Key Emerging Trends in the Food and Beverage Industry

Organizations must match demand as precisely as feasible to maximize operations and production.

FREMONT, CA: The food and beverage industry will explore new products, sourcing, and technological possibilities to better prepare for the unexpected. In the past decade, consumer tastes have significantly impacted the sector, catalyzing and compelling enterprises to innovate rapidly. To reach the next level and scale their businesses to satisfy customer demand while tackling the needs of supply chain instability and climate change, food and beverage companies will rely more on cloud-based solutions. Food and beverage companies that adopt these new technologies will likely become the industry's leaders in the future. The following trends and projections should get considered by food and beverage companies in 2023:

Rise of AI and ML: The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions by cloud-based organizations will increase. The dairy industry, for instance, created an ML model that maximizes yield and eliminates waste in cheese production. In the past, the corporation could only examine manufacturing output and a few contributing variables, such as protein, butterfat, and temperature; in retrospect, which was too late to boost yield. Today, the dairy producer may continuously change the procedure, considering many more contributing factors.

Supply chain flexibility and cost disruption: It has become the new norm, as unpredictability is the only certainty for the global supply chain's future. Commodity price inflation and other external concerns, such as geopolitical tensions and the food and beverage supply chain, require flexible planning to anticipate problems and meet consumer demand. With regular fluctuations in demand and supply, food manufacturers must be adaptable and closely watch how it affects production. To compensate for supply disruptions, food and beverage companies will diversify their raw material and supplier options further in 2023.

Automation of manufacturing processes: The worldwide labor shortage has unquestionably become a post-pandemic issue impacting the productivity of the food and beverage industry. The new generation of employees is interested in something other than securing a job for life, but rather in pursuing occupations that match their ideals. Given the pressure to sustain supply in the face of increased demand, food and beverage companies will need to invest in Industry 4.0 technologies to compensate for the shortage of workers. Robots can automate labor-intensive processes that formerly required human eyes and decisions, such as sorting, grading, cutting, and slicing, by combining image recognition and machine learning (ML).

Acceleration of food innovation: Substituting components, procuring from other sources, and reducing box sizes in response to shortages and price hikes will be a prominent trend. Genuine food innovation is becoming the norm. Due to consumer uptake and the desire of large food businesses to invest in these discoveries, many startups in alternative proteins, lab-grown meats, and synthetic dairy will scale up quickly. There is also a heightened rate of product innovation in response to consumer demand, the introduction of different container sizes, the substitution of ingredients, and the use of alternative suppliers.