15 Oct 2023 New Mintel report: 2024 global food and drink trends

Understand what’s new and next in global consumer behaviour and the impact on food and drink marketing and innovation…. [what a great, beautifully presented report! Ed]

In 2024, expect brands to help consumers live longer, healthier lives, balance their needs for health and pleasure and unlock new conveniences from technology.

Mintel’s Global Food and Drink Trends are built around the essential value proposition that food and drink must taste good and be worth the cost. This priority for flavour at affordable prices is even more important when many markets continue to face a higher cost of living.

Through the trends, Mintel recommends how food and drink brands can help consumers balance their needs for health and pleasure, prepare themselves for longer, healthier lives and gain new conveniences from technological advances like AI.

With taste and price at their core, discover the three critical trends its expert analysts think are pertinent for food, drink and foodservice brands to pay attention to — now and in the future — with recommendations for how brands can take action.

They are:

• Trust the process: Clear communication will become necessary to help consumers make informed decisions about how processed and ultra-processed food and drink fit into their diets.
• Age reframed: Healthy ageing will be redefined by debunking ‘old’ stigmas and prioritising extending consumers’ healthy years.
• Eating, optimised: A new era of convenience will emerge as technology streamlines meal planning, shopping and cooking.

Says the company: “Mintel’s annual trend predictions—or for those who need a reminder—our living, growing prediction model adapts to the unforeseen and is centred around the seven Mintel Trend Drivers.

“The model supports the fluid acceleration or deceleration of a trend according to the reality of individual markets. This allows our experts to be more adaptive and reactive to change and to continue to focus on the future.

“Unlike other trends in the marketplace, our trends are backed by robust data and expert opinions, ensuring that what you read here is meaningful and actionable.”