hichever table you find yourself at, one thing is certain: One cannot rei-magine the future of food without also considering the human experience that is so deeply rooted in it. No matter what innovations emerge, digital or otherwise, food will always remain an integral part of our existence. And yet, in an ever-changing, fast-moving, and increasingly connected

world, our most basic ties to food remain, while our expectations continue to change. Food connects all of us, across the globe, transcending cultures and religions. In every corner of the world, you can find places and spaces where people connect over food. Think of the vibrant Taling Chan floating market in Bangkok, bustling with both locals and tourists enjoying seafood at rickety communal wooden tables; or lining up around the block with hundreds of New Yorkers, impatiently waiting to try the world’s first bleeding veggie burger from Impossible Foods at Momofuku Nishi; or foraging through a tasting menu of 17 small plates (that ends with chocolate reindeer moss) at Noma, one of the world’s best restaurants; or a perfect three-hour gastronomical experience that’s waiting to be shared with your social networks. Consumers have become so much more educated that they are more aware than ever about the relationship between food and wellbeing – not only in terms of our own health and wellness, but that of our planet as well. There is a greater desire to know what’s in the food that’s consumed, but also to know where it came from and how it was grown. The #RealFood revolution, popularized by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, followed by the rise of a countless number of natural food brands, illustrate the seismic shifts that are altering our relationship with food. The rise of these initiatives has unearthed an innate desire – which was dormant throughout the Fordist era – to connect with food. Real food, made by real people (not the faceless brands that reigned at the height of the industrial food era). Conversely, the digital revolution of food enables new and redefined experiences, from biometric personalized nutrition plans, to frictionless ordering and delivery at any time of day. The digitization of food empowers consumers with new and different forms of access and information, resulting in a new relationship between humans and what they eat. The visionaries who have created these new products and services have tapped into the human experience that is so central to food. They play at the intersection of real food and technology, and are able to unearth new and infinite possibilities that are abound in this new digital culinary era. As the future of food continues to unfold, and an increasingly digitized food experience emerges, the human experience will need to remain central. As you delve into this series of articles, take time to consider the experience you want to have with food, and how your brand, product, and story can deliver on this as we continue to redefine the future of food and the experience surrounding food culture.

Kirstin Hammerberg is VP, brand experience at Idea Couture.

Maya Oczeretko is an innovation strategist at Idea Couture.

W.

Think abouT hoW you eaT Today, and Then Try To reimagine The

fuTure of The food experience.

hoW mighT We eaT in 5, 10, or 20 years?

WhaT Will We eaT? When? Why?

by— kirsTin hammerberg

maya oczereTko

The posT—indusTrial

palaTe

The posT—indusTrial

by—

dr. Tania ahmad

making reTro foods relevanT Through

conTemporary. lifesTyle concerns

can reneW food nosTalgia..

Now imagine that it’s gluten-free, made with hormone-free milk containing active

cultures, and packaged in a recycled box labeled with sustainable inks, coatings, and adhesives. Think of the familiar sizes and shapes from your childhood (or the one you may have seen on TV): the tall box, the packet of neon orange mystery powder, and the directions to boil, add, and stir until uncannily colorful creaminess is achieved. What kind of consumer object is this? And what can we make of this magnificent sociocultural amalgam of nostalgia and ethical responsibility?

Let’s hone in on the apparent contradiction of rein-vented processed foods: We’ll dub it the “post-indus-trial palate.” Call it a love-hate relationship to industri-ally produced food that doesn’t alternate between loving and hating, but instead combines both into tastes, textures, and packaging that is simultaneously new and old school. This may not describe Soylent, but it works much more effectively for vegan fried chicken with biscuits and gravy. The post-industrial palate al-lows us to explain how the different and seemingly opposing ways consumers understand processed food can coincide in the same products.

The “post” in post-industrial is not temporal in nature. Instead, it means that we cannot understand contemporary food practices and tastes unless we take into account the immediate past that they grew out of. We are not finished with industrial processing; we just associate it with a new set of meanings that are shaped by a set of specific values. Like the “post” in post-colonial, post-Fordist, or post-socialist, the post-industrial palate acknowledges how we can’t explain the existence of HIPPEAS maple-bacon-flavored organic, vegan, non-GMO, chickpea-based snack puffs – which claim to release nitrogen into crop soil with a shameless brand pun on politically enlightened flower children – unless we consider the social and cultural implications of what these snacks both embrace and critique about the iconic junk food byproduct-plus-enriched-cornmeal “original” they riff on.

