This post brought to you by me, The Reluctant Eater, coming from inside the Julian Hotel & Spa in downtown Boulder, host of Naturally Boulder Days 2008. The first of two breakout sessions has just concluded. Although I begrudgingly passed up both The Climate for Innovation - What is it about Boulder? and The Perfect Consumer Storm - What do we know about the market today? I learned a great deal in Cutting Edge Trends - What’s hot and why? Did we see it coming?
Moderated by Doug Radi of Rudi’s Organic Bakery, the “panel” (each speaker essentially spoke for 20 minutes, followed by questioning all three for 15 minutes) was made up of:
- Blake Waltrip - Growth Ventures
- Steve Savage - Eco-Products
- Etai Bar-on - Udi’s Handcrafted Foods
Blake spoke mostly about marketing and branding, but I would rather call out the part that is most relevant to this blog. Trends. He briefly mentioned a few hot subjects including:
- Locavore
- Sustainability
- Carbon Foodprint
- Food Labeling
Steve spoke almost exclusively about his company Eco-Products, which was disappointing, given the topic of this breakout session. The trends he mentioned were all product related, so I’ll skip that.
Finally Etai stepped up to the mic, and actually talked about trends! The recent trends that lead to their current success were:
- A Local food economy
- All Natural
- Healthy
- Artisan
- Fresh
- A Progressive work environment
As for emerging trends, he mentioned both granola (which is growing 40% year over year), and gluten free (which is currently a $5 billion dollar market with no clear leader).
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some tasty samples to eat (currently munching on jerky from Colorado’s Best Beef)!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting, I didn’t go to this session, but I heard that dude from Eco-Products had a lot to say about his stuff and didn’t stay on topic…
The session started with the defiant proclamation: “we’re just going to talk about what we want to talk about”.
You heard right though. Sadly, the Eco-Products guy in particular did nothing but talk about his company and their products…