Taste Is No Longer Enough

Having worked with food companies for more than 20 years, we at Pulse hear a lot of aphorisms about the CPG food industry. One of the most common has been: “Doesn’t matter how healthy it is, if it doesn’t taste good, people won’t buy it.”

A bit trite, but generally true. Consumers want food that tastes good. But we are long past the days of healthy food that tastes like cardboard. It is now also abundantly clear that for consumers, good taste is not enough. They demand that their foods do more. That they are nutritious, that they support their healthy lifestyles, and that the products they consume are made sustainably.

That can be a tall order for a food company, but some are making concerted efforts to make sure they can meet the challenge. One of those companies is Unilever, which has adopted a product testing framework that moves well beyond just taste.

“Today, just taste is no longer enough,” says president of Unilever’s nutrition division, Hanneke Faber.

Unilever’s product testing framework designates products that meet all four of their consumer-driven criteria–taste, clean label, better for you, and better for the planet–as “holistically superior.” The company has pushed the percentage of products designated as “holistically superior” up to 89% and those products are driving growth.

That’s the bottom line–both figuratively and literally. Foods that meet consumers’ demands for taste, health and sustainability sell.

For food manufacturers, the marketplace has been evolving rapidly for more than a decade. Trends in health & wellness and sustainability have altered the landscape, driving innovations and reformulations, dramatically shifting the product assortment at retail, and inducing the entrance of often well-funded startups into the marketplace.

All of those factors mean competition is intense and consumers have a wide range of choice. For food brands to be successful in this environment, they must not only meet the demands of consumers, but do so credibly and consistently. Far too many companies find themselves chasing the latest trend, rushing new products or reformulations into the marketplace in an attempt to capture some market share, but without the long-view in mind.

That’s why Unilever’s new testing framework is smart. It ensures at the product development phase that their foods will be able to compete in the marketplace. Kudos to Unilever. More companies should follow their lead.

And once those products are developed and available, it behooves manufacturers to ensure that consumers are well informed. Those same consumers who demand healthy, tasty and sustainably-produced foods tend to crave more information not less. To realize a return on the commitment to “holistically superior” products, Unilever–and all food brands–need also to deliver on the marketing end of the equation.

That means credible information delivered by trusted sources.

We help health brands earn recommendations to consumers from their most trusted source of information–their own health professionals. To learn more, visit pulsehw.com.