The key is that we engage with the memory of past tastes and ideas, reinvented for the present moment. We interact with what we know, or what we think we know, and with how things used to be by remembering the good old days where we enjoyed innocent pleasures that we look back on both critically and nostalgically from our contemporary, more discerning, and self-aware selves. For example, during a large chunk of our recent history – from at least the 1930s until the 1970s – industrial processing was culturally recognized as a positive transformation; it made foods purer, healthier, and less perishable, in addition to being more scien-tific and modern. Now, of course, we know better.

Still, awareness and the ethical demands we make of some of the ingredients in some of the items in our shopping cart – often only some of the time – still don’t dampen the strong emotional attachments and senses of belonging that we associate with the “good stuff,” in the most wide-ranging sense of what “good” can possibly mean. High-end festive SPAM in South Korea, Vegemite for babies, or ostentatious gourmet concept milkshakes made from locally sourced artisanal ingredients reinforce that the his-tory of industrial processing was also a history of building and feeling a sense of what particular foods promised in that fuzzy version of the past that seems so much sweeter, more authentic, and more right – now that we aren’t in it.

Think abouT The

humble macaroni

and cheese.

Processed foods are by no means passé. The catch is that consumers want to believe that these foods are not industrial, and instead have been reinvented for new contemporary cr it ic isms of old-school mass production. To artful ly operationalize the post-industrial palate, the cliché of a new twist on an old favorite is instructive; the new twist must acknowledge the ways we hope to reject particular versions of the past (i.e. pollution, food additives, one-size-fits-all), while the old favorite must sustain its mystique of nostalgic attachment, whether through form, aesthetic, texture, or micro-production.

As an anthropologist, this became blatantly apparent to me during recent Canada-wide research using co-creative exercises on brand extension, when consumers of diverse back-grounds consistently suggested healthy lifestyle alternatives to, and new cosmopoli-tan flavors and uses for, classic treats. Many choices focused on reinventing nostalgia for a delicious past by redeeming processed food tastes from their unhealthy and artificial as-sociations.

Newer concerns about health and food plea-sures do not invalidate past tastes for pro-cessed foods. Making retro foods relevant through contemporary lifestyle concerns can renew food nostalgia. What elements of the past to hang on to and how to bring those together for the future is an open question that is made answerable and actionable through human-centric design.

Beyond signals and change drivers, it may be useful to keep in mind the liberatory claim that industrially processed foods were made for radically democratizing how we ate, while latching onto our dreams for more access and time freeing us from onerous food prepara-tion and humdrum cleanup. The post-indus-trial utopian agenda is unfolding as we speak; bringing it to more people in better ways can reinvent past food revolutions for the de-mands of a truly innovative present.

Dr. Tania Ahmad is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

Hitting that delicate balance requires a deep awareness of the immediate past and the change drivers in the industry, but it is critical to investigate and explore how the people in a particular target market relate to processed foods – what they may critique, embrace, or profess indifference to. We can’t pretend to know what they think unless we discover and gauge the relevant design principles for multisensory bliss. Only then can we effectively tell people that elevated processed foods are good for the planet, their souls, and for working folks everywhere.

The coming convergence of naTural and indusTrial food

by—

dylan gordon

The World of food Today is in The Throes of a reacTionary Turmoil ThaT daTes, mosT recenTly—

—To The counTer-culTural,. back-To-The-land movemenTs

of The 1960s..

hether the argument at hand is about plastics and pesticides or the processing involved in “fast” or shelf-stable foods, the modern food industry is more and more often painted the villain. As this perspective has moved from the fringes to the mainstream – where organic, local, and natural

foods are rapidly becoming the order of the day – both Big Food and the nimble class of disruptive new food startups nipping at its heels have scrambled to fulfill these shifting appetites.

It may seem hard to imagine from today’s vantage point, but many of the things now critiqued about the modern industrial food system – its techno-scientific “manipulation” of the goods of nature; its speed and convenience; its fortified nutrition and hygienic sterility – were once seen as key parts of a joyous plenty delivered by the highest stages of human and industrial development. In the 1950s, for instance, convenience foods and appliances – as well as the marvels of preservation, distribution, and safety offered by advances in packaging and refrigeration – were widely celebrated. Owning, consuming, preparing, and eating these technological marvels was downright aspirational. Food in its natural state, meanwhile, meant uncertain availability, inconsistent quality, backbreaking labor, and the threat of disease and decay.

