Talking Points: The Big Surprises in 2017

In this month’s Talking Points, we’re excited to share the main findings of our annual We Didn’t See That Coming survey of food trends. We received responses from over 200 food industry players—ranging from start-up founders to CEOs of billion-dollar companies, and from authors and academics through to venture capitalists, bankers, and everyone in between (in food, all voices matter). As in previous years, we asked (in confidence): “What surprised you the most in the last 12 months?”—but we also asked a second question: “What food innovation do you think presents the biggest commercial opportunity over the next five years?” We received some great responses from this informal survey and are very appreciative of the time folk put in to reply. In this note, we will focus more on the first question, saving the second one to feed into our January 2018 edition (there is still time if you want to weigh in on this question).