Ostfriesische Tee Gesellschaft GmbH & Co. KG is one of the leading players in the food and beverage industry and, particularly through its Meßmer brand, is firmly established in the German-speaking market. In an environment shaped by rising customer expectations, price pressure, and increasing digitalization, the company is deliberately turning to Artificial Intelligence to secure its long-term viability. Together with TRENDONE, OTG developed a structured approach to implementing AI — with a clear target vision, prioritized use cases, and central organizational anchoring.
Challenge: making AI strategically usable
- No company-wide target vision for AI
- Unclear prioritization of use cases
- Need for methodological evaluation expertise
- The need to meaningfully connect business units and IT
The goal was to create a solid foundation for a sustainable AI strategy.
Solution: the TRENDONE AI Campus
With the AI Campus, TRENDONE and OTG jointly developed a structured program for introducing Artificial Intelligence, centered on three key success factors: strategy, enablement, and implementation.
The core measures:
- Establishing a company-wide AI target vision
- Identifying and prioritizing 47 use cases
- Developing a balanced portfolio of
- 8 strategic initiatives
- 39 quick wins
- Training employees in generative AI and prompting
- Enabling the IT department as a central AI competence center
- Implementing a first concrete use case (the “Mein Meßmer Moment” chatbot)
Result: structure, competence, and momentum
At OTG, the AI Campus didn’t just impart knowledge — it created a lasting foundation for developing AI independently going forward.
Project successes and outlook
In practice: the “Mein Meßmer Moment” chatbot
As a first quick win, an internal chatbot was developed that recommends suitable teas to employees based on their mood.
The focus was deliberately not on immediate business impact, but on building experience:
- Understanding how AI works
- Recognizing its limits and requirements
- Developing best practices for working with generative AI
The project served as a hands-on entry point and accelerated acceptance across the company.
Anchoring AI sustainably within the company
A key success of the project is the organizational anchoring of AI at OTG:
Today, the digitalization department plays a pivotal role and acts as the central point of contact for AI topics. It evaluates new ideas, assesses their feasibility, and ensures the use-case portfolio develops in a structured way.
The result is a system that not only enables innovation but is built to last.
Conclusion: successfully introducing AI means connecting strategy and people
The success at OTG clearly shows that effective AI adoption doesn’t come from technology alone. Only the interplay of a clear strategy, targeted enablement, and concrete implementation creates lasting value.
With the AI Campus, OTG built exactly this foundation — positioning itself successfully for the future.
