Ajinomoto Co.,Inc. and ビーワークス have won the 2026 Good Design Award for “AI Menu Planner powered by Ajinomoto Co.,” an AI menu-generation service for school meal providers.
Ajinomoto Co.,Inc. and ビーワークス jointly applied for the Good Design Award with “AI Menu Planner powered by Ajinomoto Co.,” an AI menu-generation service for school meal providers, and won the award. The award is for fiscal 2026, and an official announcement regarding the award has been issued.
The award-winning service uses menu and recipe data held by school meal providers to automatically generate menus based on conditions such as nutrition, cost and avoidance of duplication. ビーワークス leads development, while Ajinomoto uses its longstanding recipe-development expertise to create new value.
Commercial use began in May 2026, and the service is already being used at more than 200 school meal sites. Validation using operational data showed that the workload involved in menu planning was reduced by approximately 70%. The 2 companies plan to continue working to improve the quality of school meals as social infrastructure.
The Good Design Award judges praised the service for using AI to create new value, including its application of Ajinomoto’s recipe-generation algorithm to the creation of school meal recipes.