Indoor farming? Cell-cultured meat? The rise of DTC e-commerce? FoodNavigator-USA quizzed food & beverage business leaders to find out what trends they are monitoring, and what is keeping them awake at night as we approach 2021... Pic credit for 2021 graphic: Gettyimages urupong
Miguel Patricio, CEO, Kraft-Heinz: The way consumers buy goods has fundamentally changed. We always expected e-commerce to grow, but COVID has turbocharged this dynamic. We’re selling more online than ever before and are about 5 to 7 years ahead of our pre-COVID projections.
Environmental Social Governance (ESG) will no longer be seen as a standalone priority for CPG companies, but one that integrates into everything they do. Whether related to innovation, ingredient sourcing, packaging or consumer health and wellness, ESG issues have become priorities across our company. It’s become an important component of my evaluation – rightly so!
Some COVID-era changes are here to stay, especially when it comes to consumers feeling safe when dining away from home. With this in mind, our iconic HEINZ foodservice condiment dispenser is being reimagined with sensor technology that eliminates touch for the consumer. It also integrates perfectly into our sustainability focus by helping to reduce packaging.
Brian Sikes, chief risk officer, head of global protein and salt, Cargill: With limited options for dine-in at restaurants, especially in the fine-dining category, we are seeing consumers purchasing premium or more expensive cuts of meat at the grocery store and online to cook at home, offering a bit of affordable luxury.
More premium options, like steak, have experienced 33% growth in consumer spending and an increase of 18% in volume since May. Consumers are also venturing out, trying different types of proteins like bison and lamb. In fact, these niche proteins are outpacing growth in total fresh meat, with a 25% increase in dollars and 17% increase in volume since May. The experimentation doesn’t stop there; consumers are trying a variety of cooking methods, including smokers, which have seen increased usage as well.
While consumers will experiment, they still want easy to prepare meal solutions. While the pandemic continues to influence preferences and behaviors, we’ll continue to see people stock up on easy-to-prepare staples in times of uncertainty – including frozen pizzas, canned soups, ground beef and chicken breasts.
With a large portion of America’s school-aged children still engaging in some form of e-learning, parents are also taking on the challenge to prepare more meals at home. Our deli meats brands, such as Castle Wood Reserve, have doubled distribution in the last six months due to increased consumer demand.
Miyoko Schinner, founder & CEO, Miyoko’s Creamery: I'm keeping up with the emerging new science and ways of making food through food tech using microbes, fermentation, 3D, cellular ag, and so on, in order to take animals out of the food system. Are we playing God? When will commercialization really happen? What are consumers looking for? Will we be able to stop the cruelty to animals and destruction to the planet in time?
Covid created huge demand for our products, and this year was a challenging one in terms of balancing health and safety measures (such as line and shift separation), supply chain issues, while meeting the skyrocketing demand. We've had to be nimble, think on our feet, and expedite projects with copackers, who are themselves facing increasing demand.
Billy Bosch, founder & CEO, Iconic Protein: DTC, plant based, immunity, and keto are all on fire. We're so into these trends that we actually developed a line of plant based protein immunity drinks that are keto, which we're launching DTC in the spring. We call it ICONIC Immunity, keep your eyes out!
There are so many things that can keep a founder up right now. The list can seem endless": Keeping track of the changing direction of consumer trends as we go in and out of lockdowns, raising money, and finding (+keeping) the right people usually top the list.
Joe Ennen, CEO, SunOpta: Plant-based will continue evolving to planet-based, and healthy eating will expand to values-based eating, now more than ever. We are certain to see more focus on climate change with the new Administration and consumers are increasingly understanding how their dietary choices can positively impact the planet.
Jamba Dunn, founder & CEO, Rowdy Mermaid Kombucha: We are incredibly attuned to sustainably harvested functional plant-based ingredients, such as immunity-boosting mushrooms and natural postbiotics. The emergence of regenerative organic functional ingredients has also been very inspiring.
Similarly, the growth of alternative cell-based meats, such as the recent news regarding Eat Just lab-grown chicken in Singapore, is encouraging and continues to propel the plant-based category. Finally, we're also watching the DTC revolution that will continue to be a post pandemic staple of consumerism.
