You'll be hard pushed not to have heard about the metaverse one way or another over recent months. Now that it's filtering across the food and drink industry we've dug a bit deeper into the topic in our latest foodwatching report.
What exactly is the metaverse and why does it matter? Well, it's essentially a virtual space where connections occur between people who are not physically in the same place. It's where work, play and collaborations happen, but digitally. And it's predicted that more of us will be spending more time there in the coming years - in this combination of virtual reality and the world wide web.
Fashion brands were one of the big movers across the consumer industry to take note and start wising up to the change, but it didn't take long for the food industry to follow suit as many brands and individuals across all business types are interacting in the metaverse, mainly through non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
"At thefoodpeople we spend our days curiously looking at all manner of food and drink all over the world," explained Ryan Bartley, Senior Trends Analyst at thefoodpeople. "But the growing digital metaverse world is providing amazing innovation and many "world firsts" for food and drink providers. So, we thought we'd jump into the metaverse and check out the culinary goings-on across NFTs, cryptocurrency and online gaming."
We've collated some of the highlights across what we've been tracking in our recent foodwatching report over on the trendhub. This covers how brands are adapting to the metaverse, discusses those using NFTs to attract new tech-savvy customers, as well as how the metaverse fits into our 2022/23 food and drink mega trends. trendhub subscribers can access the full report here. If you're not yet subscribed but would like to find out more then get in touch using the contact form below.