A lot can happen in 10 years! In January 2016, thefoodpeople was 10 years old!

So we've been reporting on food and beverage trends for a decade! To celebrate this milestone and to share how the food industry and the wider world within which we live has changed, we decided to build a trends timeline for the last decade.

During that 10 years, we've seen the launch of YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, the iPhone and iPad, a global economic crisis and a recession, increases in 'wild weather' patterns, driverless cars as well as new words in our vocabulary like selfie, head cam, house-made, cake-pop, group-hug, date night, onesie, flat white, fat tax, staycation and babycino.

In food and drink we've seen the forever trends like comfort, health & wellness and convenience continue to evolve, we've seen grazing and sharing turn into an eating phenomena we've seen americana and burger gourmisation, we've seen el bulli win best restaurant in the world and now it's gone, we've seen dine in deals, restaurant food delivered and street food revolutionise the food scene, we've witnessed the cup cake trend, the growth of farm to table, the first female 3* chef in the UK, we've seen the exponential growth of lifestyle allergen avoiders and flexetarians, the blur between sweet and savoury and 3-D printing, we've seen the new nordic cuisine, sous vide cooking, coconut water, the kimchi craze and the cronut leading to the hybrid food movement. If that weren't enough vegetables start to take centre stage and we've seen launch of amazon fresh and…….that's just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce)!

To see the detail behind how the last 10 years have panned out in food and drink, take a look at our 10 years in trends infographic by Clicking Here!!

What about the next 10 years? We spoke to a host of food and beverage opinion formers from Cathy Chapman at M&S, Rick Stein, Bruce Langlands at Harrods, Bruno Loubet, Amanda Afiya at The Caterer to Atul Kochhar, Chris & David from Shrub and Shutter and Jonathan Moore at Waitrose to name a few. To read what our panel expect to see over the next 10 years in food and drink, have a look at the end of the timeline at 2016!