[One of my goals for next year is to draw more and write more so I'll be drawing headlines for my articles. I'm a bit shy to post them on LinkedIn but it's a start]
Old Predictions
11 Months ago, I made a prediction post on LinkedIn
My 2024 Predictions This Year That No One Asked for:
🌱More Divisiveness on How to Feed People
In the world of food company LinkedIn, we have too many people who got hurt by the other side and will make it their mission to tear the other one down. Most people who argue on LinkedIn about feeding people are in a subset of people who have the privilege of having internet and focusing on a career on a website about careers. There is an ivory tower bias on here. I’m probably going to ignore most of the conversations as I have work to do and it’s not my specialty to do debates like this. However, this will most likely get worse before it gets better.
Remember, whether you are a plant-based, whole food, cell-based, regenerative, raw food, local food, garden grower advocate, your main enemy is the industry that has a 95% market share which is conventional, animal-farmed meat that is pumped to the brim with antibiotics, and ruins the lives of their workers, and poisons the land they settle in.
❄️Innovation Winter
Multiple articles have come out showing fewer SKU’s entering the market, and correlating this to less choice in cool products this year. This is a cocktail of forces that are really squeezing food manufacturers to the brim. This includes rising COG prices (not helping due to looming shipping issues in the Red Sea) rising retail prices ($4.00 for coffee, or a loaf of bread) and the lack of Venture Capital money (VC money gives permission for people to be daring and launch things).
Companies big and small are cutting their R+D departments, most likely generating an excess pool of R+D candidates. Overall, R+D professionals should investigate QA, Regulatory, and Supply Chain roles, as these roles are much more evergreen than R+D, and pay dividends if you get back into R+D.
🌟More Celebrity Slop
With the meteoric rise of Mr. Beast’s candy brand and Logan Paul’s Prime drink (based on job postings, these industries are growing), other industries get the hint that utilizing viral media stars with CPG products is a win-win. Mr. Beast has mentioned that he gains a lot more money creating his own CPG products than getting sponsors for his Youtube videos. In this industry, Monkey See, Monkey Do.
Expect manufacturers to combine forces with viral celebrities instead of traditional advertising. There is a lot of opportunity for manufacturers to work with celebrities and create stellar products but most likely, the products being shoveled out won’t be that good, causing this to flame out in the next year. (For example, Pokimane’s cookies are supposedly terrible. More terrible products to come!)
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It’s always good to look back at old predictions and realize just how far we’ve come. I love making predictions because it’s fun to put a miscroscope on certain trends and see where they pop off a year later. A prediction is a gamble with little downsides and a big reputational upside
because you sound really smart when you’re right.
🌱More Divisiveness on How to Feed People – Getting Worse
California is where most major trends happen and it’s nice being in the center of everything AI, crypto BS and self-driving cars. Food is an underrated innovation in California. In not only science but also in pure agricultural output. The only two companies that are approved to sell
cultivated meat were created right in California and California is the sole
producer of so many unique and special crops we all know and love.
Anyways, what seems to be popping up is Regenerative in a similar way to Organic and Non-GMO, and even Plant-based. Yea I’m sure some will say “but it’s so much different”. History repeats itself when it comes to these trends. A grassroots movement, an early winner (one can argue Moonshot is THE early winner) a bunch of bad products flooding the market, a certification, and then a leveling out. Anyways, Whole Foods has
recently been posting jobs regarding Regenerative and Food Funded and Naturally
Bay Area have been focusing heavily on showcasing Regenerative products to the
market.
Regenerative is essentially the antithesis of the alternative protein movement and focuses on “going back to its roots” rather than “use unknown innovation to solve the problem”. Both have its place at a certain point in time (my favorite book on this topic is The Wizard and the
Prophet and is a book I think about a lot when it comes to talks about food).
In food, we are shifting to a Prophet cycle and Regenerative is starting to
rise up as the new trend.
Parallel to this, we’ve failed to de-politicize alternative proteins. Now totally labeled as “leftist”, the right influencers have focused on eating more meat from animals and have successfully marketed it as a masculine, healthy, and clean food.
Culture is very hard to shift and when we politicize something, we cut the potential for it to work in half. Science-based alternative proteins are facing ever-increasing headwinds from both sides to the point where I believe it’s time to find shelter and work really hard on research rather than launching new products.
At least that’s where I’ll be focusing on when it comes to alternative proteins for the next five years.
❄️Innovation Winter – Getting Worse (in food specifically)
Innovation is always a risk and sometimes risks just don’t work out. There are many innovations in the world that just didn’t work or it wasn’t the right time for it to work. The world is complicated and we have to be aware of the situation and what is currently influencing the situation. There is this denseness in the air these days where it tells me that people have better things to do than to save the world. I think it’s just a phase but it’s going to be a long phase.
One can argue that this year showed more sequels, more packaging engineering, and more of the same trends we’ve seen for decades from the same winners we’ve heard about for years. Basically, the big players are playing it safe this year as the unknowns keep piling up.
I would say there were still a few big innovations in the year of 2024 that will affect food in some way in the following years. I’ll be writing more about this, but we cannot deny the fact that Generative AI, GLP-1 drugs and a new administration will affect food drastically. (In my opinion, a new administration, especially with someone who openly states he wants to change a governmental administration, is an innovation trigger)
Right now in terms of food innovation, the industry will be more reactive than ever and it’s become a scarcity game rather than an abundance game. Those who have the resources or ability to get resources are at a bigger advantage than ever right now. Though the environment has become more unfavorable for new incumbents, smaller players have the advantage of speed and humility.
🌟More Celebrity Slop - Peaked
It seems more and more celebrities are getting into food and this year, we experienced peak celebrity BS with the introduction of Lunchly.
With a combined effort from Mr. Beast and Logan Paul (who sell candy and energy
drinks) they launched this Lunchable knockoff.
What killed the brand was an exposure to mold in theproduct. Originally spotted on Tiktok, it wasn’t until influencer Rosario Pansino opened up a Lunchly and found blue mold in the product.
Copackers and contract manufacturers have definitivly learned from this.
More celebrities are leveraging food brands as a form of merchandising and investment. Despite the kerfuffle, Mr. Beast’s Feastables is still expanding and the man himself has specifically stated that Feastables brings in more money than ads, sponsorships, etc. This makes sense. Celebrities have the marketing power of a brand and people seek more relatability in people than
brands. If you have the reach, products can have a money multiplier on your net worth.
It’s hard to say the return on investment for getting Tom Holland for
your non-alcoholic beer company or Simu Liu for your dumpling company but I do
believe the celebrities have a lot of leverage here and have taken a big chunk
of equity for their endorsement. It’s hard to understand the deal structure
with these celebrities until after something really good or really bad happens.
Next week, I'll post my 2025 predicitons, Should be fun.