Food trends are on the rise, as perceptive insights into consumer behaviour allow companies to make informed decisions. As the gap between food production and consumption shrink, more consumers demand access to higher-quality and better-priced food options. Undoubtedly this has led to an increase in food-related market activities, such as production of new and improved products, marketing attempts, and better provision of foodservice.
Within this context, understanding consumer trends and predicting future trends is key for anyone deciding to get involved in the food sector. To fully participate in the improved food supply chain and potential opportunities derived from it, potential entrants must first invest knowledge into the topic of food trends. This is why we prepared this comprehensive guide on getting started on deciphering food trends.
From a data-driven perspective, this article focuses on discussing the challenges and associated solutions to obtaining quality-rich data about the foodservice market and industry. We will also review the best research practices and tools to help ensure optimum data collection and utilization, thereby providing an overall better understanding of consumer food trends.
Data-Driven Consumer Food Trends Scanning
Data is the lifeblood of any business. It’s especially true in the food industry, where understanding consumer food trends becomes paramount. Firstly, trends detect shifts in the market, help businesses identify potential customer base and understand their preferences. Secondly, they offer insights into pavement ready products. This means that businesses who use trend insight will be more effective in formulating a competitive edge and improve their decision-making process.
As such, the data-driven part of getting started on deciphering food trends revolves around accessing quality data. Quality data displays glimpses into consumer behaviour, hence, the need for comprehensive data collection. Considerations such as the type of data collected, the timely accuracy of the data, and its relevance to the situation are all fundamental to obtaining quality data and successfully gathering insights that will later be used when deciding how to move forward with an initiative.
These considerations lead us to the perennial challenge of data quality – how do we distinguish between qualities of data? Good quality data is free from errors, timely, and accurate. Although offering great potential for insights, mistakes can be costly and long-lasting. As such, special attention should be given to data collection by comprehensive resources – such as the internet, survey-interviewing, customer feedbacks, and etc. – where more intricate details can be collected.
Relying On Qualitative and Quantitative Research to Get Started
While data collection and development of insights is key for getting familiar with food trends, gathering of actual consumer insights requires more than just data. Although collecting data is important, it does not capture the full scope of the issue — a comprehensive introduction to consumer trends should also include qualitative research.
Qualitative research is known for being an orchestrated mechanism that helps researchers gain deeper insights about the public (though surveys, focus groups, etc.). In this case, understanding consumer mindset and further building on concepts is dependent on correctly calibrating qualitative research. Moreover, other aspects of the consumer trends equation, such as gastronomy or dietary choices, need to be taken in consideration and heavily incorporated into qualitative research.
It’s important to note that qualitative research isn’t mutually exclusive from quantitative research. It is rather a complimentary form of research, where findings from both qualitative and quantitative studies bring a better understanding of the scenario. As such, it is important to acknowledge that discrepancies between both pieces of research may occur.
Finding High Quality Data Sources to Accelerate Research
Data collection and research activities can be expensive and challenging to maintain in-house. Hence, obtaining quality data often times requires leveraging an external provider. Brizo provides a board and diverse set of data for deeper foodservice market understanding and analysis. Our data allows for highly targeted research and prospecting of the foodservice market with unique data fields specific to the food service industry. Insights includes in-depth menu data and restaurant tech coverage.
Having said that, it is important to look out for the right provider. Quality providers broadcasting massive amounts of relevant serving data have become the standard, as they improve the overall quality of market research. Therefore, locating data sources that add reliable insights into the market is essential for analytics professionals.
Developing Solutions to Optimize Your Research Process
Once equipped with the right tools and data sources, the research process can be broken down into a series of steps. In this stage, it is important to be able to easily access and assess key data that requires minimum fuss.
Researching the best solutions to help the research process is key. Streamline the whole process and make sure they’re accurate, reliable, and consistent. At Brizo, we’ve designed an expanded foodservice market intelligence solution that helps businesses make decisions with confidence and optimize their insights. This rewards companies with improved sales prospecting, branding and marketing activities, expansion of their system with quality enriched market insights, and proper understanding of consumer trends.
Closing considerations
Deciphering food trends is not only an interesting topic, but an essential one, when it comes to understanding market dynamics and seizing new business opportunities. To that end, this guide provided an introduction to consumer food trends and suggestions on best-practices for obtaining quality-rich data about the market.
Additionally, the article presented solutions for optimizing the research process and investing in quality data providers. With these steps in mind, anyone doing research in food trends will benefit from the necessary knowledge and tools to best expected and forecast a brighter foodservice future.