Although less evident beneath the vision of natural food that is preeminent today, this excitement and desire for what some might call a modernist approach to food remained, though latent, and has re-emerged as of late. Consider, for instance, the molecular cuisines made fashionable by haute restaurants like elBulli and Alinea. Here, foods are fractionated and recombined, with the aid of materials and procedures best known by food scientists, into novel forms that capture their essences (or the essences of something else entirely): the tomato spherified into the form of a strawberry; the roasted veal posing as charcoal briquette. Ev-erything that is at the symbolic heart of the opposition to the modern food industry – the chemicals, the engineering, the un-natural result – is here recuperated into the engine of food cul-ture’s forefront.

Anthropologists, sociologists, and professionals in media, art, fashion, and design will all tell you that our tastes are part of an endless cycle wherein what is marginal or excluded is co-opted and reimagined, often by elites, into new tastes and products that eventually filter down to the mainstream. Those dirty, longhaired hippies with their macrobiotic diets morphed into California yup-pies eating mesclun mix and Earthbound Farm pre-washed greens found on every corner. Similarly, the TV dinner and its ilk, which have become an object of critique and even disgust in the decades since the 1950s, have morphed into molecular gastronomy. The Twinkie and the Tater Tot these days have their own high-class iterations that entertain and delight flush diners. What remains to be seen is how this cycle will end and how this revalorization of modern, industrial food will enter the mainstream in the wake of organic, natural, and local food.

W

Early indications imply that we are poised for a groundbreaking shift in that long-running war in our culture between the value of nature and the value of industry; between demand for whole, natural foods, on the one hand, and for scientifically augmented or processed ones on the other. The last century (and beyond) has been marked by an oscillation between these poles, with one para-digm or another being valorized while the other was disparaged. Recent cultural conversation, however, suggests that these formerly divergent ways of thinking and speaking about food – and, moreover, of preparing and eating it – are poised for a union.

naTure is noT, as in The 1950s, a backWard realm of

flaWed decay in need of augmenTaTion by scienTific man..

indusTry is noT, as We have iT Today, a chemical-laden.

desTroyer of life and viTaliTy under The yoke of The

modern machine.

Consider, as one prime example, the promotional spin of Doug Evans, founder of Juicero. Their product (think Keurig meets cold-press juicer) is less the object of interest here than Evans’ discourse and his way of speaking about his mission and motivations, which bring together concepts that were unimaginable bedfellows in the past.

“Organic cold-pressed juice,” Evans says, “is rainwater filtered through the soil and the roots and the stems and the plants.” This is a typical evocation found in the naturalist paradigm of food: one of the earth and all that is good that comes from it, and of the natural rhythms and processes of nature. Like a homespun farmer, or better yet, a forager of wild foods, Evans is selling us the unalloyed goodness of nature. But in the next breath, Evans changes course. “You extract the water molecules, the chlorophyll, the anthocyanin and the flavonoids, and the micronutrients,” he tells us. Suddenly, he’s speaking the language of scientific nutri-tion, of superfoods and supplements.

In the end, he brings it all together, and in this little story the power of the industrial paradigm is wedded to the goodness of nature. The result of this entire process, he says, is that “You’re getting this living nutrition. It’s like drinking the nectar of the earth.” Modern processing technology, scientific knowledge, the machine, as well as the hand, are harnessed not to manipulate, or refashion, or im-prove that essence of nature, but to purify and condense it into an elixir of health.

The point is not that there is a new juicer on the market. It is that there is the dawn of a new way of speaking, one that can make sense and one that can inspire. A vocabulary that, instead of counterposing nature to industry and valorizing one at the expense of the other, celebrates the possibilities of their union. Nature is not, as in the 1950s, a backward realm of flawed decay in need of augmentation by scien-tific man. Industry is not, as we have it today, a chemical-laden de-stroyer of life and vitality under the yoke of the modern machine. Instead, each works in the service of the other. This is a wholly differ-ent system of value that, until very recently, was unimaginable and unspeakable.

Dylan Gordon is a resident anthropologist at Idea Couture.

