Five trends that would change the food industry
View(s):The food industry is huge but exactly how huge? Well, as Sarah Murray explained in her article ‘The World’s Biggest Industry’ it’s hard to grasp the sheer scale of it because of its many components. Think about it; it’s not just growing the food, transporting it and selling it at grocery stores, it’s also the restaurant and hospitality industry, not to mention canned and packaged foods! And what about the large amount of technology and entertainment that revolves around food? Once all this is considered there is a very strong case to be made that food may be the largest industry in the world and the largest industry in the world is becoming a hot bed for innovation.
Here are five major trends to look for in the future of the food industry:
1. Self Service Ordering
The fast food restaurant server may become an endangered species as self-service kiosks become one of the key areas of innovation and quick service restaurants like McDonalds start leading the charge. In addition to bringing down labour costs, self-service kiosks are also far more accurate than a server in the fast food context. The kiosks display the items on the menu and then allow the user to place their own order using a touch display interface saving time and minimising errors.
As this technology evolves the kiosks are becoming more sophisticated and incorporating leading edge technologies. NFC (Near Field Communication) integrated payment systems will process the payment of your order simply by having you tap your credit card or phone on a sensor. Big data integrations will take the level of service even further by allowing kiosks to give you specialised item suggestions, based on what similar customers like to eat.
Facial recognition technology will personalise your experience, allowing kiosks to recognise you and show you your previous order, for faster ordering.
2. Restaurants in homes
Food service innovation won’t be reserved for the restaurant alone, in fact you may have to reconsider your definition of a restaurant altogether.
Following in the footsteps of tech innovators such as Uber and Airbnb, who have leveraged the sharing economy through their innovations, tech companies are disrupting our conceptions of restaurant dining.
Companies like Yuma and CookFromHome are allowing anyone to be a restauranteur from their home; users can log on and buy home cooked food to be delivered to them or themselves could become chefs and sell their food to others. Companies like Feastly and EatWith are even going beyond this model, allowing users to create dining experiences in their homes and invite each other over for dinner.
3. Gourmet DIY delivery
But the changes to the food service industry won’t just be reserved for where you eat, and who cooks your food, one of the biggest trends is trying to turn you into a gourmet chef. Sound impossible? Companies like Blue Apron and HelloFresh think otherwise; they are delivering fresh seasonal ingredients in perfect proportions to your doorstep, together with instructions of how to use them to prepare a gourmet meal.
They are banking on the idea that the barriers to us cooking and eating great meals is the difficulty in sourcing ingredients and the time and effort it draws from our busy schedule. With their meal plans and doorstep delivery systems they hope to change the way all of us cook and eat.
4. Supply chain
One of the biggest changes to the food service industry will happen behind the scenes without you ever realising it; in the supply chain. Food has to be acquired from its source of origin, stored and then transported to grocery stores and restaurants. Companies such as Sysco have been on the leading edge of this practice, with food trucks that contain different individually temperature controlled compartments, allowing each truck to transport every kind of food at the same time.
The latest breakthroughs in technology will also have a role to play in the supply chain. The ‘Internet of Things’ will bring a host of smart devices and data points to the different aspects of the supply chain. High standards of quality and safety will be maintained by monitoring the storage and transport of food from the farm all the way to the final point of consumption.
But how will you know that the food service companies are not deceiving you about the data? Well, another breakthrough technology coming to the food industry is blockchain. The same data-ledger technology used to maintain decentralised trust for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum can be applied to the food service supply chain too. Blockchain will allow both the customer and the suppliers to share a single set of incorruptible data, so they both know everything that happened to their food as it moved from farm to fork.
5. Food Engineering
If any of you thought that this list wasn’t futuristic enough we saved the most radical innovations for last, innovations of food itself! Beyond Meat, and Hampton Creek’s flagship product Beyond Eggs are two Silicon Valley based food engineering start-ups that believe they can create sustainable plant-based meat and plant-based eggs that are not just convincing but are better than the real thing. The two companies have taken advantage of the push for veganism in light of the environmental and ethical concerns surrounding factory farming, and created an enormous amount of buzz inspiring both fans and critics. Cultured meat is the other solution to this problem being explored. The meat is a result of cellular agriculture, a process which scientists use to grow meat using only animal cells instead of animals, by applying the same techniques used in regenerative medicine. The result is the creation of a potentially infinite meat source that only needs a single cell sample from an animal to start the process.
(The writer is a marketing communications professional specialising in brand development, passionate about new media, and art. He is currently employed as Associate Manager – Branding at Sysco LABS. This is an extract from an article published by Sysco Labs. http://syscolabs.lk/blog/five-trends-that-will-change-the-food-industry/)