Top 5 Food and Beverage Megatrends for 2024: Part 2

Highlights

• The future of personalized performance products is in hydration and energy.
• Consumers want authentic, straightforward communication from brands.
• Collaborating with consumers and suppliers generates new product possibilities.

The 2024 Food and Beverage Megatrends

In Part 1 of our Food and Beverage Megatrends for 2024, we described how more consumers are thinking of food as a path to wellness. Consumers are also refocusing their approach to health, with a growing emphasis on prevention. 

Here, we explore the last three megatrends that food and beverage brands should know to succeed in 2024:

1. Personalized Performance

The ability to personalize products has become extremely popular, especially among younger generations. This approach is also showing up in food and beverage, with performance products leading the way. Increasingly, active consumers are focusing on addressing their hydration and energy needs to achieve optimal performance during workouts—and throughout the day.

Brands are responding, with hydration-related claims on new sports nutrition and soft drinks growing at a 10% CAGR in the past three years.¹ Beyond electrolytes, hydration-focused products can include various functional ingredients that allow consumers to match the beverage to their specific need. Since consumers’ energy needs are also diverse (including energy to perform, recovery after exercise, a kick start, and sustained energy), personalized energy products offer another opportunity.²

2. Authenticity

In a world of information overload, consumers are craving trustworthy, authentic brands that communicate in a simple, straightforward way. Consumers globally want most to see the following items simplified on the package: brand overview, shelf-life, product storytelling, and sustainability information.³

The importance of sustainability continues to grow, with 64% of consumers wanting to see straightforward communication about companies’ sustainability efforts on the package.⁴ Within sustainability, nature protection is the top effort consumers want companies to make (ahead of sustainable packaging and improving waste management).⁵ Forest protection claims in food and beverage have grown at a 37% CAGR over the last three years, indicating brands may also be prioritizing this.⁶

3. Co-Creation

This last megatrend playing a prominent role in food and beverage is the co-creation of products. We've seen major snack and beverage companies collaborate with consumers (through social media and on-pack messaging) to develop new flavors for their product lines. Co-creation can generate high engagement and excitement among consumers, with the resulting products often selling well.

Co-creation to include key trendy ingredients may be next. One in three consumers globally always look at ingredients of interest on the product package, and nearly half think protein is the most important ingredient.⁷ One example of a star ingredient taking off in new products is protein- and fiber-rich millet in cookie/sweet biscuit launches, which has grown at a 17% CAGR in the last five years.⁸ Collaboration with suppliers is also effective since it can include ideation, trend insights, and formulation expertise.

Your Ingredient Partner

The 2024 food and beverage megatrends provide key insights that brands can utilize to better communicate with consumers and address their evolving needs. As your trusted ingredient partner, you can rely on Glanbia Nutritionals to share the latest consumer insights and industry trends you need to help your brand succeed. Watch our on-demand Megatrends webinar today.

Contact us to learn how you can use our healthy ingredients, including our proteins, bioactives, micronutrients, and custom premix solutions, to make your products even better!

References

1. Innova Database, 2023. Global, 2020H2 – 2023H1.
2. Glanbia Nutritionals, Global U&A Study – US, 2023. 
3-4. Innova Market Insights, Innova Trends Survey 2024.
5. Innova Market Insights, Innova Lifestyle &Attitudes Survey 2023.
6. Innova Database, 2023. Global, 2020H2 – 2023H1.
7. Innova Market Insights, Innova Trends Survey 2024.
8. Innova Database, 2023. Global 2018H2 – 2023H1.