What’s simmering in 2017?
The year will be awash with predictions and trends which are undoubtedly exciting.
Chefs, consultants and restaurateurs all have their understanding of what will push the industry forward.
However, the usefulness of these trends can be out of reach of many marketers and their brands, and even your average Filipino homemaker.
Innovations in packaging, the inclusion of the latest “it” ingredient in dishes, or even a new dining concept may not be what a mainstream audience experiences in the short term. At best, they serve as inspiration for what might be and that’s OK.
Late last year, I had the honor of speaking at CCA Manila’s “Future of Food” Conference along with other industry luminaries both here and abroad.
I talked about what Filipinos will be hungry for in 2017, but before you read any further, I want to make it clear that I am neither a chef nor an industry luminary.
My work as a strategist for McCann Worldgroup Philippines has put me in a position of privilege of getting to know people’s relationship with food and cooking because I am constantly immersed in their lives.
So, for 2017, these are what I know to be simmering and are likely to grow exponentially in the next few years.
A new generation of weekend cooks
Young adult Filipinos will be trying their hand at cooking as part of “adulting,” as we’ve learned from our recently launched Truth About Youth Philippines, part of a global study of 33,000 interviews across 18 countries including the US, Germany and Japan.
Cooking is considered one way of “adulting”—an exercise of both choice and responsibility. The appetite for cooking is also driven by the democratization of the kitchen. Suddenly, cooking techniques and how-to recipes are accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
However, while cooking on weekdays is less appealing because of traffic and irregular schedules, cooking on weekends allows young people to try out recipes they see from their social media feeds. It’s also on weekends when they have more time to shop for ingredients and gather friends and family to taste their creations.
Filipino fusion—right at home
Filipino households have been cooking mainly the same dishes since we started tracking them three years ago.
However, what’s coming up now is that they are more open to experimentation with traditional dishes, instead of preparing new ones altogether.
Encouraged by positive reviews from recipes they find online or inspired by what they enjoy from restaurants or from their travels, home cooks are adding twists to what’s familiar.
Adobo is given a makeover with the addition of cooking cream, sinigang is being “soured” by fruit such as watermelon or being transformed altogether as a seasoning for fried chicken or rice (at least as far as sinigang mixes go).
You can now even purchase green mango sinigang mix from the supermarket.
This tells us that our appetite for experimentation in the kitchen stays bound by our comfort zone.
On a practical level, this means working with ingredients typically found in the cupboard or applying cooking techniques that we already know.
YouTube vs parents as a source of recipes
Young Filipinos are pursuing cooking with more interest than their parents did at their age. They are exposed to food and kitchen concepts, and are growing up in an environment where talk about food is magnified because of early access to the internet.
However, a gap exists between their desire to learn and what they can learn at home from their parents, so they’re turning to YouTube and the rest of the online world for answers.
While the education they’re getting makes them more culinary-aware, family recipes are in danger of not getting passed on because the learning is not directly coming from their parents or grandparents.
Young Filipinos’ food heroes are celebrity chefs and food bloggers, whose lives and kitchens they’re now more familiar with than those of their parents.
Food for thought for brands and marketers
With all the conversation exchanged about food and cooking in the country, how might our brands participate in a positive, relevant way?
Here are a few things to consider:
- Do we have products and services that cater to young adults as they experiment and navigate their way around the kitchen?
- How might we make homemakers see the value of weekday cooking if they don’t have the energy to do so over the rest of the week?
- Do we have products or services that can be added on to or incorporated into traditional dishes, given that people are more open to experimentation within what’s familiar?
- How might we genuinely bring parents and children together in the kitchen?
- How might institutions and organizations encourage young Filipino cooks to discover Filipino cuisine and innovate it?
For some, it might be a matter of revisiting the role our brands play in people’s lives and looking at how we can address the changes happening in their kitchens. For others, we have a fantastic opportunity to create relevance and excitement because nothing gets a Filipino more involved than food.
