MENU MATTERS: CONSUMER NEEDS(CONT.)


the smell of Cinnabon or Auntie Anne’s. How do you prioritize those same scent cues for the in-store bakery experience?


Maeve: There are so many learnings that are applicable to retail brands and store operators. Another key theme for 2025 is giving consumers ways to live more boldly, to shake them out of their funk. When we asked consumers which foods and flavors are the most bold to them, the top three answers were spicy, sweet and spicy, and sweet. So you can play with those flavors more – why can’t the deli case look vibrant and bold and feature lots of spicy flavors? Consumers say that sweet flavors are bold – what does that mean for the in-store bakery and its products? How can you push the limits there?


Mike: I also think there’s a lot of overlap between this desire for bold new experiences and consumers’ desire to escape, which is another theme that kept coming up over and over again when we studied consumers. Those bold flavors may give them a little escape from the monotony of everyday life, but there are a lot of ways to escape.


Maeve: There are the literal escapes, where consumers are going on a trip or on vacation.


Mike: Which was huge in the past year. The TSA reported that the ten biggest passenger screening days in its history all took place in 2024. So consumers clearly have this desire to get away.


Maeve: And when they return home, they look for those foods and flavors they discovered overseas. In fact, 37% of consumers say they do, which of course impacts their friends, family, coworkers, etc. who discover those same foods and flavors by proxy. So that opens up more opportunities to feature unique global foods and ingredients in CPG products and the supermarket foodservice program. If they’re having that high-end burrata or stracciatella in Italy, is that represented in the cheese case?


Mike: That leaves our final two need states under that core “give me something new” state, and the first is giving consumers new ways to think about value. You can’t not talk about value and pricing, topics that were top of mind throughout 2024 and look to have staying power as we discuss possible tariffs in 2025. But in many ways we’ve shot ourselves in the foot by focusing so much on price alone.


Maeve: We’ve seen a price war to the bottom in 2024, which not only hasn’t been enough to make up for lost ground in foodservice, but it devalues so many brands in the long term and makes it hard to ever raise prices when necessary in the future.


Mike: It’s also not only about price even in the consumer’s eyes. When we asked consumers which attributes increase the value of a product, price and quality were neck and neck, with 57% of consumers saying price increases value while 55% said quality does. Lead with those two attributes, but determine your entire value proposition beyond price.


Maeve: We saved the best for last.


Mike: I really do think this one matters so much on an existential level, for our industry and beyond.


Maeve: You have to give consumers new ways to experience the human touch and to connect with other people.


Mike: In this age of AI and tech, consumers are missing that human touch. They’re interacting with screens and kiosks constantly. Couple that with the loneliness epidemic, where over a third of consumers told us they didn’t eat a single meal with another person in the past week, and you can see the clear need we have to solve for.


Maeve: And is there a better industry than the food industry to solve this need? Hospitality should be at our core. When we asked consumers what would make an experience more human, the number one option they chose was having a “warm, meaningful interaction with another person during the experience.” A chat with someone at the deli counter, bakery, or prepared foods area may be the only opportunity to do that during the in-store experience.


Mike: So those are our core consumer needs for 2025: give consumers something new, and you can do that by focusing on new multisensory experiences, developing new flavors and products that help them live boldly, giving them new ways to escape through ingredients and dishes, helping them think about value in new ways by focusing on the entire value proposition, and finally giving them new ways to experience the human touch.


Maeve: I think I speak for both of us when I say we’re excited to help brands develop brand new concepts in 2025.


WHAT’S IN STORE | 2025


© 2025 International Dairy Deli Bakery Association


Menu Matters: Consumer Needs


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