Retail Consumer Insights

Trend - CPG brands and restaurants are launching foods made with chai ingredients. Chai is popular in drinks for its strong, spicy, floral flavor, and its health benefits. This is now being made available to non-tea-drinkers in the form of snacks, breakfast bars, bakery items, and packaged goods.

Insight - The modern consumer in North America has countless flavors from international locations available to them for snacks, drinks, and foods. These consumers are willing to try new flavors, pairings, or interpretations of recipes, to find a new flavor, with priority given to functional foods. Some of the most popular flavors for drinks, such as chai tea or blue curacao in alcohol, are often only found in beverages, making it difficult for certain customers to ever try these flavors.

Trend - Amid the rising cost of chicken set on by the pandemic, restaurants are turning to dark meat alternatives for chicken wings. Chicken thighs are meatier and often richer in taste, making them a popular choice for QSR brands across North America. These are served fried, tossed, or with sauces.

Insight - Restaurants were of the industries hit the hardest by the pandemic, with rising costs of supply and an ever-dwindling consumer base willing to dine in. Following the pandemic, while indoor dining has returned, prices and supply have yet to return to normal. Restaurants with affected supply sought alternative products to ensure steady supply and affordable pricing, creating demand for typically less-used parts of foods in North America, such as chicken thighs or feet.

Trend - Brands across multiple industries are launching consumer-to-business-to-consumer (C2B2C) storefronts. C2B2C offers consumers discounts on products and enables consumers to sell unwanted products while the business handles transactions and verifies the quality of listed items.

Insight - When consumers no longer require products, whether it be clothing, technology, or furniture, they often turn to third-party marketplaces for all-purpose listings. However, these marketplaces pose various risks, causing some users to be wary of misleading products and scam attempts. Some consumers desire streamlined ways to liquidate older goods safely and securely, while others desire quality goods at discounted prices. Brands are responding by launching first-party C2B2C marketplaces.

Trend - Brands are turning to food-grade resin packaging for its low environmental impact, its comparable performance to unsustainable packaging, and its affordability. These packaging solutions make products more appealing to consumers as brands can market the sustainability of the product inside as well as its packaging.

Insight - While consumers are increasingly drawn to sustainability across numerous industries, the food & beverage and beauty industries are especially scrutinized for their environmental impacts. Consumers in these spaces not only vote with their dollars against brands that remain using unsustainable or animal-cruel methods, but are also willing to boycott products that fall into these categories. This places pressure on brands in the space to transform traditionally unsustainable packaging, such as plastic bottles, with newer, more eco-friendly materials.

Trend - Brands are creating ultrasonic purifiers that extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. These purifiers use ultrasonic waves to kill bacteria that grow on food during spoilage significantly more effectively than washing with water, saving customers money and reducing food waste.

Insight - With food prices rising at sharp rates due to inflation and other economic factors, the average consumer can not afford to have food spoil before it is eaten. These customers want food to be readily available for cooking, meaning they do not want to freeze food to extend its life. As a result, these customers turn to technological solutions that can preserve foods for longer without requiring extra prep time or work when the food is needed.

Trend - Brands are repurposing a traditional Japanese tea style, Hojicha, in drinks and desserts in the west. Hojicha, while commonly a health-focused drink in Japan, has a strong roasted flavor profile that suits desserts and sweet drinks well. The ingredient is gaining popularity in North America.

Insight - Tea drinkers in the west gravitate toward teas with strong flavors and underlying health benefits. Even when seeking dessert-style drinks like bubble tea, these consumers do not always want caffeinated black teas as the base, but rather something lighter and healthier mixed with sweet ingredients. These green teas leave the consumers feeling less bloated, but they often have a bitter flavor profile. This led to brands looking to more traditional teas for alternate flavor palates.

Trend - Brands are launching teas, ice creams, and other sweet foods made with taro flavoring. Taro is a popular starchy ingredient from Southeast Asia that appeals to western customers for its subtle sweetness and nutty flavor. The introduction of Taro in the west offers more variety for consumers.

Insight - Consumers in North America are continually searching for new flavors, specifically with respect to dessert-style drinks and foods, as sweet flavors are easy for customers to try. This places pressure on brands to look outward and try flavors and ingredients from other cultures, rather than trying to find new mixtures of flavors already popular in the west. Consumers then become drawn to these flavors as modern trends or obsessions, despite the long-standing history in other regions.

Trend - Brands are debuting monthly cheese subscription services to expose customers to local and global artisinal cheeses. The subscription format ensures consistent profit expectations, allowing curators the freedom to include new, unique, and hard-to-find flavors for customers to enjoy.

Insight - Fine cheeses are perceived as a luxury, with many interested customers avoiding purchasing these products due to price barriers. This high barrier of entry results in the artisinal cheese industry being difficult to navigate for customers, especially those who are unfamiliar with the many types of cheeses. These customers instead prefer variety packs, kits, and curated boxes at palatable price points that help immerse them in the world of cheeses as an affordable starting point.

Trend - Cheese curds are typically tied to full dishes such as poutines and salads. CPG brands have transformed these curds from a simple topping to a standalone snack by adding batter, seasonings, and herbs. These bite-sized fried, cheesy snacks provide both nostalgia and comfort to consumers.

Insight - As children return to schools and adults return to work after the pandemic, there is a returning desire for conveniently portable comfort foods. Whether being packed into a child's lunch as a snack or helping a worker get through the day, rich foods that do not take time or create a mess are well suited for this current environment. The fried, flavorful nature of these foods makes them evoke nostalgia in adults while making food more palatable for younger children to indulge in.

Trend - Brands in the dairy industry are offering pre-mixed, flavored goat cheese blends engineered for spreading and dipping. These products diversify the market, offering healthier, more rich alternatives to traditional processed spreads. This expands the use of goat cheese in numerous recipes.

Insight - Toast, bagels, and muffins are one of the most popular breakfast options in North America. This is caused by busy lifestyles and the quick convenience of these foods. However, as health and wellness continues to grow in popularity in the west, these consumers seek spreads, dips, and snacks, that are healthier for them, without compromising on flavor. It is important that the products are equally convenient, requiring no additional prep work over their established routines.