The Future of Snack Foods is… Bugs?
The shifting consumer preference toward food that is good for you (protein, natural, organic and others) has resulted in some interesting corporate moves including Hershey’s purchase of Krave and subsequent dried meat bars. Some companies, like PepsiCo prefer to be more forward thinking and therefore monitor potential new snacks and ingredients. While crickets based protein bars from Exo are already available, we question the degree to which bug protein will make it at least in the western world.
“Bug-related stuff is big,” says Nooyi, speaking at the Net/Net event at the New York Stock Exchange.The multinational food-and-beverage behemoth Pepsi spends considerable time and resources predicting what consumers will want to snack on in the future so that it can be the provider of those snacks.Adam Jeffery | CNBCIndra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo.
What customers will want, soon enough, is cheap sources of protein.
“One year, three year, five year, ten year: we have different people looking at different horizons, because if you believe in the ten year horizons and what we are seeing, some of the weirdest food and beverage habits are showing up,” says Nooyi. Even if consumers are not ready for those trends now, Pepsi needs to be prepared.