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Theres a new shadow in town, pardner

November 16, 2010 by Suzy Badaracco — President, Culinary Tides Inc

My world consists of an overlapping series of chaos, blips, shadows and trends. Not only do contenders move through each of these stages, they interact with, ricochet off of, and go head-to-head with other trends. Acting like the balls simultaneously set in play in a giant pinball game, trends operate in a three dimensional play space but their trajectory and lifecycle are affected by the movements around them.

Chaos represents all of the information coming to you during your day at the office, at a conference, in your e-mail, etc. Blips arise when a contender within the fabric of chaos gets a bit more attention than the rest. It’s not a trend, it’s just noteworthy.

A shadow is a pre-trend phase where the contender has enough support from other surrounding trends, but hasn’t yet garnered a voice of its own. A shadow needs a champion, which can be a company, government, advocacy group, media, university, or any other force with an interest in supporting its birth.

A trend, therefore, is a contender which ties into other existing trends, has a champion and a name. Essentially, if you can Google a trend – you have missed the birth entirely.

The shadow phase is the most treacherous phase and if it is misread it can line up a company to be intercepted by competitors, attacked by adversarial or government groups, arrive too early or too late, or be directed toward the wrong audience altogether. On the flipside, if a contender enters the shadow phase with strong ties to other trends but no one takes notice, it is in danger of becoming an orphan. Orphans are well supported pre-trend events with no voice and, if left alone, will simply fade away having never birthed as a trend.

This brings us to the new shadow in town … the Deep North.

The Deep North is a new travel-industry trend that is now setting up for possible influence on the food industry. This phenomenon is called a courier – when a trend from a neighboring industry is carried into the food category. Couriers can come from travel, wine, pharmaceutical, and countless other directions.

The Deep North is represented by travel to colder, sometime arctic regions which also tend to be isolated. Some examples include Lapland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Nepal, Siberia, and Antarctica. Deep North travel contains the sub-trend of extreme travel involving interests such as snow shoeing to off the grid locations, mountain climbing, ice climbing, helicopter skiing, arctic kayaking and the like.

What’s the tie-in to food?

During times of an economic crisis or involvement in a war (and we have both) Americans go into lockdown mode and they temporarily shut out the exotic and experimental aspects of their lives. This phenomenon can be tracked in other industries, not just the food category. For the travel industry, this translated to travel destinations becoming less exotic and experimental. Travel went to large, safe cities, English speaking or English friendly regions, and regional American travel grew. In the food industry, we saw comfort food (again), regional American food, heritage, heirloom, etc.

This swing to the Deep North in the travel industry is indicative of consumers coming out of the economic crisis and war emotionally, if not financially, too. It is a move away from fear. This change is seen in food and flavors as well with both becoming more experimental and adventurous. Food and beverage flights, insect eating, wild game, and black foods (black garlic, black mushrooms, black truffles, etc), all on the uptick in the news again.

Deep North travel is paralleling the swing back to more adventurous eating experiences. And while clanning (gathering) has been a standard behavior as late for the food industry, Deep North travel signals a return to individualism, risk taking, and getting away from the pack. While the foods from these regions also are getting recent press, it is hard to say if they will stay as the next big flavor trend influencer as we do not have large immigrant populations here from these regions. But if nothing else, the swing back to the exotic, risk taking, adventurous side of travel must be paid attention too as the food and flavor trends are now hot on the trail.