams sharper guidelines for ingredient, format, and packaging decisions.
• Supports inclusive product design: Focusing on what people need to accomplish helps avoid stereotyping and overgeneralization.

From “Target Audience” to “Job Group”

With JTBD, the target audience is redefined based on job similarity, not surface traits. For instance, consumers looking for “clean energy that fits in a gym bag” might include students, gig workers, or parents – who all share the same job, even though they look nothing alike demographically.

This shift enables more actionable consumer insights and enables smarter market segmentation. It also empowers food brands to dig beneath category conventions and understand the real forces behind food choice – including time constraints, emotional needs, physical settings, and social pressures.

Ultimately, JTBD segmentation leads to more focused, relevant solutions that resonate with customers in key moments of consumption. It's not just about understanding food customers using JTBD – it's about building around those moments where your product becomes essential.

Seeing the JTBD framework in use can help translate theory into action. Whether you’re in snacks, beverages, or frozen meals, segmenting by job contexts – rather than personas – can unlock new and profitable ideas. Below are a few fictional examples (for illustration only) of how applying JTBD to food and beverage can drive focused product development.

Snacks: Job = “Keep me full during afternoon meetings without causing a crash”

One common job in the workplace context is sustained, discreet energy. Instead of targeting “urban professionals,” a smarter JTBD approach might uncover that workers need a snack they can eat between Zoom calls – quietly, cleanly, and with slow-release energy. This insight supports innovation around high-protein, low-sugar bites in resealable pouches – a far more specific and actionable direction than the broad “healthy snacking” category.

Functional Beverages: Job = “Help me recover fast without added sugar”

In fitness circles, recovery drinks are often marketed toward active males or performance-focused athletes. But the real job may be broader – like “rehydrate after the gym without gut upset or artificial sweeteners.” This job might apply to an older adult walking for heart health just as much as a spin-class regular. JTBD allows your brand to find new, overlooked users by solving for their common context rather than their labels.

Frozen Meals: Job = “A meal I can trust when I’m too tired to cook – and still feel healthy”

Instead of targeting “busy moms” or “convenience seekers,” JTBD reveals that this job is about both emotional reassurance and physical simplicity: having something satisfying, easy, and nutritionally meaningful ready in minutes. That unlocks ideas like globally inspired bowls with clean-label ingredients and streamlined instructions – built for a moment, not a persona.

What These JTBD Examples Show

• Innovation thrives when teams focus on consumer behavior in food innovation, not consumer stereotypes.
• You can unlock hidden value when you solve real jobs that span across traditional audience segments.
• Even within the same category, there are multiple jobs – and multiple opportunities – waiting to be uncovered.

By mapping these jobs, brands can ground their offerings in day-to-day human needs, which ultimately results in food products people actually need – not just what marketers assume they want.

Innovative food and drink companies are increasingly turning to the JTBD framework not just to improve existing products, but to envision entirely new categories and revenue streams. With traditional demographic slicing often leading to incremental tweaks, JTBD offers a more strategic path to breakthrough growth – rooted in real customer needs and situational motivation.

Identifying Underserved Jobs

By mapping existing consumer journeys and pinpointing moments where current solutions fall short, brands can surface high-potential “jobs” that aren’t being satisfied adequately by the market. These insights reveal whitespace opportunities – ideal foundations for new product concepts or complete brand innovation.

For example, uncovering a job like “nutrition for toddlers that tastes good and travels well without refrigeration” could guide new product development in both content and format, while addressing a real pain point experienced by caregivers.

Pushing Beyond Category Norms

JTBD also helps food brands challenge assumptions and move beyond linear innovation. Instead of asking: “How do we make our granola bar 10% healthier?” teams can ask: “What other moments require portable, filling, healthy options – and what’s currently missing in that space?” It’s an approach that encourages creative thinking while maintaining strategic focus.

Strong JTBD Research Leads to Smarter Investments

Using custom consumer insights research to identify and prioritize these jobs ensures your innovation pipeline stays tightly aligned with unmet needs – not trends or guesswork. At SIVO, these kinds of jobs-informed studies often feed into broader growth frameworks or category landscaping to drive smarter roadmap decisions.

Food brands using JTBD gain advantages like:

• Clearer innovation filters: Helps avoid chasing fads or crowding into saturated segments.
• Greater cross-functional alignment: R&D, marketing, and insights teams can rally around prioritized jobs rather than abstract segment targets.
• Higher confidence in product launches: With demand linked to authentic motivations, launch risk is reduced.

In short, improving food product development with JTBD isn’t just about understanding consumers – it’s about organizing your business around what really matters to them. The brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be the ones that step out of the demographic box and into the consumer’s lived experience.