The Future of Snack Foods is… Bugs?

The shifting consumer preference toward food that is good for you (protein, natural, organic and others) has resulted in some interesting corporate moves including Hershey’s purchase of Krave and subsequent  dried meat bars. Some companies, like PepsiCo prefer to be more forward thinking and therefore monitor potential new snacks and ingredients. While crickets based protein bars from Exo are already available, we question the degree to which bug protein will make it at least in the western world.

“Bug-related stuff is big,” says Nooyi, speaking at the Net/Net event at the New York Stock Exchange.The multinational food-and-beverage behemoth Pepsi spends considerable time and resources predicting what consumers will want to snack on in the future so that it can be the provider of those snacks.Adam Jeffery | CNBCIndra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo.

What customers will want, soon enough, is cheap sources of protein.

“One year, three year, five year, ten year: we have different people looking at different horizons, because if you believe in the ten year horizons and what we are seeing, some of the weirdest food and beverage habits are showing up,” says Nooyi. Even if consumers are not ready for those trends now, Pepsi needs to be prepared.

Source: Pepsi CEO names the snack food of the future: bugs

About the Author

Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer
I'm the Chief Investment Officer of Tematica Research and editor of Tematica Investing newsletter. All of that capitalizes on my near 20 years in the investment industry, nearly all of it breaking down industries and recommending stocks. In that time, I've been ranked an All Star Analyst by Zacks Investment Research and my efforts in analyzing industries, companies and equities have been recognized by both Institutional Investor and Thomson Reuters’ StarMine Monitor. In my travels, I've covered cyclicals, tech and more, which gives me a different vantage point, one that uses not only an ecosystem or food chain perspective, but one that also examines demographics, economics, psychographics and more when formulating my investment views. The question I most often get is "Are you related to…."

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