—They’re noT Who you

Think They are.

by—

sTephanie kapTein

farmers

of The fuTure—

Technological innovaTions have long played a role in The advancemenT of agriculTure.

he evolution of grain harvesting equipment reduced the amount of time and labor needed to harvest by more than half. Trac-tors, trucks, and self-propelled machinery powered by the in-ternal combustion engine revo-

lutionized American agriculture by providing a reliable, efficient, and mobile source of power. These agricultural advancements all have one thing in common: They have been, and continue to be, driven by profit. But, while profit provides incentive to invest in technological innovation, it also creates limits – and these limits are becoming in-creasingly concerning.

When the main objective is to increase short-term profit, agricultural advancement is constrained to working within the current production system. According to research published in Ecology and Society, this sys-tem is finite. Peak production of the world’s most important crops and livestock products has come and gone. For instance, peak corn came in 1985, peak wheat in 2004, and peak soy in 2009. This trajectory means food production will eventually plateau, and, in some cases, start to decline.

T

if you WanT innovaTion— look To people, noT profiT.

So how do we prevent the plateau of agricultural in-novation? The answer is almost too straightforward and overstated these days: The focus needs to shift from profit to people. Put simply, the current ap-proaches to technological progress have marginalized the human element in favor of maximizing profit – and this needs to change.

The truth is, though, that the agricultural industry is running out of time – and people. Currently, only 2% of the American population is involved in farming. In 2012, one-third of farmers were age 65 and older and only 6% of farmers were younger than 35 according to the USDA Census of Agriculture. So who will be the farm-ers of the future?

But there are those who are initiating change, like Caleb Harper, Director of the Open Agriculture (OpenAG) initiative at MIT Media Lab. Instead of using technology to remove the human element from the agricultural industry, he wants to increase it with the use of personal food computers. MIT’s agriculture plat-form uses aeroponic technology to grow plants in a completely climate-controlled environment. With 30 sensing points per plant, data points can be observed over time to discover exactly what each plant needs.

It takes a farmer a lifetime of experience to develop the trained eyes to determine if a plant is dying from a nitrogen deficiency, a calcium deficiency, or if it needs more humidity. Harper is making that knowledge in-stantly accessible by creating a common language. Each plant profile will not only show the progress on the plant and when it’s ready, but it will send alerts if the conditions are not optimal for its growth. After carefully listening to the plant, the controlled environ-ment can be altered to achieve the juiciest strawberries or the sweetest basil.

Every time the environment is altered, it creates a new climate recipe. It’s an iterative design and exploration process made possible through an open database. In-dividuals can use their smartphone or tablet to log into the controlled environment from anywhere in the world. They can then select and activate climate recipes cre-ated by others or make changes to create new ones. Because the platform is open-source, the data is avail-able for everyone to use in a language everyone un-derstands. MIT OpenAg has used technology to reframe agriculture not only into an open platform that is ac-cessible to practically everyone, but into one they can find renewed interest in as well.

Agricultural advances are also limited to the external environment in which they exist. Even the most advanced production innova-tions are still vulnerable to unpredictable weather conditions. Shifting climates have already affected America through extreme conditions, such as prolonged periods of heat, heavy downpours, floods, and droughts. According to the National Climate Assess-ment, climate disruptions to agricultural production have in-creased in the past 40 years and are projected to continue to increase over the next 25.

Most young people are not interested in farming. Lindsey Lush-er Shute, executive director of the National Young Farmers Co-alition, notes that, as farm families have struggled over the last century under the effects of globalization, farmland speculation, industrialization, and competing land uses, many have discour-aged their children from staying in the industry. Between 2007 and 2012, there has been a nearly a 20% drop in the number of new farmers nationwide. Shute warns that these barriers to new farmers are barriers to national food security, with a global pop-ulation projected to reach nine billion by 2050.

Innovation stems from the intersection of different people, with different ideas and backgrounds, working together. Agriculture isn’t just for farmers; it’s for electrical engineers, environmental engineers, computer scientists, economists, urban planners, and seventh-grade students. If you want innovation, look to people, not profit.

Stephanie Kaptein is a senior foresight analyst at Idea Couture.

I often find the last question difficult to answer. After all, what is the “right” way to eat, and am I really qualified to determine whether or not I meet that standard? Increasingly, many might argue that I am. But

if I am now the expert on my own health, what former “experts” are out of a job?

defining “righT”

or decades, we, the lay consumers wandering the aisles of the grocery store, have relied on Big Food brands to tell us what, when, how, and why to eat. The claims printed on packaged food labels and proudly touted in television commercials have told us

what it means to be a healthy eater, and those of us who self-identify as healthy have – excuse the pun – eaten it up.

