The importance of innovation for competitiveness has been recognized intensively in the academic, social and organizational environment, an aspect that motivated the development of the present research. It aims to analyze the national and international scientific literature in the field of innovation management in the food industry. This is a quantitative survey classified as exploratory and descriptive and the data was analyzed using the principles of bibliometrics and alignment according to Lotka and Bradford standards. There is no longitudinal cut due to the interest to investigate the behavior of intellectual production over time. There is evidence of the expansion of the investigative interest regarding the theme from 2008 on, with an increasing number of publications on the subject, which coincided with the growth attributed to innovation as important survival and affirmation factor of organizations. However, we still see a little consolidated academic production in the area, with the predominance of publishing centers that do not provide exchange with other groups. Empirical findings also indicate that 91,24% of the authors published just one article and that five journals published more than 1/3 of the articles about the theme, confirming Lotka\'s and Bradford\'s laws.