Identification of food colorants in food products is a vital aspect of the food industry. Food color plays a vital role in choosing the food product. This paper focuses on identification of food colorant tartrazine in turmeric powder. To achieve accurate identification of colorant, a hyperspectral imaging system (HSI) operating in the visible/near-infrared (Vis–NIR) range (400–1000 nm) is employed. Traditional methods like high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and thin-layer chromatography (TLC) are effective, but they are time consuming and labor-intensive. So, we proposed non-negative matrix factorization (NMF)-based spectral unmixing method for the estimation endmembers, which represent pure spectral signatures, along with their corresponding abundance fractions using HSI system. In this paper, the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method and multilayer NMF method is applied for estimating endmembers and their abundances.