Target and it's food ideas

Consumers believe they are buying one thing when, in fact, they are buying something else. "We don't really know what we are putting inside our bodies at all," he says. And this isn't just true in the fresh produce aisle of the grocery store. Labels on packaged goods are often inaccurate, he argues, as any parent of a child with allergies will tell you.

This is just one of many food-related quandaries and opportunities that Shewmaker and his colleagues are exploring out of Target's Future + Food coLab, which is located in the Kendall Square tech district outside Boston and looks much like the other incubators that have set up shop in the area. MIT-trained data scientists are coding away, entrepreneurs are writing business plans, and designers are at standing desks drawing mock-ups of potential products. They are working together to imagine the future of food—and where Target might, eventually, fit into that future.

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