Retail Trends - can you afford to ignore them?

Let’s be clear about trends from the start – you must keep an open mind. One man’s heaven is another man’s hell. Cast your mind back to 2012 – who’d have thought gourmet marshmallow, artisan popcorn and hot dogs would have caused such fuss. James Knappett took the hint with hot dogs and now look at him – Bubbledogs was one of the biggest launches the UK saw last year.

Hot on the heels of our last blog about flavours and ingredients, let’s a look at the wider picture and how these translate into products. Taking macro trends as a given – social, financial, health, environmental and political - we can think about consumer trends for 2013 – what are we likely to see?

For a start, there’s the usual line-up – health and wellness, experience and indulgence, comfort and simplicity, but this year will give rise to our ongoing love of technology, our need to express ourselves but at the same time wanting value – how is this possible?

Then we finally get deeper in to what we’re all about – food. We’re still going to want a taste of home and our love of urban food is set to continue. Food with a conscience, the natural world and an eating evolution all tie in with, you remember, the need to look back to look forward – we’re talking Scandinavian again! Then there’s the food for the Wellthy – no that is not a typo!

If you want to find out what being Wellthy is all about, or indeed any other of the predictions in more detail, please contact us at thefoodpeople…we’d love to hear from you.