Taste king, texture queen
Taste king, texture queen
TASTE KING, TEXTURE QUEEN
After having highlighted various aspects of sustainability, health and naturality in our last trendblog articles, this time we focus on indulgence. One of our global megatrends reflects the need for indulgent moments and is called “live intense”. It’s defined as creating extraordinary & indulgent food experiences stimulating all your senses. One crucial element here is the role of texture that we like to summarize as: “taste king, texture queen”. While it’s widely known that taste is king for food & drink products, texture as queen is pushing back the boundaries of indulgence and increasingly becoming a focus for innovation.
WHAT CONSUMERS LOOK FOR IN TEXTURE
For consumers, food is much more than just nutrition – it’s indulgence, a multi-sensory experience, and a way to express themselves. 50% of consumers globally seek adventure from unknown food & drink products and are interested in trying out new products or experiences. According to FMCG Gurus, 1 in 2 consumers like food & beverage products with new and unusual flavors and textures. This substantial target group opens abroad scope for texture innovation.
For special occasions, consumers are even more likely to seek unusual textures; 77% of consumers do so according to FMCG Gurus. Furthermore, 44% of them are even willing to pay a premium for food & drink products with unusual textures. Mouthfeel significantly influences the eating experience and ensures a multi-sensory pleasure. Textures like chewy, crispy or crunchy are particularly sought after by consumers in food items.
The perfect photo for social media is a must for many and texture does play a vital role here. The hashtag #crunchy for example has more than 2.7 million posts on Instagram.
TEXTURE WITH INCLUSIONS
One option to create such texture innovation is by adding inclusions to food & drink products. Inclusions can level up yogurts, ice creams, beverages, bakery fillings and toppings & sauces among others – in both retail and food service. At AGRANA Fruit, we are experts in incorporating manifold inclusions into our preparations that can easily be added to all the applications mentioned above. Adding the inclusions in liquid form makes aseptic transfer possible where necessary and decreases complexity at the customer’s production site.
Our range of preparations with inclusions features manifold options:
Chocolate inclusions (splits & crunchies):
Our aseptic chocolate inclusions delivered in a liquid system are especially suitable for yogurt applications. The chocolate splits and crunchies stay crunchy over the whole shelf life of the product. They can be used in both drinking and spoonable yogurts and tastewise can be combined with both fruity and brown flavor preparations.
HAVE WE GOT YOUR ATTENTION?
Curious to find out more about texture innovation in food & drink and AGRANA’s expertise in the world of preparations with inclusions? Contact us for a tailor-made proposal of how to level up your portfolio with texture innovations. We look forward to co-creating the next pleasurable eating experience together with you.
