I work in food/tech and like to keep abreast of what is on the horizon in this space. I’ve grouped together a completely ramshackle list of things I think are interesting trends for 2021 and beyond. I am no expert. Here goes part 1 of a 2-parter that nobody asked for…

Trends

I’m going to bypass the big covid-shaped elephant in the room for now and touch on some other areas first.

Tackling Food Waste

There is a terrifying oft quoted figure that ⅓ of food we produce, we end up wasting. Food waste is also a big contributor to the climate crisis, possibly being responsible for 6% of greenhouse gas emissions. This folly is also sad as we live in an age with nearly 8.4million people in the UK experiencing food poverty and much needed campaigns to alleviate this. Basically it’s important.

A chunk of solving this problem is behavioural change (lots of people need to buy & waste less) but there is also some interesting stuff away from our kitchens that might aid the fight. Here are some trends/predictions…

• Firstly, we’ll see even more offers and services like Oddbox (which are great) for those wanting to buy wonky fruit & veg and stop it from being wasted. I suspect we’ll grow to accept more imperfection of our produce as we learn more about how food is often wasted
• We’ll see more services to help shift food that would usually get binned, such as Too Good to Go
• Internationally, I wonder what the effects of the potential new laws as part of ‘Operation empty plate’ could be as they begin to nudge people into not over-ordering or over-consuming! I honestly have no idea if these will work but they may begin to cast further criticism on Mukbang culture
• More companies getting involved with paid-services to tackle food waste, like Leanpath, will emerge & install tech into kitchens to track what food is being wasted.
• Some big players have invested in tackling food waste with Google recently making progress in their endeavours, principally tackling surplus food and how to get this soon to be wasted food into the hands of people that need it.
• Last year, the ODI had a food waste data trust pilot too. Similarly trying to get organisations to better collaborate with one another on the food waste agenda.

The issue is far from cracked and still very much at the foothills of the problem with many organisational hurdles to jump and far more future collaboration needed before this type of work bears fruit. The fact it is being worked on should be seen as progress though. I don’t see this issue becoming any less important so I predict we’ll see greater consumer demand for food that is sustainably produced and expect that leftover food is not wasted unnecessarily.

Want to delve deeper?

If you are interested in learning a bit more about the economics of food distribution then this is a great listen (btw it is a U.S. case study);

Controlled-environment farming

As the population grows and demand for food rises alongside the ill effects of climate change on farmland and farming it seems plausible we’ll need to rely on more greenhouses and vertical farms, etc. Here is a run down on some things we could see more of…

• More investment in this space. I suspect we’re edging towards a future where farming isn’t happening just in fields somewhere outside of cities.
• Vertical farming has been a trend of 2019-2020 and long been predicted as a trend to invade kitchens/supermarkets.
• If you are an escapist like me and like a bit of sci-fi, scrolling through designs of what this could look like is a wonderful 2 minutes of your day.
• More appliances come on the market for you to grow stuff at home such as LG’s indoor farm.
• Even Ikea is getting in on the action
• If people are escaping cities, with more remote workers, likely greater access to gardens then we might see the humble garden veg patch continue to be popular too. After all, you don’t always need fancy tech to grow a potato.

Dynamic pricing

Inspired by iterations of supermarkets abroad - that may make it over to our shores eventually (see Chinese supermarkets with conveyor belts or Amazon contactless stores). We may see an uptick in dynamic pricing experiments on electronic screens “invading” stores.

Not soon, but a rise in dynamic pricing of food/drink goods could mean in practical terms if there is a low supply of celery then price goes up or if hot and sunny day then supermarket may boost price of ice cream, etc. I don’t see this contained to just supermarkets & wouldn’t be surprised to see this in restaurants/bakeries in some future scenario. Of course it already happens IRL, if a chef knows they have lots of strawberries then they might scribble on a special board to have a flash sale of pavlova. I just suspect these changes of price will happen far quicker. Gone are set predictable prices or weekly special offers in supermarkets, replaced with price changes hourly for example.

I’m not sure how consumers will react to this type of setup. We deal with it for taxis or flights but without the right messaging it might be a little unpopular to begin with. It’ll also need a thorough exploration into what inequalities this change could entrench or deepen. For example, how this would affect areas termed as ‘food deserts’ where access to affordable fresh healthy food is already pants. It’ll need someone smarter than I to unpick.

Next?

Part 2 will follow soon. Will be more trends & what could be ending up on your plate or delivered to your door in 2021.