Food Audiences And New Gatekeepers
HONG KONG,April 8,2021 --Eno-gastronomy – the wine & food world - is perhaps the sector that expresses most fluently the plurality of the realities we are living.
Awareness about food has incredibly evolved in the last decade,or rather returned to be a matter of discussion the last year,andhas made nutrition even more relevant.
WHAT:Consumers and particularly the youth – Millennials and GenerationZ – are paying attention.
Albeit skepticalof 'labels' and critical in the approach to information,buyers seem to have developed a sense of agency towards food that in recent years has fueled organized groups and start-up on a mission to improve the way we eat,and the way food is produced.
HOW-TO-WHERE: Changes in eno-gastronomy,however,are about the content as much as about the way wine and food are consumed,the places where they are consumed and how these impacts our sociality.
Restaurants,eateries,and lunch venues– already orphaned by tourists – have shifted to takeaway,organizing deliveries,adapting menus to customers' needs and supply chain alterations.
Reasonably,these changes are already informing and designing the future development of the sector reflecting the needs of a society that would probably behave differently and is re-considering geo-location,making alternative lifestyle choices.
Spaces are changing: smaller foot prints,different locations in neighbourhood-communities; redesigned into natural looking,'sustainable' styles,equipped with manicured outdoors and 'built-in' safety and hygiene measures.
Would it be enough?
WHO:The recent medical emergency has been building upon behavioural changes that were already brewing for a while.
Customers seem to be more likely to order food from platforms, restaurant groups are creating white labels and ghost kitchens serving exclusively an online audience. People have been rediscovering home-cooking,one of the few residues of tactile living in a heavily digitized lifestyle.
The cumulative effect of these new behaviours is denting into restaurants businesses with consequences impacting the entire food ecosystems – farmers,producers,suppliers – who are now diversifying their distribution network and retooling to develop a direct relation with consumers.
All categories are moving closer togethercreating more competition and more 'noise',as each segment of the food market fights for the attention of final patrons,
At the same time,a determined breed of consumers and gatekeepers in the food business – seemingly looking for different contents in difference places with different purposes – is expressing resistance to 'digital intrusion' and is pushing for sustainability,honest products,better value proposition,gender and racial equality and shaping a new sociality.
How to reply to these signs? How to reflect new food audiences' aspiration?This is the conversation proposed in the RE-SEED issue of appraisal. At present. www.appraisalatpresent.com
appraisal. at present.is a collection of self-initiated,multi-disciplinary,community driven researches and articles about customer facing businesses.
praxisis a management consulting practice with a focus on brands & connected retail businesses/projects.
www.intopraxis.com