In 2020 we became a national brand and understanding how to communicate authentically to our consumers across channels has become our everything. Keeping up team and office morale during periods during which we have no control over market forces has also been challenging.
Eric Schnell, co-founder Beyond Brands, Mood33, Cool Beans: I'm optimistic on the growing consumer awareness of, and demand for, CBD infused beverages as we head into 2021. I believe there will a day that this category rivals the energy category in beverages, as CBD is an 'anti-energy' functional ingredient and is the only other plant compound I know besides caffeine that you can use in a formula and the consumer 'feels' an effect within minutes.
As for what keeps me up of night, lack of sampling ability on new food and beverage products definitely keeps most founders up at night as active demos are the lifeline of all new products, especially ones creating new categories and need the hand-to-hand touch so that the consumer is educated and enlightened in store and can create a purchase immediately at checkout.
No matter how much a brand can strategize about how to 'touch' the consumer digitally to gain excitement on a new product, its always been about the meet and greet that takes place at a demo experience in store that often leads to a loyal brand evangelist being created for a new product.
Nate Storey, co-founder & CSO, Plenty: As technologies such as LEDs and computing power get cheaper and more efficient, indoor farming will produce significantly higher yields. In 2020, Plenty was able to increase yield by 700%, and we anticipate that type of progress will continue and possibly double or triple. In addition, we’ll see new crops enter the mix for indoor farms and the costs of production will continue to decrease. Over time, indoor farming will allow us to bring back food varieties and species we haven’t seen in a long time.
In order to stay profitable, the field will move toward more heavily commoditized crops such as corn, rice and soybeans and let market disruptors - such as vertical and indoor farming - focus on horticultural crops including fruits, vegetables and flowers.
We'll also start to see an increase of vertical farms inside grocery stores, and over time these farms will prove to be a critical supplement to produce shelves. 2021 will yield more relationships between retailers and indoor farms, offering long term dividends
Pic credit (left-hand image): Spencer Lowell.
Santiago Merea, co-founder & CEO, Raised Real: We are really focused on the increasing evidence that the first 1,000 days for tiny humans are not just about what they eat, but how they eat (self-feeding, no pouches, more textures, finger foods, baby led weaning).
We often treat food during this stage as just as way to make sure that our babies and toddlers are getting the right nutrition, but we forget that it is about more than just that. Their relationship with food, for the rest of their lives, will be shaped by these very important first couple of years. The new USDA guidelines start to address these “how they eat” topics for the first time and Raised Real will continue to develop products and advocacy tools that help establish these behaviors from day one.
This is what makes Raised Real such a differentiated offering in the market and not just a 'better for you' platform but a 'best for you' one. This idea of flexible food + customized content is something that will be very big for us in 2021.
[When it comes to channel strategies] 2020 presented a unique opportunity for companies that were already well positioned to take advantage of an increased demand through online channels. As a DTC company, we benefited, and had months of ridiculous growth. At the same time, increased online spend from the presidential election, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday got compounded by new and legacy brands suddenly opening DTC channels and pouring more money into online ads. All this made CPMs jump and reinforced my belief that we are in an online advertising bubble.
One way to combat this, and what I am spending most of my time thinking about, is channel diversification. When everybody zigs, startups need to zag. What is that zag though? We are getting ready to open new distribution channels in 2021 and find new ways of getting in front of our audience.
Ilana Fischer, CEO, Whisps: With more Americans seeking foods with clean, simple labels with nutrition that supports their lifestyle, you'll continue to see people bringing forth innovative snacks that spotlight a single ingredient. Additionally, cheese is something Americans couldn't get enough of in 2020 and we've seen interesting new blends of cheeses and new cheese snacks launches which excite our team as we continue to launch new creations that celebrate a love of cheese.
Whisps celebrated our one year anniversary during 2020 and as a relatively young company and team, the health and happiness of my team continues to be my top priority as building a brand is a very demanding job.
With all of the shifts in people's lifestyles and day-to-day routines, I, along with the rest of the Whisps leadership team, are continuously thinking through how we can better support our teammates within their roles and growth, as well as assist with the flexibility they need given personal responsibilities.
Working from home can be productive, but also lonely, and I want to make sure that we get to unwind and connect as a team as much as we can to keep the magic of our culture alive while remote.
