FAQs

Known Entity helps suppliers to food & drink manufacturers improve how they appear when buyers use AI to discover, research and shortlist potential suppliers.

We assess your current visibility, improve the structure and supporting evidence behind your business information, and measure changes over time through our AI Buyer Visibility Audit, EntityCore™ and EntityWatch™ services.

In AI and knowledge systems, a known entity is an organisation the system holds enough reliable information about to name with confidence. That is the status we help suppliers work towards: found for the right buyer questions, described accurately and considered for relevant requirements.

Known Entity was co-founded by Helenor Rogers, Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Rogers, Chief Technology Officer.

Helenor brings more than twenty years of strategic marketing experience across global brands and B2B sectors, and leads client delivery and the evidence and credibility work.

Mike previously co-founded Troo Foods. He has sat on the buying side of this industry, specifying ingredients and packaging and qualifying suppliers, which is why the audit is built around the questions technical, NPD and procurement teams actually ask. He leads the technical build and measurement.

Specialist content, technical and PR people are brought in per project.

We work with packaging, ingredients, equipment, processing, co-manufacturing and logistics businesses supplying food & drink manufacturers and producers.

Our work is relevant where buyers need to understand specific products, capabilities, certifications, applications or technical requirements before choosing a supplier.

We work with founders, MDs, commercial leaders and marketing teams. There is no published minimum turnover requirement.

We combine an understanding of food & drink supplier buying questions with structured business information, supporting evidence and ongoing measurement.

The audit identifies where your business appears and where information is missing or inaccurate. EntityCore™ provides a clearer business record, while EntityWatch™ tracks changes and helps keep that information current.

We work alongside your existing marketing, PR and web partners, giving them focused recommendations informed by the findings.

Buyers are increasingly using AI alongside search, referrals and trade contacts to research markets and identify potential suppliers. Forrester reports that 94% of B2B buyers use AI in their buying process, and 6sense reports that 95% of winning vendors were already on the buyer’s Day One shortlist.

In food and drink, the procurement, NPD, technical and operations teams at the manufacturers you most want to supply are among the most likely to be researching this way. Existing customers can run the same questions when they dual-source or re-tender.

Understanding where you stand now gives you a baseline to improve from before those shortlists are formed without you.

Opportunities you never see. When buyers shortlist before making contact, a supplier that is absent or described inaccurately can miss a brief without ever hearing about it, and nothing appears in your sales reporting.

The defensive case matters too. Audits regularly surface outdated certification, discontinued products or missing capabilities in AI answers about established suppliers. If a buyer relies on that answer during a re-tender, an existing account can be at risk without anyone in your business knowing.

Two things are happening at different speeds.

AI-assisted discovery is happening now. Buyers ask AI to research markets, identify potential suppliers and compare capabilities, drawing on directories, registers, trade body lists, trade press and suppliers’ own published information.

Buyer agents that act on the buyer’s behalf are developing. Gartner has suggested that a large share of B2B buying will be AI-agent intermediated by 2028. How quickly that arrives, and through which platforms, remains uncertain.

The work that pays today is being found and understood for relevant buyer questions. Structured, supported business information also provides a foundation for those future interactions.

The same structured, verified information that helps AI find, understand and shortlist your business today is what buyer agents are likely to draw on as they develop: products, capabilities, certifications, applications, sectors served and the evidence behind them.

EntityCore™ is designed with that shift in mind. Any additional integrations or transaction services would be scoped and agreed separately as those systems mature.

AI Buyer Visibility describes how your business appears when buyers use AI to research potential suppliers: whether you are found, whether your capabilities are understood accurately, and whether you are recommended or shortlisted for relevant requirements.

We assess those outcomes using an agreed sample of buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.

AI Authority describes the credibility and supporting evidence behind how AI represents your business. Our AI Authority Ladder™ is the five-stage methodology we use to improve AI Buyer Visibility.

The commercial objective is to help your business become visible, accurately understood and considered for relevant supplier opportunities.

These disciplines overlap. Technical accessibility, clear content and credible external sources can support both search visibility and inclusion in AI answers.

Our work focuses on supplier buying questions, the accuracy and evidence behind your business information, and how your presence compares with competitors. We coordinate with your existing SEO, content and PR partners.

