Is every trend an opportunity or a danger?

Sustainability, food waste, superfood, alternative proteins, urban gardening, no-plastic, and much more are keywords that want to make a contribution to sustainable food systems. Some of them are short-lived without any effect - others have a major impact, also due to changed consumer behavior. How do you recognize sustainable trends and how do you know which ones are right for your product / concept?

The English word “trend” has its origin in the Nordic word “trendr”, which means something like: “inclination”, as M. Lindkvist writes in his book “Trendspotting”. The German Zukunftsinstitut arranges them in different categories according to duration and impact: contingent worker

1-5 years of publication: 

Microtrends are more likely to be hypes / fashions, you can recognize them by how people dress, what they consume, which electronic gadgets they use and which fashionable terms shape language. Do you remember the advent of "bubble tea"? Short-lived hype.

10-20 years:

Macro trends emerge in economic changes, political tendencies or new types of technologies. For example - plant-based protein or regionality and transparency

More than 20 years:

Megatrends can be seen in changed cityscapes such as urbanization and urban gardening, changes in functions and habits such as churches in restaurants or smartphones as an interface to consumers with concepts such as From Farm to Fork, which redefine processes and are made possible by digitization.

Overriding these categories there are metatrends , that is, social observations that lead to new consumer behavior, for example the desire for climate-neutral consumption that leads to reduced consumption of animal proteins.

What skills will the catering industry need for the future?  Source: foodwar

Facing trends competently

In this way, sustainable trends become a philosophy that characterizes action within a business or in private. Those who strive for the continuation of their business or their personal competitiveness in the market of innovations cannot ignore social trends, i.e. metatrends. It is generally important to decide which trends can be relevant for your own business and which trends are better to keep your hands off.

This usually requires new skills that support the analysis of a change of direction. Recognizing and understanding trends is one of them. The capacity to align one's own business in the environment and carefully interpret the future strategy is also relevant. To create a kind of compass that helps to work with trends.

This interaction is taught in the “CAS in Food Product & Sales Management” certificate course from foodward. The module “Conception of Food Worlds *” deals with the handling of trends, new approaches and methods with which you can create unique and differentiated added value for your customers. So that you can see trends as opportunities and not as threats.