Barb Stuckey: Wellness Speaker

Food innovation leader and taste expert Barb Stuckey helps brands elevate flavor, consumer insight and product development through decades of experience shaping breakthrough foods and beverages for national markets.

Barb Stuckey - Image 02 (November 4, 2026)

Quick Facts:

    • President and Chief Innovation Officer at Mattson
    • Nationally recognized expert in taste science, food trends and product development
    • Author of Taste What You’re Missing and Taste
    • Regular Forbes.com contributor on food and innovation

Formats:

  • Keynote speaker, food innovation expert and taste educator

Audiences:

  • Food and beverage brands, CPG innovators, culinary schools, R&D teams, product developers and organizations seeking flavor improvement and consumer-driven innovation.

Outcomes:

    1. Clear frameworks for improving flavor and understanding the science behind taste.
    2. Actionable insights on food trends, consumer behavior and product development.
    3. Strategies to elevate innovation processes and create products that resonate with today’s market.
6 min read
Reviews: (0 reviews)
  • Travels from: San Francisco, CA
  • **US Fee range: On Request

Talent Services

Talent Short Bio

Barb Stuckey is President and Chief Innovation Officer at Mattson, the nation’s leading independent developer of foods and beverages for retail and chain restaurants. Since joining the company in 1997, she has become one of the industry’s most respected voices in taste science, food trends, innovation strategy and consumer insights. Her work centers on improving flavor and guiding companies through the full product development process, from ideation to commercialization.

With more than two decades of daily tasting embedded into her role, Barb has refined a rare ability to diagnose flavor challenges and teach others how to make food taste better. She distilled this expertise into her acclaimed book Taste What You’re Missing, later re-released as Taste, which introduced scientific yet accessible insights on how humans experience flavor.

Barb’s passion for taste education extends into the classroom as a long-standing instructor at The San Francisco Cooking School, where she teaches the Fundamentals of Taste to each entering class. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com, writing on food industry trends and innovation, and serves on the advisory board of the Plant Based Foods Association.

Barb Stuckey is a food innovation expert, author, and speaker who explores how taste, consumer behavior, and product development shape what people eat and drink. Drawing on decades of experience at Mattson, she connects the sensory experience of food with the practical challenges of creating products people want.

Barb joined Mattson in 1997, building a career in food and beverage development for retail brands and chain restaurants. Her leadership experience includes serving as President and Chief Innovation Officer, working at the intersection of consumer insights, food trends, and product innovation.

Tasting is central to her work. Evaluating food, understanding its sensory qualities, and identifying opportunities for improvement have helped Barb develop a detailed perspective on how people experience flavor. She shares that knowledge in ways that make the science of taste accessible to business audiences, culinary professionals, and curious consumers.

Her book, Taste What You’re Missing, was published in 2012 and released in paperback as Taste in 2013. It examines the experience of eating and encourages readers to pay closer attention to the sensory information that influences enjoyment and preference.

Barb also helped the San Francisco Cooking School integrate taste science into its curriculum and taught its Fundamentals of Taste course. That educational work reflects her interest in helping others become more attentive tasters and understand the relationship between sensory perception and food preparation.

Her contributions to the industry include writing for Forbes.com and advisory work with the Plant Based Foods Association. She has also served on the boards of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis, and La Cocina, a San Francisco food business incubator.

As a speaker, Barb brings a practitioner’s perspective to conversations about food trends, consumer preferences, and innovation. She helps audiences consider how sensory understanding can inform product decisions and how curiosity about the eating experience can reveal opportunities for improvement.

Barb is suited to food and beverage conferences, culinary programs, innovation gatherings, and consumer insights events seeking an accessible connection between taste science and commercial creativity.

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