Future of FMCG · Track 03
Food &
Drink
Your brand almost certainly lives in an occasion you didn't design - assembled around it by culture, habit, and decades of retail decisions. The question is whether you're still the right thing for that occasion. And whether the most valuable one you could own has already been named by someone else, or is still waiting for a brief.
What this room is asking
Three questions that cut to the specific, non-obvious pressure points in food and drink right now.
The hypothesis
Heinz ketchup lives in the burger occasion, the chips occasion, the fry-up. All the same emotional register - comfort, indulgence, informality. But Heinz has the brand permission to go somewhere completely different. The late-night snack occasion. The hangover occasion. The "I'm eating alone and this is my treat" occasion. None of those have been designed for. Maggi has done this brilliantly in South and Southeast Asia - not as a meal accompaniment but as the base of a late-night comfort meal that university students have genuinely ritualised around. Heinz's equivalent hasn't been written as a brief yet. The question is whether it ever will be - or whether a challenger brand writes it first and takes territory that a 150-year-old brand should have owned by right.
The hypothesis
Doritos launched Flamin' Hot as a niche variant fifteen years ago. It is now one of the biggest flavour platforms in snacking globally - not because heat was new, but because a specific emotional register of heat (intense, almost confrontational, identity-signalling) hadn't been designed for at scale. Meanwhile most mainstream food brands are still treating "bold flavour" as a line extension rather than a cultural statement. The next major flavour opportunity in Western FMCG is not another heat variant. It's the umami-forward, fermentation-led, genuinely complex flavour profile that a generation raised on ramen, miso, and kimchi now considers baseline. The brand that normalises that at mass scale will own the next flavour generation. The window is open. It won't be indefinitely.
The hypothesis
Actimel built a functional platform on genuine probiotic science and held it for twenty years. That window has been replicated - or attempted - by dozens of brands, most of which are packaging ordinary yoghurt in clinical-looking containers and hoping the consumer doesn't look too closely. The consumer is increasingly sophisticated about the difference between a genuine functional claim and a wellness aesthetic. The brands that will win the next phase of functional food are the ones with real science and the design intelligence to communicate it without condescension or jargon. Huel is closest to cracking this in the meal replacement space. Nobody has done it yet in everyday grocery. That is both a warning and a brief.
The hypothesis
The 3pm emotional dip. The post-commute decompression. The Sunday slow. These are not functional occasions - they are emotional ones, defined by a specific mood state the consumer wants to shift or sustain. Every food and drink product is currently designed for a functional occasion. Almost none are designed for an emotional one. The brand that names a specific mood occasion precisely enough - not "feel better" but the particular texture of a specific moment - and designs a product, ritual, and cultural framing around it is entering completely unoccupied territory. The question is not whether the opportunity is real. The question is whether your organisation can write the emotional brief before it can write the product brief. Most can't. That is the constraint worth examining.
Three specific opportunities - real, emotionally grounded, and waiting for someone to write the brief properly.
Whitespace 01
The mood occasion
The 3pm dip. The post-commute decompression. The Sunday slow. Not functional occasions - emotional ones. Every food and drink product is designed for functional need. The brand that designs for a specific emotional state with the precision of Gatorade's physiological brief is entering territory with no direct competition.
Whitespace 02
The next flavour generation
Umami-forward, fermentation-led, genuinely complex. A generation raised on ramen, kimchi, and gochujang considers these baseline. The brand that normalises this palette at mass FMCG scale - not as a niche variant but as a genuine proposition - writes the flavour brief for the next decade before anyone else does.
Whitespace 03
Functional food with genuine credibility
Specific claims at specific doses with specific documented effects - not "supports your immune system." The consumer is now sophisticated enough to distinguish science from wellness theatre. The brand that brings Actimel-level scientific specificity to a new functional territory will own it the way Actimel has owned gut health for twenty years.
A closed-door dialogue for food and drink innovation leaders who are ready to examine the real brief - not the brief that was approved.
Cross-organisation, same vertical. The person from a global snacking brand sitting alongside the person from a functional drink challenger sitting alongside the person from a heritage condiment brand. The structural patterns are more similar than they appear from inside any single organisation. The cross-company view is where the most useful insight lives.
Who belongs here
Heads of Innovation, CMOs, Brand Directors, and Design Directors with authority over the product brief. People writing the next thing - not presenting the last one.
The Signal Scan
48 hours before, every participant receives six prompts specific to food and drink. Which occasion are you trying to own? Which flavour territory are you watching? Results revealed live - the room sees the aggregated picture before anyone has spoken.
Off the record
Chatham House rules. The conversations about which innovation the NPD process killed, where the functional claim is ahead of the actual science, and what own-label has genuinely closed the gap on - these require protection to be honest.
Grounded in live work
The questions are built from real briefs and real design challenges across food and drink categories. Case material from Seymourpowell's work in the category provides the starting point. The room provides the honest examination.
Request
a seat
We review every request individually. The people we're looking for are navigating a specific innovation challenge in food and drink - and are prepared to examine it honestly in a room with peers from other organisations.