When nutritional studies – many now notorious for being funded by Big Food itself – told us that fat was bad, we flocked in droves to products labeled “non-fat,” “fat-free,” “low-fat,” or “part of a heart-healthy diet.” When carbs became the enemy, we filled our baskets with “sugar-free,” “low-carb,” “high-protein,” “Atkins-approved” items. And when conversations turned to the idea of “everything in moderation,” we started count-ing Weight Watchers points on familiar wrappers while embracing the “permissible indulgence” of cookies pre-portioned into 100-calorie packs.

These waves of clear, socially accepted (albeit transient) definitions of “health” not only made it easier for health-conscious consumers to make decisions at the shelf, but also made Big Food’s job that much easier. After all, if I know millions of consumers equate “health” with “fat-free,” I know what to make, how to sell it, and who to sell it to. Marketers relying on cleanly delineated (if not un-representative) segmentations knew what claims would resonate with Health-Conscious Heather or Nutritious Nancy and could build health-focused brands accordingly. (See: Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Kashi, Special K, Fiber One, Smart Balance, Activia, and so on.)

If this doesn’t feel representative of how you – our health-conscious reader – make choices for your own lifestyle and dietary needs, it’s because it no longer is. Say goodbye to the age of mass-marketed health and hello to the age of personalized, democ-ratized, information-overloaded health.

every year aT my annual physical, my docTor runs

Through a sTandard baTTery of quesTions—

am i sleeping Well?

exercising?

eaTing righT?

f

A recent NPR poll found that roughly 75% of Americans ranked their diets as “good,” “very good,” or “excellent.” While rising rates of obe-sity, diabetes, and heart disease might bring this number into question, it’s not hard to see how so many people view their diets as “healthy.” One may be a vegan who relies on protein-rich soy and grains; another is on the ketogenic diet, which encourages eating lots of fat but limits fruits and vegetables and prohibits grains alto-gether; a third packs their diet full of lean pro-teins, raw nuts, and fruits and vegetables rich in natural sugars.

And these are just a handful of the arguably “healthy eaters” walking around my office right now.

A host of factors have contributed to this new normal. Consumers are exhausted from decades of conflicting claims. (Fat is bad vs. fat is good! Carbs cause weight gain vs. eat more quinoa! An apple a day vs. fruit contains evil sugars! Three square meals vs. snacking is part of a healthy diet!) Social media and its myriad of “experts” only amplify this confusion. Consumers also have unprecedented access to information around biology, nutrition, and medicine, and are more empowered than ever by technologies that measure bodily inputs, outputs, and performance.

As a result, consumers have taken it upon them-selves to define “healthy eating” – and no two define it the same way. Indeed, a recent Nielsen study found that 64% of global consumers say they partake in a specialized diet that restricts consumption of certain foods. For some consum-ers, this is required by food allergies or intoler-ances, or is part of disease prevention or a treatment protocol. For others, a specialized diet is a carefully curated projection of personal brand and convictions. Regardless of the driver, the “right” diet has been transformed from what you say is right for me to what I say is right for me. “Right” is no longer an objective definition, but rather a subjective assessment that relies less on reading nutrition labels and more on a comprehensive consideration of how a certain food fits an individual’s lifestyle.

Big Food has spent decades building healthy brands by telling consumers that their products adhere to an objective definition of health as evidenced by the numbers and claims on the package. But with these shifts, the future for “healthy” Big Food starts to look murky.

Consumers are self-clustering into ever smaller “segments” of healthy eaters: vegetarians vs. paleos vs. nut allergies vs. lactose intolerants vs. celiacs vs. diabetics vs. pre-diabetics vs. weight losers vs. fitness buffs vs. the infinite combina-tions of these and other considerations. Many may already say that their personal brand of “healthy eating” has an N of 1, and more will say so moving forward. As such, Big Food brands clutching to a singular health promise will find their once mass-product lines chasing increas-ingly niche markets.

The question for Big Food now becomes less about which functional claim companies should print on the package, and more about giving consumers the information, optionality, and judgment-free space they need to define their own healthy diets. Consumers will choose the brands that – dare I say it – leave those prescrip-tive functional claims out of the conversation altogether and focus on lifestyle fit instead.