Matias Muchnick, co-founder & CEO, NotCo: We see a new wave of optimism starting to develop in the world... Brands will play a key role in bringing consumers positive messages, matching their lifestyles beyond food. New brands like NotCo can offer excitement and relief bringing an unexpected take on the old ways of talking to consumers, offering them content more than ads, information and entertainment more than forced sales pitches.
Technology as an enabler to shift the world to this new and more positive space is also something we track constantly. It is amazing to see how it has been helping consumers connect, experiment with new things, get further convenience to their everyday life and powering different and more accurate solutions to deliver them delicious plant-based food without compromising on taste, look and feel. Our A.I. technology and all the possibilities it offers get us very excited with all we can do in this space.
Mark Samuel, founder & CEO, IWon Organics: ‘What if’ scenarios of COVID-19 and how we’ll continue to be affected by slower foot traffic at retail are a concern. It affects trial and exploration by consumers, especially for emerging brands.
As for trends, we’re all in on a singular mission to innovate snacks and foods that make up a balanced nutritional profile. This approach to eating has been around for generations and it will continue to be the go-to for long term, healthy eating principles.
Jeff Richards, founder & CEO, Mooala: With the launch of our new shelf-stable line, we are very excited about finally expanding into DTC. We plan to launch our DTC channel with some exclusive mooala.com products that you can’t find in stores. We’re also very closely tracking the intersection of several large trends, like plant-based and Keto.
COVID-19 has required us to be all the more nimble and dynamic, from marketing strategy to supply chain continuity. I’m not overly concerned about any one area of the business, but there are definitely more surprises and pivots than in years past. But the fact that we are an emerging brand allows us to quickly and effectively react.
Chuck Muth, chief growth officer, Beyond Meat: The data shows that health is the #1 driver to the plant-based meat category. We believe that no one should ever have to choose between taste and health or health and the environment, which is why we remain committed to offering delicious, nutritious and sustainable products using simple plant-based ingredients with no GMOs or bioengineered ingredients.
As we think about building a better and brighter future for the next generation, it is critical that we create a more sustainable and accessible food system for all. Beyond Meat is dedicated to using what’s on the center of the plate as a critical starting point to advance nutrition access and health outcomes in America by creating products that not only taste great but are better for human health and the health of the planet. Expanding access to these products across the globe, in grocery stores and in restaurants, at schools and in hospitals, will help to ensure that people everywhere have access to delicious, nutritious and sustainable protein options.
Viraj Puri, Co-Founder & CEO, Gotham Greens: While indoor farming may not represent the future of all fresh produce production, for certain types of crops, it will become more prevalent. In 2020, our partners increasingly recognized the reliability, consistency and high quality of our greenhouse-grown produce that is grown in close proximity to their homes and stores.
Our number one priority in 2021 remains the continued health and safety of our employees, our customers and the communities in which we operate. There wasn’t a playbook for how to handle our operations and employee health in a pandemic, so everyday decision making keeps us on our toes. In addition, we’re focused on keeping up with the demand from customers across the United States.
We will continue to scale our operations quickly to meet the broader food and nutrition needs of consumers nationwide.
Tyler Lorenzen, president & CEO, PURIS: Local sourcing is an issue that is top of mind at PURIS, and something that needs to be addressed industry-wide. For every pound of pea protein sourced from PURIS vs. from China for example, we can avoid the emissions equivalent of driving 1,200 miles. With domestic sourcing, we're also able to verify manufacturing claims, especially those around organic standards.
The industry needs both low cost and environmentally friendly practices, but it's not possible to have both with the way the food system operates today. Consumers and food makers alike have been making smarter choices nutritionally, and we see 2021 as the year to prioritize environmental impact by accounting for the true cost of food, with local sourcing as an immediate priority.
Collectively, we're eating more whole foods as well as incorporating more plant-based packaged food into our diets. These are steps in the right direction towards a more sustainable food future. What comes next is heightened scrutiny and consumer education on food transparency, including ingredients and sourcing, and overall environmental impact — areas that PURIS is actively working to address.
Thomas Jonas, co-founder & CEO, Nature's Fynd: Covid has been the great accelerator of all trends; as a result 2021 is really an earlier version of 2026. Consumers are emerging from covid with a renewed interest in their food, and how it impacts their health and the environment. They expect better, and they expect it now.