How to analyze food and beverage trends

And why effective trend analysis is key to your company’s success

The food and beverage industry is heavily influenced by consumer trends. Whether it be an increased demand for organic produce or a desire for seasonal coffee flavors, consumer preferences are constantly changing at an increasingly rapid pace. If you’re not keeping up with the latest trends, your food or beverage company may be falling behind.

However, it can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to undertake traditional consumer research methods, such as surveys and focus groups. With these methods, the trend may have passed before you’re able to identify it and shift gears.

Fortunately, social listening platforms, such as Infegy Starscape, allow you to identify, understand, and respond to rapidly evolving consumer trends. The result? An opportunity to quickly pivot in response to changing consumer needs.

The importance of trend analysis

Using social listening for trend analysis can help your company:

• Identify emerging trends and topics in real time.
• Quickly spot new developments, consumer interests, and shifts in preferences.

Food companies tend to have long product cycles, especially those with large manufacturing plants built to achieve economies of scale. Because of this, the earlier you receive trend intelligence, the better chance you have of shifting your manufacturing to capitalize on changing consumer preferences.

Social listening allows you to constantly monitor the marketplace for shifting trends so you can begin pivoting as soon as possible when new trends emerge.

Two categories of food and beverage trends

As we begin looking at changing food and beverage preferences, it’s important to note that there are two distinct types of trends that impact this industry.

1. Seasonal trends – Some foods and beverages are more popular during certain times of year. For example, demand for pumpkin-spiced coffee drinks spikes in the fall; candy canes are primarily sold in the month leading up to Christmas; and corn on the cob remains a summer staple.

Seasonal trends are predictable and easy to anticipate. As a marketer, you can begin planning relevant campaigns and product launches well in advance.

2. Changing food preferences – On the other hand, changing food preferences can be difficult to anticipate and even more difficult to identify. This presents a challenge for marketers. How can you ensure you’re making the right investments in the right types of products?

Let’s dig deeper into these two types of trends and consider how social listening can help marketers and brand managers identify and adapt to evolving consumer preferences.

Seasonal trend analysis

As we dig deeper into seasonal trends, we find that there are two types of seasonal trends:

1. Seasonal trends driven by supply
2. Seasonal trends driven by demand

Supply-driven seasonal trends

Foods that are driven by supply-based trends typically include those that experience a peak local growing season. These are often fruits and vegetables that taste best when they are harvested at their peak ripeness and transported short distances to reach consumers.

Asparagus is a good example of a food that trends based on supply.

^{Figure 1: Post volume of asparagus; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

When analyzing trends, the first data we look at is post volume. In Figure 1, notice how posts regarding asparagus have experienced predictable peaks each year between June and July. This coincides with the vegetable’s peak U.S. harvest season, which is when it is most available in local grocery stores.

Notice the sharp spike in post volume that occurred in July 2017. This was in response to a post on X (at the time, Twitter) that went viral. If you were a brand manager engaged in social listening, you may have identified this spike as it was occurring. If you were especially on top of it, you may have identified a unique opportunity to capitalize on this dramatic (yet fleeting) rise in interest.

^{Figure 2: Theme analysis, tomato availability post volume; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

When using social listening to identify trends, another important factor to monitor is themes. A themes analysis identifies specific parts of speech, such as verbs and nouns that relate to a certain theme. This allows us to easily group well-known conversation topics related to our subject of interest. Theme analysis is what sets Infegy AI apart from the other social analytics engines for it’s theme identification.

Figure 2 is an example of a themes analysis that charts the availability of tomatoes. “Availability” is the theme that relates to tomatoes, so this analysis provides insight into people’s conversations about encountering tomatoes.

As Figure 2 illustrates, conversations surrounding the availability of tomatoes are strongly tied to seasons. Specifically, we typically see posts tend to trend upward in June and July, with sharp spikes each year in August. This coincides with when tomatoes achieve peak ripeness in the United States.

However, there were some years that experienced a lower-than-average spike in post volume. For example, 2015, 2016, and 2018 had muted peaks compared to the surrounding years. Notice that the years with muted post volume in June and July also have smaller volume peaks in August. This can be helpful insight for farmers and produce distributors, as it can help them predict the intensity of seasonal trends as the year’s peak ripeness season approaches.

