The second section of our 9th annual Food & Beverage Trend Summit this week shone a light on the Social and Cultural Trends influencing Food & Beverage, brought to life by Trend Summit regular, Amelia Boothman, Brand Strategist at global branding and creative design agency 1HQ, as well as tfp director and co-founder, Charles Banks.
Amelia got things underway to bring to life the cultural driving forces and the human narrative behind the top trends for 2023/24. Beginning by understanding the importance of looking at these cultural trends, the conversation then moved into identifying those big cultural shifting stories, the macro cultural trends.
This year's main global theme identified was 'Under Pressure', brought about due to the less stable world we currently live in where people are struggling to maintain control of their health and finances. People are now looking to relieve this pressure. Part of this is in finding ways to help make food more healthy, affordable and accessible.
Beyond this, the four large cultural trends identified are - Health Wise, Unlock Time and Money, Treasure Planet, and Displace & Distract. Find out about these trends in more detail in Amelia's full keynote below.
Following Amelia, Charles took to the virtual stage to share thefoodpeople's top 10 influencing trends for 2023/24. These trends include Cost of Cooking, Back to Basics, New Climate New Crops, Beige Comforts and Perfect Patisserie.
Cost of cooking - we may only be at the advent of the cost of living crisis but it's already having an impact on home cooking and food service alike, hence thrift and frugality are in and flashy shows of wealth are out. But help is at hand in the form of retailer initiatives, influencer recipes, techniques for cutting food waste and affordable menus.
Back to Basics - sometimes you have to look back in order to look forward. Faced with inflation and global instability, people are turning to the reliable wisdom of tried and tested methods of yore. Farmers return to old regenerative farming practices, while preserving, pickling and fermenting prevent food waste. And there's a return to sensible healthy eating.
Understand all 10 trends in more detail by watching the full video with Charles.