Andy Coyne reports from the Food & Drink Trends & Innovations Conference in London, where the shock of the new was not such a great shock.
To a large degree, any conversation these days about innovation or future trends in the food industry is likely to reference the same things: plant-based, the health agenda, free-from, transparency, provenance etc.
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But that such terms are now being repeated almost like a mantra does not make the trends any less genuine.
At the Food & Drink Trends & Innovations Conference in London last Thursday (17 May), these terms were once again bandied around.
Consumers driving the agenda
But what became clear is that this is not a top-down agenda. Food companies are having to respond, quickly, to an increasingly demanding and knowledgeable consumer base.
Danielle Bekker, a former global product & process innovation director at brewing giant AB InBev, moderated the morning sessions and summed up the climate in which food and drink businesses are working.
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By GlobalDataShe said: “What do people care about? The problem we face is that we are bombarded with health messages every day. What will kill you today saves you tomorrow. You can find a health message that supports your point of view. We use our own priorities to match decision making.”
But despite that ‘bottom up’ view of consumer choices leading the way, Bekker does not see manufacturers as passive.
“We have a choice as manufacturers. We can promote a product that tastes good and minimises harm,” she said. “We need to look at how we are impacting on the global burden of disease. Regulators are becoming more active in this sphere.”
Bekker suggested consumers are trying to fix problems or stop them from happening in the first place and manufacturers are responding.
“We try to swap the bad for good or reduce the bad – replacing animal protein with plant protein, for example. The artificial and natural sweetener market is growing by 20%. These days you don’t need a lot of sugar to make a product taste good.”
Thomas Cropper, managing director of Indian street food business Tuk In Foods, also focused on consumer-driven activity.
“There is growth in convenience and food-to-go. The biggest driver of this is consumers’ growing time pressures. There has been massive growth in the last few years,” he said.
Rob Martineau, head of product at sports nutrition business Tribe, sees the nutritional content of food increasing in importance and that too is being led by consumers.
“Performance is a trend. Consumers are starting to see food as a source of nutrition,” he said. “Ten to 15 years ago people using sports nutrition products were athletes or bodybuilders. Now it is much more mainstream and that will continue.
“America is five to ten years ahead in this are but it is coming here.
“And personalisation: the real growth area is stuff that is more accessible to consumers and gives consumers a degree of control. They can tweak their nutrition products to get more carbs etc.”
Manufacturers’ claims
However, Bekker also warned about food and drink manufacturers making claims they cannot back up. “Making a claim is dead easy. Making a good claim is more difficult,” she said.
Claims need to be relevant, credible and defendable, she said.
She asked: “Do consumers care? Is it linked to their lifestyle priorities? Is there science behind the claim? Pseudo claims are not backed by science. And can you defend it in a room full of journalists?”
Later, Damien Kennedy, co-founder of sugar-free ice cream brand Wheyhey, echoed Bekker’s thoughts about the claims made by manufacturers.
“Consumers are confused by health claims. We are trying to simplify what healthy food means and to be clear on the message,” he said.
“It’s about educating consumers and it’s about working together as an industry. It’s impossible to do it individually.”
Food for the future
After Bekker’s opening speech, representatives from a mix of food businesses, large and small, discussed the trends shaping innovation in the UK food industry and, once again, there was a sense of responding to consumer demand rather than manufacturers setting the agenda.
Tammy Butterworth, global R&D manager at food and drink giant PepsiCo, said: “The macro trends are around sustainability and food for the future.”
It was notable an executive from the one of the world’s largest food companies gave an indication of how much attention PepsiCo is paying to upstart companies entering the sector. So-called Big Food, of which PepsiCo is a member, is ceding share to smaller entrants, helped by consumer mistrust of larger manufacturers, the ability of fledgling firms to more quickly adapt to changes in consumer demand and the breakdown of barriers to entry when it comes to marketing.
“What is interesting is all the challenger brands. How do we respond to all the brands that are coming in? They are the ones driving category growth. That’s really shining a light on what the trends are at the moment.”
Meanwhile, Cropper at Tuk In Foods pointed to the growth in world foods. “There was very little presence of world foods in food-to-go five years ago and even now there is much further to go in this space,” he said.”
Asked by just-food whether he thought the growth of world foods meant the traditional sandwich is on the way out, Cropper said: “We’ve seen massive growth in flatbreads. McDonald’s is now selling flatbread. We will see that continuing. My underlying point is that growth in the bakery category has been in decline for a while. I think we will see a gradual shift away from bread-based to meal solutions, pots etc. But we have to work hard to get those flavour combinations and the eating experience right.”
Embracing e-commerce
While doing business in the UK’s core supermarket channel has been a tough place to do business for much of the last decade, the country’s grocery market has seen spurts of growth, with online one of the more buoyant parts of the industry. Industry researchers The IGD values the UK’s online grocery market at around GBP10.4bn (US$13.97bn) (of a total of GBP184.5bn in sales) and has forecast the channel will expand to GBP16bn by 2022 – growth of more than 53%.
Butterworth at PepsiCo sees digital playing a key part in the way food and drink companies operate in the future.
“Digital has given us more ways to eat and drink. We may need to adapt products and how we get them to the consumer,” she said.
Martineau added: “We need to add value through personification and technology. It will be interesting to see if it’s Amazon or the supermarkets who drive that change.”
There is a lot of debate about the long-term outlook for consumer demand for meal kits. At Tuk In Foods, Cropper sees the meal kit market growing. “[Meal-kit supplier] HelloFresh is a very interesting piece. It is a combination of immediate convenience and buying food that is easy to prepare and eat,” he said.
Healthy options
Growing consumer interest in the link between diet and health win the UK will only continue to grow – and a second panel at the conference looked at health trends and how they are impacting on the industry.
Steve Walpole, head of food at pasta and noodle supplier Ugo Foods Group, said: “My main part is free-from. We create products to be inclusive to suit people’s lifestyles. They need to look and taste like normal products.
“Vegan is my biggest bugbear – not in a bad way. But for an allergy advocate, to try and be in both camps is really quite hard.”
“With free-from the biggest problem is social media. To a degree we all need gluten in our diet. When you try and cut it out your body reacts to it.”
Perhaps to the discomfort of those in the audience representing dairy companies, Walpole said: “Gluten-free is definitely here even though more people are lactose-intolerant and need to be dairy-free. It’s something we need to wake up to.”
The meat-free message
Many observers believe 2018 has been the year when plant-based meat alternatives hit the mainstream in the UK.
Despite his problems with satisfying both free-from and vegan consumers mentioned, Walpole suggested plant-based is the way forward. “Vegan and meat-free and flexitarian are all here to stay. Consumers and supermarkets are getting that message,” he said.
Music to the ears of Derek Sarno, the chef-director of plant-based innovation at supermarket Tesco who recently created the Wicked Kitchen vegan range for the retailer.
“I want to take animals off the plate. ‘No animals’ is here to stay and will only get bigger,” he said.
Among the UK’s largest supermarket chains, Tesco has made notable moves in plant-based food in recent weeks, becoming the first retailer in the country to stock Oumph, the flagship meat-alternative brand of Swedish supplier Food For Progress and deciding to stock the plant-based ‘steak’ of Dutch vegetarian and vegan food specialist Vivera.
There is little doubt the UK’s major grocers are increasingly seeing plant-based food as a competitive battleground, with upmarket food retailer Waitrose this month announcing plans to expand its range of vegetarian and vegan food.
Bekker agrees: “Anything plant-based is growing. If you can extract it, it is growing in beverages and food,” she said.
