The soup business has grown cold. Inside Campbell’s plan to turn up the heat.

In the research and development kitchen at Campbell Soup, chef Todd Lyons spent much of the past 18 months fine-tuning a batch of new recipes. Would shoppers go for chicken noodle soup with kale added as a healthful twist? Would a cauliflower soup seasoned with dill land in their shopping carts? Lyons was creating the culinary prototypes for two of three new lines that the packaged-food empire has rolled out on supermarket shelves in recent months.