Last month I was lucky enough to sit in a talk by Irina Beule from Innova Market Insights. A really informative seminar discussing the top trends in Sports Nutrition in 2019 so far.
Here at Opalbond we deal with lots of new enquiries each week, so we are quite privileged to be so up to date with the trends in what brands, and also what kind of products/ingredients startups are wanting to focus on.
The top trends that Innova has highlighted so far are the following;
- Adventurous consumer
- Plant Kingdom
- Fibre
- Snacking
Not quite the order that I anticipated, as I expected snacking to be number 1. However, as with most things, there are lots of over laps and blurred lines.
The adventurous consumer trend I find really interesting. With most of the products we supply, we see a base set of flavours that brands opt for, almost a starter pack as such. For protein bars you would normally expect to see flavours including chocolate brownie, caramel, cookie. For effervescent tablets you’d expect to see flavours like orange, citrus and berry. All quite “safe”, non polarising flavours that the consumer likes. Once a brand has a few ‘crowd pleaser’ products, they tend to use new SKUs to come up with more out of the box, imaginative flavours that do the exact opposite – generate a polarised response. These kinds of products are more risky, but as shown by Innova – consumers love being different and adventurous.
I remember a couple of years ago seeing a brand selling cricket protein bars. Actual, dried crickets, cold pressed into a bar. A massive no from me, but the brand is still going and is becoming increasingly popular, just showing how polarising products can fly off the shelves!
At Opalbond we love being experimental and searching for new flavours to work with our products. My current favourite? A rhubarb flavoured effervescent tablet. So good!
If you want to extend your product range to include more adventurous flavours, please get in touch at enquiries@opalbond.co.uk