ST. LOUIS — Food and beverage product development is a balancing act between applying innovative ideas and using established trend data to identify what resonates with consumers. Too much of either element may lead to consumer indifference and eventual failure for a new retail item or menu concept.

Food and beverage trends, in particular, may be a challenge for developers to decipher, given the high volume of trend sources that sometimes present conflicting data.

“You hear health and wellness, and then you hear indulgence,” said Polly Johnson, president, PSJ Marketing, who spoke at the recent Research Chefs Association conference in St. Louis. “You hear nostalgia and retro, but then you hear global flavors and more adventure. You could find a blog or a trend article that supports almost any direction you want to head, which really makes it challenging for the people at the crux of developing new ideas.”

During her presentation, Johnson offered a roadmap for developers to organize and make sense of trends, and more importantly, make sure certain trends align with specific product development goals.

“We look at all this trend information,” she said. “We may not understand it all, so we may just gravitate to our comfort zone: what we’ve done, what we’ve been doing, what’s easiest. So, our challenge becomes to think about these trends and harness them in terms of looking at it through a different lens. What matters for me? What’s really most important? That requires us to read through all this data that we’re inundated with and think about it more strategically. As we do that, we have to think about who our end user is.”

“Consumers are great at telling us what they like today … but they’re not great at telling us the things they don’t yet know,” said Polly Johnson, president, PSJ Marketing, at the recent Research Chefs Association conference in St. Louis.

| Source: Sosland Publishing Co.

Johnson mentioned that Wingstop and Raising Cane’s – two of the most successful restaurant chains in 2024 – ignore most food trends and instead focus on what their respective customer bases want. As a result, Wingstop saw a 36% increase in 2024 customer traffic, while Raising Cane’s saw a 25% jump, in what was a down year overall for restaurants.

“You don’t see them jumping on every trend bandwagon that’s out there,” she said. “Raising Cane’s has the simplest menu you can imagine ... similarly, Wingstop, they’ve done an incredible job. They are following the trends a bit more. They launched a Korean barbecue sauce and put their wings this past year in hot honey. We all know hot honey has been very trendy, but you don’t see (Wingstop) jumping into new categories, like specialty coffee beverages or health and wellness. They know who their target audience is, and they know what resonates with their brand. And that is a critical underlying theme to keep in mind as you’re looking at development.”

Johnson said having clear goals should be the starting point for how trends are interpreted by developers.

“I was just on a call with a major QSR chain that is one of my clients, and we had that exact conversation,” she said. “They told me exactly where they wanted to focus. They said, ‘This is our core audience, and this is not our core. We want to go in this direction. This is what we’re trying to accomplish.’ They were able to articulate to me what they wanted to do. Once we understand what the goals are, then we can start to think about, when looking at all those trends, what really matters.”

Trends as a tool

Two main areas Johnson said are crucial to successful product development are what she calls the “toolkit” of art and science. Art is the gut feeling a developer has about whether a concept will be a hit with customers, while science is the actual hard data of trends and what currently resonates with consumers.

“It’s all about balancing our toolkit,” she said. “Consumers are great at telling us what they like today. They’re great at telling us, ‘Yes, I like this milkshake flavor. Yes, I like this kind of burger. This sounds great in terms of a new flavor.’ They can respond. They can react. They can rate things. They can even tell us why they like those things. But they’re not great at telling us the things they don’t yet know.”

Johnson cited some successful leaps of faith in product development where intuition overrode trend data. These include Panera’s integration of relatively unknown (at the time) Asiago cheese into its menu; Starbucks’ pink Dragon drink; and the recent Grimace shake at McDonald’s. However, she said those gut-feeling product launches that eschew trend data and turn into hits are exceptions.

When applying trend metrics to product development, Johnson said asking why certain trends are resonating with consumers is the key to unlocking what may or may not work for specific development goals. The process goes for all forms of trend data, including one-on-one customer surveys, and monitoring food-centric social media posts.

Panera bucked trends and successfully introduced Asiago cheese as an ingredient across its menu.  

| Photo: Panera Bread

“I think the why is where you’re going to get deeper understanding and ideas in terms of winning concepts,” Johnson said. “Why are we seeing certain trends? Why are certain categories up? Why are certain flavors up or down, and what is this telling us? As we think about why certain trends are happening, that starts to give us more insight into consumer behavior. What are their real consumer needs? What are they missing? What are they looking for? Versus just seeing that hot honey is trending, for example.”

AQI Index

Johnson offered a two-step approach to combining measurable data and adding some developer intuition while concepting to see whether an idea will work for a particular customer base. First, filter trends and product ideas through an AQI index, which translates into three questions: can it be delivered authentically? Is it a quality offering? And does it inspire guests’ imagination to drive interest?

 Johnson used the example of McDonald’s McPizza failure (launched in the 1980s and later discontinued) as not answering affirmatively for all three AQI questions.

“The theory was McPizza would be a home run,” she said. “People love McDonald’s. People love pizza. The authenticity, well, maybe McDonald’s can’t be authentic pizza like Italian pizza, but they could probably be fast-food pizza, so they were probably okay there. But the delivery was a challenge. It took them 10 to 12 minutes to make a pizza. Well, nobody’s going to wait 12 minutes at a McDonald’s for a pizza, so it bombed.”

The second part of Johnson’s two-step approach is for developers to score each AQI index question on a scale from one to five as it relates to their concept idea. If the result of all three scores together on average amounts to less than four, there’s an imbalance in the art and science of the product idea, and it needs to be reconsidered.

“If I’m only in the threes or lower, I’ve got a problem on my hands,” she said. “I would encourage you at that point to ask yourself, what could you change? Is it dumbing down the trend? I would suggest that sweet spot of familiar but a little different. Question the trends. Don’t be beholden to them. You’ve got to make them work for you. Remember, consumers are only going to get you so far … don’t let them rule everything you’re doing. Remember your target (customer demographic) is going to change and is changing, so keep tabs on them and know where you’ve been.”