Trends Impacting Potatoes

Trends Impacting Potatoes. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

During this year’s annual Potato Expo there was a lot of talk about consumer trends and how that was impacting the potato industry. Maeve Webster, the Director for Datassential, a research driven firm that specializes in menu trends had some key information.

WEBSTER: Understanding consumer and operator data is really the best way to understand whether a trend is something you need to know more about or is it something you might be able to pass over. Not all trends are alike. It’s all well and good to understand that poutine is a trend, but where is it in the industry. Is it something you or your customers need to jump on

Poutine is a Canadian dish with cheese and brown gravy covered French Fries. Webster says they look at trends in a four-stage cycle.

WEBSTER: Some may move all the way through to ubiquity, some might actually die on the vine before they even hit adoption. Again this is where you come back to understanding consumer and operator data to understand whether these trends have a strong likelihood of moving forward from inception to adoption where you are talking about more casual dining independence, maybe some quick service independence through to proliferation where it begins to hit the chains and this is where it becomes a trend that’s really impacting the mass market.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.