Kerry has released its annual Asia Pacific Taste Charts for 2021, uncovering flavours and ingredients that are set to inspire innovation and taste excellence across the region’s food and beverage landscape.
They are developed by the company’s global team of experts who bring valuable insights on mainstream, key, up and coming, and emerging flavours and ingredients from around the world. This expert perspective into the flavours and ingredients shaping the industry—across the sweet, beverages, savoury, and salty snack categories—helps customers craft a clear, research-backed roadmap for creating new products, or revitalising existing choices in ways that will delight, surprise and excite.
Among emerging flavours, there is a growing trend towards micro sensory foods that go beyond taste to target visual, olfactory and mouthfeel senses. These include saffron (Savoury) for colour enhancement, chai spice (Dairy and Hot Beverages) for added fragrance, and chewy Korean Tteokbokki (Salty Snacks) that contribute to mouthfeel. From a health perspective, flavours containing essential micronutrients are on the rise, among them lemon myrtle (Dairy and Hot Beverages), Manuka honey (Water and Cold Beverages) and flavours that strengthen gut health, like kumquat (Sweet; Dairy and Hot Beverages).
Avinash Lal, market research and consumer insights director, Kerry Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, said, “The 2021 Asia Pacific Taste Charts reflect how taste trends have been shaped by the pandemic in the past year. Health is now a key factor in consumer food choices, with a strong focus on ingredients and nutrition labels. More than ever, consumers in the region regard food as a functional remedy and are turning to traditional ingredients such as turmeric, ginger, lemongrass, yuzu lemon, and soybean paste for their health-giving, healing properties.”
Most mainstream tastes in Asia Pacific show a continuation of consumer preference for familiar, traditional tastes. At the same time, there is cross-over and development of mainstream tastes across categories. Chillie, a mainstream flavour popular in many savoury Asian cuisines, is now an emerging flavour for Cold and Water Beverages.
Leigh Anne Vaughan, global strategic marketing director, Taste, said, “Our Kerry 2021 Taste Charts provide customers with a concise, insightful guide on trending global consumer taste preferences. The charts are an excellent resource to help navigate a pandemic-influenced consumer world in 2021—one that is experiencing not only a renaissance of traditional comforting tastes and flavours, but also a heightened push for new taste innovations that nod to adventure as well as familiarity. Next year will be a challenging one for food and beverage developers, and Kerry’s Taste Charts are available to help the industry steer a course to success during this time of great change.”
“Through a consumer-focused, on-trend lens, each of Kerry’s unique regional and country reports utilises consumer purchase patterns, retail product performance, food service influences, and endorsements from the company’s internal culinary, beverage, and mixology experts to predict tastes for the coming year. Kerry’s Trendspotter™, a proprietary artificial intelligence that predicts food trends from global social media content, was used to provide additional perspective, inspiration, and validation of flavours and ingredients influencing the marketplace,” concluded Vaughan.