International blends, spicy snacks among Kerry’s 2024 taste trends

A World of Future Tastes offers a glimpse into snack and bakery flavors to watch.

Photo: McHail Hernandez/Pexels

Kerry, a provider of taste and nutrition solutions, has released its 2024 global taste charts, A World of Future Tastes. The culmination of Kerry’s year-long research is a series of incisive, interactive charts created for 13 individual regional markets.

These charts track flavor adoption and evolution around the world and provide an in-depth analysis of the ingredients and trends that will shape innovation in the food and beverage sector over the year ahead. The charts are an online resource that can be mined by product and menu developers worldwide.

To illustrate today’s incredible pace of innovation, Kerry researchers also conducted a deep dive into the lifecycles of two long-popular heritage flavors, orange, and chocolate, and examined how these mainstream ingredients are now exploding into all manner of inventive product offerings around the world. These two case studies illustrate how many traditional tastes worldwide are fusing into new, innovative applications as product creators around the globe source, combine, and recombine flavors and spices from distant origins into exciting new taste experiences.

Soumya Nair, global consumer research and insights director at Kerry, commented on the 2024 taste charts: “The global exchange and dissemination of tastes and flavors through social media and travel is still in its infancy, and globalization in food, beverage and cuisine development make this a truly exciting time to be in the industry. Although rapidly changing times can present great challenges, they also provide an unparalleled opportunity for brands to catch an emerging trend on the rise. We are seeing many unique flavor intersections in foods and beverages, and Kerry is using technologies such as Natural Language Processing, AI, social media, and traditional consumer observation tools to stay ahead of the adoption curve, and to help customers navigate the emerging taste environment for products being developed in 2024.”

Examples of some of the insights noted in this year’s charts include the following:

Increasingly inventive crossovers of international cuisines are being seen, such as the innovative blends of Filipino and American dishes happening in the U.S., with halo-halo-inspired cocktails, ube burgers, and adobo chicken sandwiches appearing on menus.
Spice is being added to a wide range of more everyday foods, providing a dash of excitement, and a new sensation. From the now common-place spicy cocktails, everything from spicy chocolate and spicy honey to spicy sparkling waters are also being seen; with products often utilizing new and interesting spice ingredients, such as arbol peppers, gochugaru, and tajin seasoning.
Young consumers are craving bold and unusual flavor combinations, driven by social media's influence and a desire for novelty. This opens opportunities for sweet-savory pairings like bacon milkshakes, coffee infused with black garlic, and chocolate bars with wasabi.
Some very familiar flavors, such as orange, are getting a new look, with varietal and floral twists. Health considerations spurred by the pandemic also provided this source of vitamin C with a renewed wave of consumer appreciation.
And, as always, people remain open to new experiences. Fruits such as Yuzu are gaining popularity across multiple markets and applications, with recent launches including Yuzu Gose Beers in South Africa, Yuzu and Pepper Mayonnaise in China, and Yuzu Low ABV wines and alcoholic beverages in the USA and Australia.

To access the 2024 Kerry Taste Charts for various regions, click here.

Jenni Spinner is the chief editor of Snack Food and Wholesale with more than 25 years of experience in business-to-business communications. She has written extensively about food production, safety and packaging; pharmaceutical drug development; concrete and masonry construction; and more. She holds a Bachelor’s in Communications from the University of Illinois. Jenni can be reached at spinnerj@bnpmedia.com.

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