SugarCreek: Brandworthy Food Solutions

With Sriracha, shisito peppers and ginger once again topping the list for the hottest food industry trends, it’s clear that Asian and Latin-inspired flavors have truly gone mainstream in the United States. Shifting demographics, coupled with Millennials’ preferences for global flavors, are driving a major shift in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods, fast-casual concepts and even grocery store offerings. From breakfast tacos to sushi, Latin American and Asian foods are in-demand, RTE staples for Millennial grocery shoppers. Is your brand prepared to capitalize on this major shift in food consumption?

The last several years have seen a seismic shift in food industry trends. Where consumers were once highly loyal to big name brands, they are now more choosy than ever about where they spend their food dollars and tend to favor smaller brands and less processed foods over old-school favorites. The largest food and beverage brands saw their market share fall from 49.4% to 45.1% between 2009 and 2014—the equivalent of $18 billion in market share. And, unfortunately for brands who have yet to adapt to changing consumer values, it doesn't look like these patterns will be changing anytime soon.

With the Grocerant Summit in full swing, everyone is talking about the evolution of the modern consumer. Americans are changing the way they eat and shop for groceries, and retail brands need to stay on top of these evolving trends lest they fall out of favor. Need to know what grocery shoppers are looking for? Take a look at our 5 best posts from 2015 that dig into popular grocery shopping trends.

Not a day passes without some sort of alarmist news story about the state of food in the U.S. Whether the topic is gluten, GMOs, paleo, pesticides, protein bites or antibiotics, the 24-hour news cycle feeds fears. But, many of the fearmongering is based on false premises or connections that have not yet been firmly established.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, many home cooks are asking the age-old question: “To brine or not to brine?” Brining a turkey, while a lengthy process, can practically guarantee a moist and tender dinner. It’s a flexible technique that’s popular for preserving moisture, especially for the tricky breast meat. But the process can be pretty time consuming: home cooks need to first dissolve salt in several gallons of water, keep the turkey covered in the solution for several days, then let the turkey’s surface dry out for another two days before cooking. While brining itself is not complicated, the advanced prep time is simply too much for the average home cook, who may wait until the night before Thanksgiving to even Google, “How do I cook a turkey?”

“Count chemicals, not calories”– that’s the new motto grocery shoppers are increasingly embracing as consumers push for cleaner food labeling and steer clear of foods with unfamiliar ingredient lists. According to a survey in Nutrition Business Journal, high-fructose corn syrup is at the top of consumers’ least-wanted ingredients, followed by partially hydrogenated oils and trans-fats. Not far behind: any ingredients that sound like they belong in a chemistry lab and not a kitchen, reports WebMD. While the Nutrition Business Journal survey found that most consumers were not familiar with the term “clean label,” they certainly understood what it meant.

Forget clean labels, fusion flavors, "snackable" ready-to-eat meals, and kale smoothies. Smart technology is one of the hottest food industry trends—it’s not just changing what we eat, but how we are manufacturing food. Today’s food processing plants exist in a classic state of information overload: A galaxy of sensors, video security, and monitoring devices deliver more data than can possibly be processed for meaningful, real-time insights. The “Industrial Internet of Things” (IIoT) is changing this. By applying deep analytics through software, IIoT brings meaning and order to this interconnected physical world of sensors, devices and machines. The result is a futuristic food plant where data can now be leveraged for real-time optimization of production and intelligent decision making in actionable, accountable ways.

It's not just a cliché when people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Science has shown that eating a nutritionally sound morning meal can improve satiety and performance throughout the whole day, and health-savvy consumers are making a healthy breakfast a priority to get their days started right. But the days when mom would put on an apron to cook up a fully sit down breakfast are a figment from another era. With more people living in all-adult households, and few people having extra time to cook elaborate meals, grab and go options are more popular than ever: Breakfast bars, protein bites and other quick and healthy options are the choice of busy modern consumers.

Grocery shoppers are changing. They want foods that are quick and convenient, but they demand high quality, as well. One quarter of shoppers say that their top priorities in food are short ingredient lists that only include ingredients that they recognize. Sous vide is a great way to give them what they want and keep them coming back to your brand.

When most Americans hear the phrase “ready to eat,” farmed ostrich, rabbit, oysters and eggs benedict are hardly the foods that come to mind. Instead, consumers imagine soggy fries, overdone (and over-processed) hamburger mystery meat, or crunch-less veggies. But that perception could be about to change.

Innovating food industry trends is no small task—especially with the converging demands for fresh, ready-to-eat foods that are healthy and snackable. That is, until sous vide met ready-to-eat (RTE). It’s a match made in culinary heaven: bite-sized, ready-to-eat foods that are still healthy, fresh and flavor-packed. Thanks to rapidly growing consumer demand, sous vide could easily dominate the RTE category by as early as 2025.