By way of example, consider the following two brands:

Consumers today and moving forward are not asking “Does this brand define health the same way I do?” but rather “Does the brand stand for something? Does it trust me to decide when, how, and why I eat for myself? Does it speak to who I am as a person, rather than to the quantities of particular macronutrients I choose to put in my body?” The future of Big Food will belong to those who stop selling functionally beneficial products and start building emotionally resonant brands.

Michelle Jacobs is AVP, innovation strategy and head of IC New York.

democraTizaTion

of auThoriTy

noW WhaT?

Sure, the popular beverage brand (150% YOY growth since inception) has a “healthy” attribute that ties its product line together (read: antioxidants), but it takes some digging on

their website to find the functional RTBs you might have formerly expected to find front and center. And though its signature product contains only five calories, you’ll never see “diet” or “low calorie” on its labels. Instead, Bai focuses the conversation on flavor, variety, and a brand promise to “never conform.” Does a consumer need to adhere to a specific antioxidant-rich or low-calorie diet to feel Bai is for them? Of course not, because Bai isn’t built around a singular, prescriptive promise of health. Instead, it’s built for (the much broader audience of) people who want a “better” alternative to great-tasting drinks. Whether consumers define “better” as rich in antioxidants, lower in calories, lower in sugar, or free from artificial sweeteners is entirely up to them.

“Health” is what it’s all about at KIND. How does the billion-dollar brand define “health?” I read the entire company website and couldn’t find the answer to this question. But I know what

the brand stands for: treating people (including ourselves) with kindness, transparency (in communications, in packaging), and great taste. The food itself can be a part of a high-fat, high-protein, whole-ingredient, and/or clean-label diet; the brand, on the other hand, transcends these attributes. A kind and honest lifestyle – who wouldn’t aspire to that?

bai —

kind —

The fuTure of meal preparaTion—

by—

gareTh hockley.

maTheW lincez

Tech

or

food?

Who’s. Taking

The lead:.

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and non-traditional food players are team-ing up and taking the first step into “con-

nected culinary.” Both Samsung and LG have an-nounced strategic partnerships with the likes of GrubHub and Amazon for first-generation friction-less ordering and inventory management.

The proliferation of cheap sensors has spurred Amazon to step in with a modular solution that helps consumers retrofit existing technology. Enter the Amazon Dash: a $5 dongle that enables friction-less ordering for any household goods. Eating prepared and fresh meals has never been more affordable and easy.

Then there are other players entering the con-nected culinary space with no dependence on hardware whatsoever. Service offerings like Uber-EATS remove all friction from the cooking experi-ence by bringing healthy and affordable meals to the mobile-first generation. It’s not a leap to think of a possible future where more and more meals are completely prepared offsite and the kitchen is only used for special occasions.

connecTed

culinary is here

ou’ve probably read in Business Insider or heard from someone on your technology team that the Internet of Things (IoT) will revolu-tionize the world. You probably bought a Nest Learning Thermostat a few years ago and thought, “wow, heating my house remotely is really convenient!” You probably even have a few other smart de-vices in your home, like a TV or smoke detector. If you’ve really got

some bucks to spare, you probably also have a smart fridge that looks cool and tells you what you need to replenish without even pulling out your smartphone. In your business, your tech and supply chain teams are probably testing smart sensors and working through a bunch of pilot programs to test their value.

That’s the extent of your IoT experience so far. On the consumer side, you’ve got a bunch of slick looking devices that connect to “remote control” smartphones, and on the business side you have a proliferation of sensors that are helping to monitor and track inventory.

Stating the obvious, all first generation technologies are overhyped and do not fulfill their promised potential. It’s precisely why they call the adoption period before mass adoption “the chasm.” Crossing the chasm requires a convergence of human insights, technology, new and unconventional partnerships, new busi-ness models, and affordability where the exponential value is created for both consumers and businesses.

IBM’s Chef Watson is the first real step forward in bringing intelligence to the world of connected culinary. Chef Watson assists the at-home cook in making better recipe decisions by matching ingre-dients in the fridge with recipes from its Bon Ap-pétit database. The beauty of Chef Watson (and any other solution that’s hinged on machine learn-ing) is that it gets better and better with the more data it has. It’s easy to imagine a future where your medical and social data is connected to Chef Wat-son so that all your meals are customized to your unique nutritional needs and social settings.

It’s not only the major OEMs that are entering the connected culinary space. Niche products like Juicero (a connected cold-press juice system that promises to revolutionize nutrition with frictionless ordering and nutritional tracking) and Pantelligent (a connected fry pan that helps consumers fry the perfect steak or salmon) are also emerging at a rapid pace.

