Food Consumer Insights

Trend - Meal kit brands are launching various forms of smart meal kits. These kits use artificial intelligence algorithms to ensure both that no ingredients are leftover, and that consumers only purchase products that they know they will eat. This helps reduce the stress and cost of grocery shopping.

Insight - With the rising price of groceries and the increasingly busy nature of working adults in North America, many find it difficult to find time to grocery shop properly without overspending. These consumers are often drawn to premade meal services. However, many of these services have limitations related to variety, and often only provide enough ingredients for their prepared meals. For those looking to grocery shop beyond a curated list of dinners, brands are launching AI grocer tools.

Trend - Children's snacks are now incorporating vegetables in a way that makes them less noticeable to picky eaters. Typically in pureed or finely chopped forms, these products are designed to provide the nutritional benefits of vegetables without being visibly recognizable or having a strong taste.

Insight - Parents frequently face challenges in getting young, picky eaters to embrace nutrient-dense vegetables, often due to aversions related to taste, texture, or appearance. In response, children's nutrition brands are increasingly formulating their offerings to conceal vegetables and help growing kids meet their daily vegetable intake recommendations. These products encourage healthy development, ensuring children get essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber without the typical mealtime battles.

Trend - Restaurants are offering Halloween-themed meals and items with unique appeal. These items often come at discounted prices to help parents and children, while they feature items with spooky-themed designs to enhance Halloween celebrations. These meals are designed to be positive experiences for fans.

Insight - In North America, Halloween is one of children's favorite holidays due to fun decorations, costumes, and free candy. However, Halloween has evolved to be more than simply a day-of trick-or-treating celebration, with many businesses offering celebratory items as early as a month before the day itself. Consumers who enjoy Halloween celebrations gravitate toward businesses that offer such items to engage with the holiday, build excitement, and save money for their families.

Trend - Gen Z is transforming the pickle market with a fresh, trendy approach that combines unique flavors, clean ingredients, and eye-catching branding. Good Girl Snacks epitomizes this trend with vibrant, Y2K-style branding and engaging social media presence. This demographic's obsession with pickles is reflected in the massive engagement on TikTok, where hashtags like #pickle and #picklesnack boast billions of views.

Insight - Branding plays a critical role in capturing Gen Z's attention, particularly for everyday pantry items. This generation's food choices extend beyond mere culinary preference, often serving as cultural statements that reflect identity and values. Take, for example, the resurgence of the pickle. Similar to past food fads, Gen Z's current fixation has elevated this familiar snack into a cultural touchstone, with brands capitalizing on its popularity through creative marketing strategies.

Trend - Brands in the CPG space are turning to chia seeds to create better-for-you alternatives to on-the-go breakfast offerings. Coming in the form of bars, bowls, and snackables, these packaged products offer healthy breakfast options for consumers with busy lives and limited time.

Insight - As individuals age, they typically take on more and more responsibilities ranging from advanced schooling to full-time employment and personal obligations, such as families and friends. This often leads to periods with very limited free time, leading to these consumers turning to time-saving options when possible, preferably without compromising on their lifestyle preferences. In order to appeal to such consumers, CPG brands are creating healthy on-the-go breakfast options with chia proteins.

Trend - Personal care brands are increasingly focusing on marketing probiotic gut health products to younger women. From products with packaging targeting younger women to full-on marketing campaigns, these brands are aiming to help women get a head start on proper gut health practices to improve comfort.

Insight - Younger women, namely those of the Gen Z and younger Millennial age groups, often do not worry about the perimenopause and menopausal life stages, as these come far later in life. However, in part due to health influencers on social media, these younger women are paying more attention to proper health practices that can help reduce symptoms of menopausal life stages later in life. In response to this, personal health brands are releasing gut health supplements designed for younger women.

Trend - Bubble tea restaurants are launching new seasonal flavors inspired by traditional pumpkin spice lattes. This blending of a traditional fall dessert flavor with the bubble tea format is designed to offer more variety to fans of both respective products.

Insight - Younger consumers ranging from younger Millennials to Gen Alpha, are more drawn to loaded dessert-style beverages, such as bubble tea, than those of previous generations. These consumers treat bubble tea as a social experience. As these drinks continue to become ritualized in consumers' lives, demand for new flavors and experiences goes up in turn. In order to cater to the ever-growing demand for flavor diversity, bubble tea restaurants are looking to popular seasonal flavors for inspiration.

Trend - Food brands across Latin America are beginning to launch new options for vegan and vegetarian consumers. Both restaurants and CPG brands are launching vegan options in LATAM countries to be pioneers in the region, with many proclaiming to offer the first vegan meals in their respective countries.

Insight - Both natives to countries in the LATAM region and those who travel there have often complained about the limited vegan and vegetarian dietary options, both at restaurants and in-stores. Consumers with these dietary restrictions instead turn to preparing their own dishes, and are often unable to enjoy restaurant-grade experiences. As more and more consumers adopt this lifestyle, brands are now adapting to offer vegan and vegetarian options in restaurants, fast food stores, and on retail shelves.

Trend - Appliance companies are releasing countertop composters designed for the kitchen. These composters accept food waste and paper-based products, which they then transform into usable fertilizers. These feature tight seals to keep scents trapped, and removable components for easy maintenance.

Insight - Environmentally-conscious consumers are acutely aware of the amount of food waste they produce. Often, these consumers will opt for products with both eco-friendly ingredients and packaging. However, discarding such packaging and producing food waste are still inevitable in the kitchen. For consumers who would like to further reduce their environmental footprint in the kitchen, brands are creating countertop composters that enable these consumers to see their eco-friendly impact in real-time.

Trend - Brands are now utilizing Tajín, a popular Mexican seasoning blend made from chili peppers, lime, and salt, to enhance fruits, candies, and snacks. When applied to treats, Tajín provides a unique flavor profile that combines the seasoning’s characteristic spice and acidity with sweetness.

Insight - Latin-American consumers often grow up enjoying Tajín on fruits and snacks but struggle to find this unique combination of flavors in their local grocery stores and restaurants. These consumers gravitate toward products that offer familiar, culturally resonant ingredients in accessible formats, allowing them to satisfy specific cravings. Businesses catering to the demand for culturally influenced flavorings can attract consumers looking for nostalgia and familiarity in their food items.