Yes. A well-structured, crawlable website with genuine authority supports the signals AI systems use, and you should keep investing in it.

AI Buyer Visibility looks at a related but different question: whether AI finds, understands and recommends your business for the questions buyers ask. Our work complements what your SEO agency does rather than replacing it.

We assess four: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.

Each draws on different sources and weights evidence differently, so a supplier can appear on some platforms and not others. We run each agreed buyer question across all four, using the consumer apps with web search enabled, which is what most buyers use.

We help clarify how your products, capabilities and strengths answer relevant buyer questions. This includes identifying unclear descriptions or missing information that could make your business harder to understand.

A wider rebrand or business repositioning remains work for your own team or strategic advisers. We incorporate agreed changes into your business record and monitoring.

AI systems can keep repeating older descriptions of a business for some time, because they draw on third-party sources that have not yet caught up. That makes a current, well-supported business record more useful during a transition, not less.

We publish the agreed current facts in EntityCore™, identify sources still carrying outdated information, and recommend corrections. The repositioning itself remains work for your own team or advisers.

They are the three outcomes we work towards.

Visible. Your business appears when buyers ask AI for suppliers with your products, capabilities, certifications and expertise, not just when they search for you by name.

Verified. AI understands your business accurately, and the important facts about it are clear, current and supported by credible evidence.

Shortlisted. When AI recommends potential suppliers for a relevant requirement, your business is one of them.

Being visible is not enough on its own. The goal is to be understood, trusted and shortlisted when the right opportunity arises.

Monitoring tools report what AI says about you. Content services aim to increase mentions. Both can be useful.

Our programme combines an assessment built around food & drink buyer questions, a structured business record, supporting evidence and monthly measurement, with recommendations for your existing marketing, PR and web partners. The aim is to improve whether AI can find, understand and shortlist your business, and to track whether that is changing.

Because the work earns its value on today’s buyer questions. Being found, understood and shortlisted when a buyer uses AI to research suppliers this month is the immediate objective.

The structured, supported information you build for that also provides a foundation for future buyer-agent interactions, so it is not work you expect to repeat from scratch.

The AI Authority Ladder™ is our five-stage methodology for improving AI Buyer Visibility. Each stage answers one question.

1 · Discover. Are you appearing in the questions that matter to your buyers? Delivered as the AI Buyer Visibility Audit.

2 · Structure. Can AI understand what you supply and where you fit? Delivered as the EntityCore™ build.

3 · Verify. Is there credible evidence behind what AI says about you? Delivered as the supporting evidence and credibility work.

4 · Protect. Are you staying visible, accurately represented and competitive? Delivered as EntityWatch™.

5 · Agent readiness. Will your information support the next stage of AI buying? Built into EntityCore™.

The Ladder is how the work is sequenced. EntityCore™ is the record you own, and the later stages build on it.

We agree a panel of real buying questions with you, typically 30 to 50, the ones a technical, NPD or procurement manager at your customers might ask: this material, this certification and scope, this pack format, this application, this quantity or lead time. We run them across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.

We assess how often your business is found, whether it is recommended or shortlisted, how accurately AI describes your products, capabilities and credentials, and which competitors appear alongside or instead of you. The audit includes a working session with Helenor and a review of the important claims you make and the evidence available to support them.

You receive a documented baseline, an analysis of the likely gaps behind the questions you are missing, and prioritised recommendations showing what to improve first.

Two weeks. Included in the £6,000 setup fee covering Stages 1 to 3.

We draw on your website, product pages, specifications, certificates and the authoritative external sources about you, and turn them into a structured record: company, products, capabilities, certifications, applications, sectors served, locations, people and supporting sources. Our team resolves what cannot be determined confidently from the sources, and you sign off the record before it is published.

EntityCore™ is hosted at a subdomain of your own domain. It is not a copy of your website and it is not a content site. It is a record of the important facts about your business, presented in a form designed for AI systems to interpret, with supporting sources alongside the claims they support.

The record sits on your domain, it is yours, and it is portable if you ever leave us. Publishing a record does not guarantee that every platform will retrieve it or recommend your business.

No website rebuild and no CMS access: one DNS record. Four to six weeks, subject to timely access to business information and approvals. Included in the £6,000 setup fee.

