Personalized nutrition bars, dried worms, and at-home vertical farms are just some of the products that ad agency McKinney is tracking as it keeps tabs on food trends that have the potential to break into the mainstream.
The agency, which works with brands such as Little Caesars and Stop & Shop, isn’t expecting any of these ideas to become ubiquitous in the U.S. anytime soon. It keeps tabs on food industry trends to better help it cater to the needs of clients inside and outside the sector. McKinney’s latest annual food trends report, being released this week, is meant to highlight “really nascent or emerging trends,” says Jasmine Dadlani, the agency’s chief strategy officer.
Some of the findings tie into pandemic-driven trends or issues exacerbated during 2020, such as food insecurity. The report doesn’t delve into food companies’ donations or the rising necessity of food banks during COVID-19. Instead, it points out some ways companies are trying to reduce food loss at the outset, aiming to lessen the amount that is wasted. Regenerative farming is also mentioned. “It at least gave me hope that we were trying to tackle this food insecurity issue in different ways,” says Dadlani. “The big thesis of our food trends presentation is [that] food is a crystal ball,” says Dadlani, who has been looking at food trends for a dozen years.
Plenty of trends, as she points out, continue to come from Asia. Worms are slowly starting to catch on in snacking in the U.S. Brands highlighted in the report include Larvets, which sells dried, seasoned mealworms; Hey Planet, the maker of Dare Squares that include buffalo worm flour; and Thailand Unique, which sells salted Sago worms.
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