Forecast these fear-based shopper behaviors

BOSTON — A food trend forecaster — who studied serial killers as a criminalist in London before going to culinary school and becoming a registered dietitian — says knowing the trends does nothing for your business if you don’t understand where they come from and where they’re going.

Suzy Badaracco, president of forecasting firm Culinary Tides, shared her detailed findings Sept. 29 in the second session of the two-day 2021 New England Produce Council Expo in Boston. She titled her talk: “How to Use Strategic Thinking to Navigate Trends for 2021 & Beyond: A Future Without Fear.”

Consumers will shift from craving more neutral-tasting comfort foods to more intensely flavored, edgy foods as the COVID-19 pandemic fades — “we hope” — and the inflationary economy settles, Badaracco said.

We’re not there yet.

For more than a year and a half, consumers have been experiencing physical and psychological fear, the effects of COVID-19, the recession and inflation. Mistrust is high. Brand loyalty is down, and budget trumps convenience.

“Address and correct the fear, not the product,” she said. “Form an emotional connection with the consumer to overcome this mistrust. All of this is fear behavior.”

When we are on the up and up, trends will reverse: The trends predicted for 2020 that were halted will restart.

It’s important to understand how flavor preferences evolve related to the feelings of the time, she said. In a recession, it’s familiar comfort foods. Mid-recovery, people crave hybrid and stuffed foods, and then, they want fusion foods. When our country is in full recovery, consumers want “crazy” foods, like molecular gastronomy’s foams, spherical foods and edible papers, she said.

“When things are good, people want extreme things on the palate. They want more intense flavors, and that only comes with confidence, and that’s where we are [heading] now,” she said.

But with COVID-19 variants popping up, restaurants aren’t recovering as fast as they would be otherwise, and we’re hanging out in the mid-recovery stage for a while.

We’re in the first half of mid-recovery — the hybrid and stuffed stage, Badaracco said.

Hybrids include things like the Cronut, cake pops, chicken and waffles, ramen burger, pretzel buns, and as we focus on produce, the pluot, plumcot, peacotum and broccoflower.

Stuffed food includes pasta, bread and pizza crust. For produce, that trend can include stuffed peppers and winter squash.

As we near the second hump of mid-recovery, fusion foods will rise up yet again, such as Tex-Mex, Pan Asian, Korean-Mexican and Deep South-Japanese. And when our economy is booming and we generally feel safe, foods get spicier, weirder, wilder, more exotic and adventurous.

First, companies need to regain consumer trust by telling their stories, so that consumers feel safe and grounded.

“Consumers want authentic, but not comfort. If it’s grandma’s recipe from the Deep South, they better be able to Google that grandma,” Badaracco said. “This isn’t the time to go too hard on comfort foods.”

Your consumers want to know your company is always on the cutting edge, telling them what the trends are.

“You want them to trust you for that,” she said.

It doesn’t matter if you think the trend is stupid. Maybe it is. But your emotions can fog the trend’s pattern and blindside you when it shifts.

“Know the birth and lifecycle of a trend prior to deciding to enter, so you can foretell how to navigate it,” she said.