EntityCore™ states what is true about your business. Stage 3 connects the important claims to supporting sources: certification bodies, accreditation registers, Companies House, trade associations, industry directories and relevant trade coverage. A certification is linked to the issuer’s register where one exists, rather than reproduced as a logo.

We then identify gaps in that evidence, including sources that appear in AI answers for your buyer questions where your business is not yet present, and develop a focused brief for your PR or marketing partners on the listings and coverage worth pursuing.

Included in the £6,000 setup fee. Article production and PR placements themselves are carried out by your team or agency.

EntityWatch™ is the monthly monitoring and improvement stage. Each month we repeat the AI visibility checks across the four platforms using your agreed buyer-question panel, review the accuracy of your business information and track your presence alongside competitors.

Your monthly AI Buyer Visibility Report covers how often you appear, whether you are recommended or shortlisted, factual accuracy and which competitors are gaining attention. It comes with updates to keep EntityCore™ current, recommendations for two to four articles for your team or PR agency to write and publish, and a monthly review of findings and priorities for the next month.

EntityWatch™ costs £1,500–£3,000 per month depending on agreed scope, with a twelve-month minimum term.

EntityCore™ is designed to provide a foundation for future buyer-agent interactions through structured, supported business information.

As those systems develop, they may use supplier information to compare specifications, check capabilities and initiate enquiries. Additional integrations or transaction services would be scoped and agreed separately.

The audit establishes your baseline in two weeks. The build takes four to six weeks, subject to timely access to information and approvals.

Changes in AI responses depend on the platform, the question and the sources it retrieves. We repeat the assessment after the build and monitor progress monthly. We do not guarantee a particular shortlist position, improvement date or commercial result.

No. AI platforms control their own responses, which can vary between searches and over time.

We improve the clarity, accessibility and evidence behind your business information, then measure how your presence changes across relevant buyer questions.

Only lightly. EntityCore™ is hosted at a subdomain, so the build needs one DNS record. There is no CMS access and no web development on your main site.

The audit may identify technical changes to your website that would help AI systems read it, such as crawler access or structured data. We recommend those changes and your web agency or IT team implements them.

Parts of it. Your team could run buyer questions across the AI platforms and brief your PR agency on gaps.

What is harder to sustain in-house is the consistent process: an agreed question panel run the same way each month, a structured record with supporting sources kept current, and findings turned into prioritised actions for your marketing and PR partners. Many suppliers prefer to have that run as a standing service rather than build it themselves.

We investigate the available evidence and cited sources, identify outdated or conflicting information where possible, and recommend or make corrections according to who controls the source.

We then repeat the checks to see whether the inaccurate answer persists. We cannot always establish why a model produced an answer or guarantee that a correction will be adopted.

AI systems draw on many sources beyond your own website when answering buyer questions, and they tend to give weight to information they can corroborate. In food and drink supply that often means certification registers, trade body membership lists, sector directories, the trade press and professional profiles.

Evidence does two jobs. It helps your business be retrieved for a question at all, and it supports the accuracy of what AI says once you are found. Both matter, and different sources tend to serve each.

From your own audit and ongoing monitoring rather than from a generic media list.

We capture the sources cited when your buyer questions are run across the four platforms, look at which appear most often and on which platforms, and overlay where you and your competitors already appear. We then classify each source by what it can carry, a verifiable fact or a mention, and by how attainable it is. A register entry or directory profile is usually straightforward. Trade coverage takes more effort. Some sources cannot be influenced, and we say so.

You receive a prioritised list of the sources most likely to help, refreshed as monitoring continues.

We recommend what to cover and which supporting sources or publications are worth pursuing, based on the audit and ongoing monitoring.

Your team or PR agency writes, publishes and carries out outreach. We provide direction and assess whether relevant sources appear in the AI responses we monitor. Article production and PR placements are not included in the standard programme.

By running the same core buyer-question panel across the same four platforms each month and reporting the results consistently. The core panel stays the same so that results are comparable, and any agreed changes to it are documented.

Each month you see how often you appear, whether you are recommended or shortlisted, an accuracy review of what AI says about you, and the competitors appearing for the same questions. We track competitors on the same panel, which helps distinguish changes that affected everyone from changes specific to your business, although AI responses can vary and we do not claim to prove the cause of every movement.

