Top 10 Food Trends for the New Year
1. Gift cards – Not McPlastic, a trend toward affinity credit cards that I predicted last year, but a very close and lucrative first cousin. The wizards of Oak Brook jumped on gift cards as a Christmas present in lieu of their usual $5 gift coupons. Sonic is offering one at various denominations that top out at an amazingly absurd $100. KFC is aggressively “carding” their customers. Even regionals like Potbelly are into it. Think about it – no fees to pay to the friendly folks at MasterCard; all the cash comes in up front, floating out there no matter how long it takes to use it, and not all the money gets spent when a few of the cards get lost or forgotten.
2. Better bread – Take a look at the honey wheat bread deli sandwiches peddled at Arby’s and the ciabatta that replaced the standard white bread bun on a few sandwiches at Carl’s Jr. Then consider that Panera Bread is one of the hottest franchises in the restaurant business – a QSR cleverly disguised as a fine bakery. You can only do so much with the meat between the bun to differentiate yourself. Sooner or later, you’ve got to get better buns.
3. Sugarless soda/Schizo consumer – Diet drinks now outsell their naturally sweetened counterparts, a strange turn of events when other food products are successfully hyping their “all natural” status. In one of those strange-but-true, Ripley’s believe-it-or-not food moments, artificially sweetened drinks will leap into grocery carts and land right next to the high-priced but all natural Niman Ranch dry aged prime rib.
4. All Natural/Organic – It doesn’t matter that those two terms have almost no meaning. Eating all natural and/or organic just sounds like the right thing to do to the upcoming Generation X (or are we at Gen Y or Z, now?). Beginning with all natural beef, pork, breads, and soft drinks, the shopping list rolls on forever. There are even a few “All natural, organic” sodas out there, a kind of nutritional two-bagger. Maybe it’s a Grape Nehi tasting product that bubbles up out of a hidden spring in some exotic wine growing district in the south of France? Here’s the catch: The phrase "all natural" can mean just about anything; it has no nutritional meaning whatsoever and isn't well-regulated by the FDA. Organic is only slightly more defined.
5. Tea time – It’s the new coffee. Here’s proof positive: Starbucks peddles Chai, a tea-based dairy drink laced with ginger, honey, vanilla or whatever you can find in the spice drawer that sounds half decent. Lots of start-up soft drink companies are using tea as a flavor base and a few bleeding edge chefs even use it to spice up their recipes. Can old-fashioned tea rooms with china cups and doilies be far behind?
6. Feeding the old folks – Baby boomers will officially stop being babies and start entering their golden years in 2006. These erstwhile hippies never intended to grow old and don’t ever plan to die. Ponce de Leon is their patron saint and the holy ground is the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park in St. Augustine, Florida where many seek Botox laced holy water. They will demand pharma-foods that will help them live longer, healthier lives and the food industry will come to their aid with thousands of products, further annoying the FDA with a few hundred specious health claims. I can’t emphasize this enough – this is a HUGE and rapidly growing market with an incredible amount of discretionary income.
7. Burping the babies – Feeding the old folks will be nicely balanced with feeding the youngest folks. We’ve never skimped on our children, even spending as much as $900 for a Cameleon stroller complete with independent suspension and hand-actuated parking brake. With wretched excess like that, is $8 for a jar of baby food containing 4 ounces of all natural fruit gelee out of the question? I think not. (At those prices, it ain’t jelly anymore!)
8. Mass quantities – It started in 2005 when Burger King and Hardee’s said to hell with healthy. “We’re feeding our core audience what they want, not what they need.” Young men responded with their lunch money, buying half pound mega burgers and wolfing them down in the back seat of their King cab work trucks on the way to the job site. With sales successes like that, everybody will jump on this massive market. The big question won’t be “How many calories?” Lots of consumers ask “Will it fill my big belly?”
9. Fruitarianism – Vegetarianism is old school high school. It’s gone mainstream. It’s something last year’s senior class did. Up-and-coming high schoolers, looking for a way to stand out in the crowd, will start to move away from a vegetarian diet which was THE thing to do in the first half of the decade. An all fruit diet – apples, pears and exotica like star fruit and cherimoya – that’s the ticket for the second half of the decade.