Demand-driven seasonal trends

As we’ve seen, the seasonally driven trends surrounding asparagus and tomatoes are driven by supply, as they coincide with peak growing seasons. In contrast, some seasonal trends are driven by demand. Let’s take a look at a few examples of seasonal trends that are driven by when consumers want a specific type of food or beverage.

An obvious example of demand-driven seasonal demand is ice cream versus soup.

^{Figure 3: Ice cream purchase intent; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

In Figure 3, we used a themes filter to track purchase intent surrounding ice cream. Purchase intent is one of Infegy’s most impactful themes, as it allows marketers to better understand buyer cycles. It also represents the bottom of the marketing funnel, as it provides insight into the people closest to making purchasing decisions.

Notice in Figure 3 that ice cream purchase intent peaks during mid-summer months. This makes sense since it corresponds with the United States’ hottest months.

^{Figure 4: Soup purchase intent; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

In contrast to ice cream, take a look at Figure 4, which illustrates purchase intent for soup over the last 15 years. As expected, soup post volume tends to spike during colder months. In this chart, there are a few obvious outliers. While it may be helpful to understand why these unexpected peaks and valleys occurred, it’s more important to look at the general shape of the trend line when making decisions. Anomalous post volume isn’t typically as impactful as overall trends.

This trend information can help marketers and brand managers anticipate seasonal demand-driven trends and take steps in advance to capitalize on those trends.

Spotting changing food preferences

We’ve spent some time looking at seasonally driven food trends, which can be relatively easy to anticipate. A more difficult task is to spot changes in general food preferences over time. A company that can identify and take proactive action to capitalize on evolving food trends before its competitors will be better positioned for future success. But how can you predict changes in consumer preferences?

Social listening can help.

The decline of cereal

Breakfast cereal’s decline has been well documented across the food and beverage industry. While it used to make up a large percentage of people’s diets, it has fallen out of favor among consumers for a variety of reasons.

• Consumers have been shifting to healthier, lower-carb options.
• The cost of cereal has significantly increased in recent years.
• A new category of protein-packed breakfast foods has emerged.
• Consumers have experienced a rise in fad diets, such as keto, low-carb, Atkins, etc., that shun high-carbohydrate breakfast cereals.
• Published research and health professionals have highlighted the dangers of a high-sugar diet.

^{Figure 5: Cereal post volume; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

Figure 5 illustrates the decline in cereal’s popularity over the last 15 years. This post volume analysis shows a sharp drop in cereal-related posts beginning in 2010. While there are a few small spikes in the ensuing decade, cereal’s post volume has never come close to its 2010 peak.

If you’re a cereal manufacturer, it’s absolutely crucial to track consumer trends such as this. By identifying changing consumer preferences as they emerge, you can avoid pouring money and manpower into food that consumers no longer want to eat. In other words, social listening can help your business avoid costly mistakes, such as poor product investments.

The surge of sugar-free beverages

Not only can social listening data help you avoid investing in declining trends, it can also help you make wise investments in surging trends. Consider the example of sugar-free beverages.

^{Figure 6: Sugar-free beverage post volume; Infegy Social Dataset, July 2009 through July 2024.}

Looking at the demand for low-sugar/sugar-free beverages over the last 15 years, we see a significant surge in post volume beginning in 2016 (Figure 6). The trend toward sugar-free beverages is consistent with research studies that have shown the dangers of sugar consumption on individuals’ long-term health.

Not only did these research findings lead to an uptick in sugar-free beverages, they also impacted consumers’ buying decisions related to candy, cookies, juice, other desserts, and, as we’ve already seen… cereal.

If we compare Figures 5 and 6, it’s interesting to note the uptick in cereal post volume that occurred in 2016 through 2017 coincides with the timing of an uptick in post volume related to sugar-free beverages. A brand manager in this space may discover valuable insight by digging into this post volume spike to learn more about consumers’ conversations, topics, and sentiment.

Using social listening to analyze food and beverage trends

Social listening platforms, such as Infegy Starscape, provide real-time insight into changing trends across a wide range of industries. This data helps brand managers, marketers, and business leaders quickly identify, pivot, and capitalize on evolving trends. The result? A competitive advantage that helps you meet the needs of your target consumers.

There are countless examples of how social listening can be used to identify, analyze, and anticipate changing trends in the food and beverage industry. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our recent insight brief, Tapping into Tropical Tastes.

To learn more about how Infegy’s social listening platform can help you identify, analyze, and respond to consumer trends, request a custom demo.