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but restaurant menus and supermarket
shelves don’t return to a meat-and-
potatoes default state when trends fade.
The greater bundle of trends is dynamic,
evolving and expanding, and embodies
long-term opportunities for Canadian
farmers.
MILLENNIALS,
GURUS AND
GLOBAL MARKETS
“Consumer trends
affect everything,
especially in Alberta,”
said Jordan Mahar,
Alberta Agriculture
and Rural Development (AARD) post-
farm gate business analyst. Provincial
consumers are well informed about
food, responsive to new culinary
developments and have high average
incomes to support their food purchase
impulses. But it is millennial generation
consumers—an especially strong
demographic on the Prairies—who are
most responsive to developments in
food culture.
“These people are a lot more idealistic
and open to new technologies and
change,” said Mahar. “They’re more
open to exploring new possibilities,
especially in food.”
Plugged into the Internet, millennials
are great appreciators of niche products
and are an effective barometer of
emerging trends.
“What you have is a few main gurus of
particular topics like gluten-free, organic
and all-natural,” explained Mahar. “These
gurus will distribute their knowledge
down the chain. They start this trend, and
then the early adopters pick it up.”
For example, Canada’s organic food
and non-alcoholic beverage sales hit $3
billion in 2012, tripling over just six years,
according to the Canada Organic Trade
Association.
Identifying the trend being
propagated early in this chain may help
to predict emerging trends as well
as market opportunities. Mahar said
global food demand is expected to rise
35 per cent between 2007 and 2025,
mostly driven by the rise of the middle-
income bracket in countries such as
India and China.
“There are opportunities for Canada
to feed the world, especially Alberta,
which has a
strong agricultural
presence,” he
said. And big
corporations are
spending big dollars
to obtain statistical
food marketplace
information.
Especially
useful to smaller enterprises, AARD’s
Competitiveness and Market Analysis
Branch collects and disseminates this
information, purchasing the publishing
rights to studies and making them
available on its website in its Alberta
Food Consumer View and Consumer
Corner forums.
THE FARMER’S R&D DEPARTMENT
“Eighteen million Canadians visit
restaurants every day. That’s one out
of two,” said Garth Whyte, president
and CEO of Restaurants Canada. This
illustrates the value of food trend analysis
to his industry, which is by nature
hypersensitive to customer demand.
Restaurants, food businesses and
governments use the organization’s
annual Chef Survey to identify hot and
emerging trends.
Whyte points out that the top 10 trends
relate to healthy living and locally sourced
food. Though pinning down which
The Food Issue
2014
grainswest.com
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“Consumer trends
affect everything,
especially in Alberta.”
–Jordan Mahar