Salty snacks, alcohol-free cocktails and plant-based everything were trending at a leading showcase event for new foods last week. - In our quest for culinary novelty, some food trends are emerging that are just plain weird.
- Sleep inducing foods like bedtime cookies, ice cream and cereal are a thing.
- Flower-flavored foods and cocktails — tinged with lavender and rose— are suddenly everywhere.
- “Upcycled” foods — made from ingredients that might otherwise have been dumped out or used for animal feed — are touting their tastiness.
Salty snacks — pretzels, crisps, popcorn, and the like — topped the list of bestselling specialty foods last year for the first time, according to the Specialty Food Association (SFA). - A “return to more social events and entertaining is driving sales” of this category, the SFA said in a trends report.
Food and drink makers are rewriting their playbooks to attract Gen Z consumers — whose taste buds, cravings and binge-worthiness meters are heavily linked to TikTok and Instagram. - “The generation born between 1997 and 2012 are accustomed to greater choice and are less willing to consume what they don’t immediately enjoy than previous generations,”.
- To cater to their palates: “Beers are lighter. Drinks are more colourful. Coffees are colder,” and chicken is edging out beef.
In other food industry trends, there’s a heavy focus on sustainable packaging, regenerative agriculture, and other ESG-type considerations — as well as fun consumer experiences. - “Self-pour walls” have us pulling our own pints in restaurants.
- More snacking and saltiness — particularly since one trend identified by a Whole Foods aficionado is “charcuterie at home.”
“Judging by the numbers in the first four months of ’23, we expect [crunchy] snacks to fuel growth in specialty through this year,” the SFA predicts. |