A free read of where you stand today. Tell us your company name and website and we run the fixed panel of buyer questions for your supplier category, the same questions for every business in that category (ingredients, packaging, equipment, co-manufacturing and so on), across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.

You receive your AI Buyer Visibility Score out of 100 and the rate behind it: how often you were named when buyers asked for suppliers like you, whether you were recommended or only mentioned, whether AI describes you accurately, which competitors were named instead, and where you sit against other suppliers in your category. Emailed the next working day. No meeting required. No obligation.

• Assessment across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity using relevant buyer questions
• A baseline showing how often your business is found, recommended or shortlisted
• Review of how accurately AI describes your products, capabilities and credentials
• Comparison with the competitors appearing for the same questions
• Prioritised recommendations showing what to improve first

Delivered in two weeks. Included in the £6,000 setup fee covering Stages 1 to 3.

• Repeat checks across the four AI platforms using an agreed buyer-question panel
• Reporting on appearances, recommendations or shortlisting, factual accuracy and competitors
• Review and updates to keep your EntityCore™ information current
• Recommendations for two to four articles focused on relevant buyer questions and information gaps, for your team or PR agency to write and publish
• A monthly review of findings and priorities

The scope is agreed upfront. EntityWatch™ costs £1,500–£3,000 per month with a twelve-month minimum term.

Because without it you cannot tell whether the work is making a difference. AI responses change for many reasons, including platform updates that affect every supplier at once.

A consistent buyer-question panel, run the same way each month with competitors measured alongside you, is the most reliable way we have to see whether your visibility, accuracy and shortlisting are improving, and to decide where to focus next.

AI Buyer Visibility Score. Free.

Stages 1 to 3: Discover, Structure and Verify. £6,000 total setup. This covers the AI Buyer Visibility Audit, the EntityCore™ build and the supporting evidence work. It is the total for all three stages, not a price per stage. Audit delivered in two weeks, with the build taking four to six weeks, subject to timely access to business information and approvals.

Stage 4: EntityWatch™. £1,500–£3,000 per month depending on agreed scope, with a twelve-month minimum term.

Stage 5: Agent readiness. Built into EntityCore™. Any additional integrations or transaction services would be scoped and agreed separately.

Every engagement begins with the audit. We agree the deliverables and fees upfront, and explain where further work is likely to add value.

AI Buyer Visibility needs ongoing review as your business information, competitors and AI platforms change.

The twelve-month term provides a consistent period for monitoring, maintaining the record and reviewing improvements. It does not mean results are guaranteed within that period.

The setup fee is 50% on agreement and the balance on delivery. EntityWatch™ is billed monthly. We can spread the setup fee across three months for larger engagements.

The monthly fee is not discounted.

Alongside them. The audit and monthly monitoring produce specific findings: which buyer questions you are missing, which facts are unclear or unsupported, and which sources appear in AI answers where you are not yet present.

We turn those findings into focused recommendations for your existing partners: a brief for your PR agency on listings and coverage worth pursuing, article topics for your content team, and technical changes for your web agency. They keep their work, and the monthly report shows whether the sources they secure are appearing in the AI responses we monitor.

Yes. If an agency has clients supplying the food and drink industry, it can introduce them to us. We deliver under our own name, the client pays what they would have paid us directly, and the agency earns a referral fee.

We will always tell an agency before we contact its client about anything, and we do not sell services the agency already provides.

Request your free AI Buyer Visibility Score. Tell us your company name and website and we run the fixed panel of buyer questions for your supplier category across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, then email your Score out of 100, the rate behind it, which competitors were named instead and where you sit against other suppliers in your category, the next working day.

No meeting required. No obligation.

The audit produces a prioritised plan. Most clients go on to the EntityCore™ build and supporting evidence work, because that is where the gaps behind the missed questions are addressed. Where the findings point to a positioning question for your own team to resolve first, we will say so.

There is no obligation to continue, and you keep the audit report either way.

You keep EntityCore™. It is on your domain, the content is yours, and it is portable. What stops is the monthly monitoring, updating and reporting, so the record will gradually date from the point you stop.

Book a call with Helenor, email hello@knownentity.ai, or message +44 7411 934700 on WhatsApp.

Known Entity, Folkestone, Kent. A trading brand of WorkSpot Ltd.