From the examples above, it’s easy to see that the current connected culinary experience lacks cohe-sion. This is typical of early iterations, however, and you can bet that this won’t last for too much longer. In fact, Apple has already attempted to bring cohesion to this space with their HomeKit, and Samsung has an open-source operating system for the IoT in the works.

y

crossing The chasm requires a convergence of human insighTs, Technology, neW and unconvenTional parTnerships, neW business models, and affordabiliTy Where The exponenTial value is creaTed for boTh consumers and businesses..

Clearly, Big Food is a laggard in the connected culinary space. This makes sense, given that technology isn’t part of the Big Food core competency. Nevertheless, this will need to change if Big Food wants to stay relevant and at the top of grocery lists.

Here are a few possible scenarios for Big Food to consider:

To win in the world of connected culinary, food companies need to understand the end-to-end value chain in order to know where and how they can play and which strategy (build, buy, or partner) is best to bring the opportunity to life.

The connected culinary value chain includes a front-end user experience layer, a middleware insights layer, and a back-end infrastructure layer. To be successful, food com-panies must become human-centric, future-oriented, technology-fueled, and design-centric. To make this transi-tion, food companies will need a transformation that ad-dresses the following:

Addressing these points now using both foresight and strategy is a small investment that could provide a big payoff downstream. After all, you shouldn’t be letting tech lead in a space that food knows best.

Gareth Hockley is a senior foresight strategist at Idea Couture.

Mathew Lincez is VP, futures at Idea Couture.

— A future-oriented understanding of existing and potential changes that connected culinary could enable in market conditions, and how those could threaten Big Food’s current position within the market.

— The opportunities, including products, services, and business models, that connected culinary could enable for Big Food now and in the future.

— The design principles required to deliver a human-centric connected culinary experience.

— The data that could be made available from a connected culinary ecosystem, and how to lever-age that data to drive value and reduce costs.

— Privacy and security protocols to ensure con-sumer trust is central to the connected culinary experience.

— Investments in both the systems and people required to support a connected culinary strategy.

— Understanding of when to build, buy, or partner in order to bring a connected culinary experience to life.

Tech has a first-mover ad-vantage in terms of user experience design, as well

as a monopoly on the ecosystem and key enablers (like AI), which create a barrier for entry into the IoT for more manufacturing-focused industries, like Big Food. In this scenario, traditional channels are eroded, and Big Food will be beholden to the tech ecosystem in order to market and provision its products to consumers. “Foodpreneurs” who work at the intersection of food and tech will be the ones who will partner with tech companies and reap the rewards.

In this scenario, Big Food makes an early investment in connected culinary. This

early investment enables Big Food to have the first access to data analytics and frictionless ordering systems, giving it a valuable first-mover advantage. Big Food will, in turn, have a leg up and will be able to transform the back-end infrastruc-ture to support the connected culinary experience for friction-less ordering before it hits the mainstream. It will also give marketing teams access to data that will help inform their messaging in traditional channels and their product develop-ment process, eliminating costs and decreasing lead time so that Big Food can move with and lead markets, instead of being reactionary.

WhaT connecTed culinary

could mean for big food

hoW big food should respond

Tech pushes ouT food—

big food leads connecTed culinary—

ur brains are wired to seek out sensory experiences, and food taps into all of them. Food also inspires us to share our experiences with others, triggering pleasure sensors that keep us coming back. In a world increasingly void of genuine, authentic human connection, food remains the one source we can turn to for a plate full of comfort, nostalgia, and sustenance.

We can see this evolution unfolding, from the diet fads of the past to the personalized nutrition plans of the future. As time goes on, the human experience around food will undoubtedly continue to progress, and so too will consumer expectations.

An increasingly digitized food experience is something that we cannot overlook as we move forward into the future of the food experience. Our future food systems must not only strive to sustain the planet and reverse the effects of past business models, but also work to satisfy the human necessity for an experiential connection to what we eat.

Food is at the heart of who we are. Food can connect us. It tells a story of our culture, our history, our values, and our societal norms. It is the common denominator that connects us all, and is intricately tied to our existence as humans. As we head into the fourth agri-cultural revolution and continue to explore the digitization of food systems and culinary experiences, it would be no surprise if the next technological upheaval is not in cyberspace, but instead on our plates.

o.