Supermarket Perimeter - December 2020 - 10

" Grocerants were an interesting option before the pandemic,
but now they could be a really viable and appealing
alternative to restaurants for many consumers. "
Maeve Webster, Menu Matters

" Trend parents " take a breather
COVID will continue to prevent new ﬂavors and
cuisines from emerging by silencing the usual " trend
parents " who are often the instigators of new trends,
said Suzy Badaracco, president of Culinary Tides, Inc.,
Tualatin, Ore.
" While consumers are in quarantine, so are trend
parents, " she said. " Celebrity chefs, suppliers - they're
all in time out, and others, like pharmaceutical and
book publishers, are being pushed into narrow focuses.
Second string parents are not able to operate off of
traditional drivers, so the trends that are coming forward
will be temporary, chaotic one hit wonders. "
When things are born out of stress, depression, and
chaos they don't tend to last, Badaracco said.
The focus now is on health and safety - ﬂavor trends
are a distant third interest for consumers. The most
interesting thing that COVID-19 did, instead, Badaracco
said, was reverse to certain trends, like omnivores
returning to meat (and, within the category, choosing
ground beef over steak) and sustainability taking a
temporary back seat due to the recession.
When things ﬁnally calm down - possible not until
2022 - the food industry will see trends pick up where
they left off in 2020, Badaracco said. Until then, expect
" one hit wonders " that have shorter lifecycles.

Back to basics
COVID-19 will continue to cause many consumers to
focus on old reliables in 2021, Marks-McGee said.
" Consumers are unsettled for a variety of reasons,
including emotional and ﬁnancial insecurity due to fear,
illness, and/or job loss. "
In addition, people with children are balancing
childcare and remote education. All of those stressors
taken together, she said, have caused consumers to go
back to basics and look for safe, comforting, and easy to
prepare foods.
10 - DECEMBER 2020

Finding
comfort
Childhood favorites
in high demand
during the pandemic.

+55%

+48%

For example, according to a OnePoll and Farm Rich
poll of 2,000 Americans, two in three consumers are
reverting to childhood food favorites and eating more
comfort food during the pandemic. That includes an
uptick in such favorites as pizza (up 55%), hamburgers
(48%), ice cream (46%), French fries (45%), mac and
cheese (38%) and spaghetti and meatballs (32%).
And with consumers at home, there's been a huge
increase in cooking and baking, a trend has given meal
kits a second life, Marks-McGee said. According to
Nielsen, US customers spent around $100 million on
meal kits at retail stores in the month ending April 11,
nearly double that period a year prior.
Another trend Marks-McGee is keeping a close eye on
is demand for multicultural ﬂavors, since travel is limited.
But she thinks that trend won't likely take off until later
in 2021 after consumers have had their ﬁll of classic and
comforting food and ﬂavors.
Plant-based meat alternatives continue to proliferate,
and Marks-McGee sees no signs of that trend slowing
in 2021.
" Plant-based meat substitutes are now also offered in
plant-based pork, chicken, and ﬁsh alternatives. "
COVID-19 severely impacted quick service restaurants
(QSR) and they had to react and adapt quickly, MarksMcGee said. Many launched DIY kits such as DIY Dunkin'
Donut Decorating Kits, Chick-ﬁl-A Chicken Parmesan
Meal Kit and Friendly's DIY Sundae Making kits.
That's a trend that will likely make its way to retail
grocery.
" I expect to see more QSR offering these kinds of kits
and then eventually to trickle down into collaborations
with consumer packaged goods companies. "

Lasting impact

+45%
Source: OnePoll and Farm Rich

supermarketperimeter.com

There's no doubt, Webster said, that COVID will have
long-lasting impact on hospitality going forward. But
the full extent won't be known until we get through the
winter and see what the pandemic does to consumer
behavior and foodservice.
The way trends get started and gain steam has been
profoundly affected thanks to the pandemic, and those
effects will likely linger for some time.
" The key engine to industry innovation has been
signiﬁcantly negatively impacted - namely ﬁne dining -
which will leave a lot of the innovation to casual dining
and fast casual, " Webster said. " This means innovation

RAWPIXEL, REGINA FOSTER - STOCK.ADOBE.COM

of the top 10 most searched recipes, according to Google
Trends cited by Marks-McGee.
" I expect to see these two products and a variety of
different ﬂavor combinations to translate into consumer
packaged goods, " she said. " Enlightened recently
launched a collection of keto cheesecakes in ﬁve ﬂavors:
Caramel Chocolate, Chocolate, Classic, Pumpkin, and
Strawberry. "

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Supermarket Perimeter - December 2020

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