Be Your Own Trendologist: Understanding the Specialty Food Trend Landscape

As trends come and go at an ever faster rate, how do you keep track and act on them in such an abbreviated cycle? In this session, Datassential's resident trendologist, Mike Kostyo, will show you how to make sense of the trend landscape. We’ll look at a framework for how trends grow and decline, discover how to differentiate a trend from a fad, and dive into foodservice and retail examples that exemplify the way we eat today and how we’ll eat tomorrow. We'll cover health trends and the latest research on plant-based eating, check in on the cuisines that impact what consumers choose, and use Datassential's machine learning engine Haiku to predict which ingredients and flavors will grow in the future. After this session you'll walk the show floor with a new understanding of how to think about the foods, flavors, and trends you are seeing and how they may impact you and your business.