“What’s Brewing?” is a World Tea News round-up of recent happenings, news and factoids from the global tea industry.
Here’s what’s notable:
Kerry Releases 2021 Asia Pacific Taste Charts, Highlighting Top Flavors, Ingredients
Kerry, the taste and nutrition company, released its annual Asia Pacific Taste Charts for 2021, uncovering flavors and ingredients that are set to inspire innovation and taste excellence across the region’s food and beverage landscape.
Kerry’s Taste Charts are developed by its global team of Kerry Insights and Taste experts, who bring valuable insights on mainstream, key, up-and-coming and emerging flavors and ingredients from around the world. This expert perspective into the flavors and ingredients shaping the industry – across the sweet, beverages, savory and salty snack categories – helps Kerry’s customers craft a clear, research-backed roadmap for creating new products, or revitalizing existing choices in ways that will delight, surprise and excite consumers.
Among emerging flavors, there’s a growing trend towards micro sensory foods that go beyond taste to target visual, olfactory and mouthfeel senses. These include saffron (savory) for color enhancement, chai spice (dairy and hot beverages) for added fragrance, and chewy Korean Tteokbokki (salty snacks) that contribute to mouthfeel. From a health perspective, flavors containing essential micronutrients are on the rise, among them lemon myrtle (dairy and hot beverages), Manuka honey (water and cold beverages) and flavors that strengthen gut health, like kumquat (sweet; dairy and hot beverages).
“The 2021 Asia Pacific Taste Charts reflect how taste trends have been shaped by the pandemic in the past year,” noted Avinash Lal, market research and consumer insights director, Kerry Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. “Health is now a key factor in consumer food choices, with a strong focus on ingredients and nutrition labels. More than ever, consumers in the region regard food as a functional remedy and are turning to traditional ingredients such as turmeric, ginger, lemongrass, yuzu lemon, and soybean paste for their health-giving, healing properties.”
Most mainstream tastes in Asia Pacific show a continuation of consumer preference for familiar, traditional tastes. At the same time, there is cross-over and development of mainstream tastes across categories. Chili, a mainstream flavor popular in many savory Asian cuisines, is now an emerging flavor for cold and water beverages.
“Our Kerry 2021 Taste Charts provide customers with a concise, insightful guide on trending global consumer taste preferences,” said Leigh Anne Vaughan, the company’s global strategic marketing director for taste. “The charts are an excellent resource to help navigate a pandemic-influenced consumer world in 2021 – one that is experiencing not only a renaissance of traditional comforting tastes and flavors, but also a heightened push for new taste innovations that nod to adventure as well as familiarity. Next year will be a challenging one for food and beverage developers, and Kerry’s Taste Charts are available to help the industry steer a course to success during this time of great change.”
Through a consumer-focused, on-trend lens, each of Kerry’s unique regional and country reports utilizes consumer purchase patterns, retail product performance, foodservice influences, and endorsements from the company’s internal culinary, beverage, and mixology experts to predict tastes for the coming year. Kerry’s Trendspotter, a proprietary artificial intelligence that predicts food trends from global social media content, was used to provide additional perspective, inspiration, and validation of flavors and ingredients influencing the marketplace.
To learn more, visit Kerry.com.
STASH Tea Brews Up Ideas for Consumers for January’s National Hot Tea Month 2021
January is National Hot Tea Month and STASH Tea has been using the opportunity to share ideas and resources with its customers all month long. The company, which has more than 150 different teas to choose from, has been promoting several recipes (links below), sharing facts about tea, encouraging tea activities and highlighting the health benefits of tea.
The company’s promotional ideas for the month – “14 Tea-rrific Activities to Celebrate Hot Tea Month” – include:
1. Learn about tea at Stash’s History of Tea
2. Learn about the different varieties of tea with Stash’s Tea 101
3. Learn how to Steep the Perfect Cup of Tea
4. Paint with tea
5. Read tea leaves
6. DIY tea-tasting flight: Mix and match teaology/teaologist: Mix & Match Your Stash
7. High tea via Zoom – Enjoy high tea with friends via your favorite meeting platform
8. Show us your Stash – Share Insta-worthy photos of yourself and your favorite Stash flavors
9. Play Tea Bingo
10. Host a Tea Scavenger Hunt
11. Tea Dare Game
12. Discover tea based on your Enneagram type
13. Create some tea-infused 1-minute mug cakes
14. Create tea-rrific beverages and sweets with Stash’s QuaranTEAn Cocktail recipes and recipes including: Spiked London Fog Tea Cocktail, Vegan Double Spice Chai Tea Latte and DIY Chocolate Peppermint Tea Latte.
To learn more about Stash Tea, visit StashTea.com.
Global Matcha Tea Market to Expand by 2026 per New Report
According to the new Global Matcha Tea Market Analysis 2020 report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, the market is expected to reach US$2.69 billion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 6.7 percent from 2019 to 2026
The study notes that matcha contains 137 times more antioxidants than other tea and, therefore, has more health benefits for the health-conscious set. Due to its high antioxidant content, matcha tea also helps in boosting metabolism and also in burning more calories.
The report says that factors such as rising demand for organic products, growth in tea production and consumption, and increasing health awareness among consumers are driving the growth of the market. However, high product cost is restraining market growth. Based on the report’s findings, the powder matcha segment is going to have lucrative growth during the forecast period.
The key vendors mentioned in the report are Unilever, Nestle, Tata Global Beverages Ltd, Sun Time, DoMatcha, Marushichi Seicha, Kissa Tea, Ujimatcha, Mizuba Tea, Ippodo Tea, Encha, Midori Spring, Yanoen, AOI Seicha, ShaoXing Royal Tea and Marukyu Koyamaen.