10. GI diets – No, we’re not talking about military foods and MRE’s. We’re talking glycemic index which was developed to help control glucose levels in diabetics. High GI foods result in a greater increase in blood glucose levels. Low GI foods, such as nonstarchy fruits and vegetables, beans, and dairy products, produce a smaller rise in blood glucose levels. It’s simple, it works and you can really lose weight with it. With type 1 and type 2 diabetes among the most rapidly growing health problems, especially among our aging population (see #6 above), there is a big, built-in audience for GI diets.
2. Better bread – Take a look at the honey wheat bread deli sandwiches peddled at Arby’s and the ciabatta that replaced the standard white bread bun on a few sandwiches at Carl’s Jr. Then consider that Panera Bread is one of the hottest franchises in the restaurant business – a QSR cleverly disguised as a fine bakery. You can only do so much with the meat between the bun to differentiate yourself. Sooner or later, you’ve got to get better buns.
3. Sugarless soda/Schizo consumer – Diet drinks now outsell their naturally sweetened counterparts, a strange turn of events when other food products are successfully hyping their “all natural” status. In one of those strange-but-true, Ripley’s believe-it-or-not food moments, artificially sweetened drinks will leap into grocery carts and land right next to the high-priced but all natural Niman Ranch dry aged prime rib.
4. All Natural/Organic – It doesn’t matter that those two terms have almost no meaning. Eating all natural and/or organic just sounds like the right thing to do to the upcoming Generation X (or are we at Gen Y or Z, now?). Beginning with all natural beef, pork, breads, and soft drinks, the shopping list rolls on forever. There are even a few “All natural, organic” sodas out there, a kind of nutritional two-bagger. Maybe it’s a Grape Nehi tasting product that bubbles up out of a hidden spring in some exotic wine growing district in the south of France? Here’s the catch: The phrase "all natural" can mean just about anything; it has no nutritional meaning whatsoever and isn't well-regulated by the FDA. Organic is only slightly more defined.
5. Tea time – It’s the new coffee. Here’s proof positive: Starbucks peddles Chai, a tea-based dairy drink laced with ginger, honey, vanilla or whatever you can find in the spice drawer that sounds half decent. Lots of start-up soft drink companies are using tea as a flavor base and a few bleeding edge chefs even use it to spice up their recipes. Can old-fashioned tea rooms with china cups and doilies be far behind?
6. Feeding the old folks – Baby boomers will officially stop being babies and start entering their golden years in 2006. These erstwhile hippies never intended to grow old and don’t ever plan to die. Ponce de Leon is their patron saint and the holy ground is the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park in St. Augustine, Florida where many seek Botox laced holy water. They will demand pharma-foods that will help them live longer, healthier lives and the food industry will come to their aid with thousands of products, further annoying the FDA with a few hundred specious health claims. I can’t emphasize this enough – this is a HUGE and rapidly growing market with an incredible amount of discretionary income.
7. Burping the babies – Feeding the old folks will be nicely balanced with feeding the youngest folks. We’ve never skimped on our children, even spending as much as $900 for a Cameleon stroller complete with independent suspension and hand-actuated parking brake. With wretched excess like that, is $8 for a jar of baby food containing 4 ounces of all natural fruit gelee out of the question? I think not. (At those prices, it ain’t jelly anymore!)
8. Mass quantities – It started in 2005 when Burger King and Hardee’s said to hell with healthy. “We’re feeding our core audience what they want, not what they need.” Young men responded with their lunch money, buying half pound mega burgers and wolfing them down in the back seat of their King cab work trucks on the way to the job site. With sales successes like that, everybody will jump on this massive market. The big question won’t be “How many calories?” Lots of consumers ask “Will it fill my big belly?”
9. Fruitarianism – Vegetarianism is old school high school. It’s gone mainstream. It’s something last year’s senior class did. Up-and-coming high schoolers, looking for a way to stand out in the crowd, will start to move away from a vegetarian diet which was THE thing to do in the first half of the decade. An all fruit diet – apples, pears and exotica like star fruit and cherimoya – that’s the ticket for the second half of the decade.
10. GI diets – No, we’re not talking about military foods and MRE’s. We’re talking glycemic index which was developed to help control glucose levels in diabetics. High GI foods result in a greater increase in blood glucose levels. Low GI foods, such as nonstarchy fruits and vegetables, beans, and dairy products, produce a smaller rise in blood glucose levels. It’s simple, it works and you can really lose weight with it. With type 1 and type 2 diabetes among the most rapidly growing health problems, especially among our aging population (see #6 above), there is a big, built-in audience for GI diets.
posted by Chuck Jolley at Wednesday, December 14, 2005
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