Many in the food and beverage industry have lagged behind the curve for years when it comes to “fresh” and are just now trying to narrow the gap by responding to consumers’ demand for fresh, less processed foods and beverages.

fresh produce

Finding meaning in a major trend is a formidable challenge. Many in the food and beverage industry, for example, have a keen sense that developments falling under the rubric of “fresh” are fundamentally transforming food retail formats, product sourcing and production, and marketing strategies to take advantage of consumers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for “all things fresh.”

A glance at recent headlines from the same day about both Walmart and Whole Foods Market undergoing a renewed focus on “fresh” within their stores underscores this point. But we have to ask why this is now news — again.

It was shortly after the turn of the century, after all, when we here at The Hartman Group heralded the dawn of new paradigms in eating and drinking. This proclamation was grounded in our own proprietary research around a wide scope of questions and concerns stemming from the essential observation that consumers increasingly desire healthier food and beverage products.

Since those early days of the new millennium, we have often written about the paradigm shift toward a redefinition of quality that we have seen play out in ingredient trends (e.g., low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie), the mainstreaming of organic products, the movement toward local food products, interest in artisanal products and, above all else, the trend toward “all things fresh” (shopping the retail perimeter for higher-quality “fresh” and prepared food offerings).

The Past Holds the Keys to the Future

We believe that the roots of the fresh movement can be more easily understood by careful examination of simmering trends among core food consumers (those consumers most intensely involved in the World of Food, the early adopters, trendsetters and most food literate) in restaurant settings. Just as Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant set the stage in the early 1970s for what is now the most dominant food trend of our era — the trend toward all things fresh, seasonal and local — we believe a select set of current kitchens and dining rooms holds the secrets of what is yet to come.

The rise of fresh time line

Alice Waters’ spirited championing of all things fresh and local found a comfortable ally in a new generation of maverick food manufacturers and retailers. And as consumer acceptance of price premiums aligned with higher quality became apparent, more and more producers and retailers tossed their hats into the ring.

While traditional marketers and analysts snickered at upstarts like Starbucks, Annie’s, Amy’s, Odwalla, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market, Wegmans, Central Market, Muir Glen and the like, consumers proved more than willing to play along.

Once consumers had available to them a slate of brands and food retailers that met their demand for better-quality food, they no longer had to worry about the nutrients or nutrition of their food products. These critical developments allowed consumers to begin devoting more attention to (a) enjoying food on their terms, (b) in a cultural fashion (via the food world and not the food industry’s world) and (c) for the food’s sake.

Which brings us back to today’s headlines.

Food manufacturers and retailers along the full continuum of the food retailing spectrum are upping their game on featuring fresh offerings and reimagined fresh products. These efforts are timely for sure.

Fresh is the most scalable demand driver in food and beverage today. Everyone can relate to freshly prepared food; you'd be hard-pressed to find a consumer who cannot tell a great story about eating freshly prepared foods on many occasions in their lives. This makes a compelling case for an enormous market space.

Yet many CPG marketers and food retailers are still more than a bit puzzled by how best to market to the fresh phenomenon. One of the most consistent, compelling findings to emerge from our years of consumer research regarding food and beverage, eating habits and shopping behaviors suggests that — at least for consumers — the word “fresh” is actually a complex indicator of broader lifestyle orientations toward food quality more than it is an objective food distinction.

Consumers have come to rely on fresh as a broad marker of a high-quality food lifestyle. Currently, there is no one single dimension that triggers “fresh” perceptions in all consumers. Instead, there exists a multiplicity of underlying dimensions capable of signaling fresh. While each may trigger this perception on its own, they also have a pronounced cumulative effect. Some of these dimensions include:

  • Appearance of minimal processing
  • Cues of naturally sourced ingredients
  • Location in perishable and perimeter food categories
  • Use of natural color palettes and natural packaging materials
  • Product narratives emphasizing people, places and traditions
  • Connection to indigenous culinary traditions

Moving Forward With Fresh

Consumers are attracted to fresh products for a variety of reasons (taste, quality, healthfulness, status, ideology, etc.). It is important to understand that fresh is not so much an objective distinction (as in the difference between fresh fruit and canned fruit) as it is a multifaceted framing device that allows consumers to differentiate between the real and the imitation, the raw and the processed, the tasty and the bland, the ripe and the stale, the good and the bad, the fancy and the plain, and so forth.

As discounters like Walmart move more intentionally into fresh marketing, the issue of staff and shopping experience arises, since shoppers today are highly conditioned to what constitutes the “real deal” when it comes to fresh. If we’ve learned one thing about converting toward a fresh-oriented retail model, it’s that you absolutely have to have a committed, enthusiastic staff. Shoppers don’t trust retailers’ fresh offerings when they don’t appear to care about fresh food and when store employees provide little more than utilitarian services. There is something essentially intimate about selling fresh perishables and foods: it’s a theater in which consumers’ highest standards of quality are invoked. But the payoff is increasingly big.