I’m not sure how I feel about making predictions. It’s generally not a very good business because you’re essentially just guessing with bits of insights. But plenty of people bet their whole life savings into guessing and lose it all so it’s really nothing new.
Here are my top five predictions for 2023. These are influenced from my time at a few startups, traveling the world, and surprisingly, doing both the My Food Job Rocks and Crisis Meets Opportunity Podcast. I would say that they rank from most likely to happen to kind of long-shot predictions.
1.AI is the new buzzword
One could argue that plant-based was the buzzword in 2021 and crypto was the buzzword in 2022 but in the final moments of the year, the advances in AI technology have scaled leaps and bounds.
There will most likely be an “oh shi-“ moment in AI technology where people aren’t going to trust it as much.
In food, the only company really pushing for AI blatantly is NotCo, which just announced a Series D extension or something and announced taking Giuseppe, their AI thing, as a B2B platform. Does Giuseppe work? I have no idea.
AI is basically a data and processing game so the AI needs to know how to figure out the best way to use the data given.
The biggest hurdle between AI and food is that food is generally very subjective and even the objective devices we use to measure food is, to be frank, can be easily disproven and only looks good convincing your manager or client that you used science to do something productive. So even if the data is accurate because food is a decently complex system, it will be a big challenge building an AI system that actually works in food. If an AI built a food product and it sold in the supermarkets, and that product fails, who’s to blame? Like everything, there are so many factors that influence product development.
However, AI is probably going to be a good tool to speed up formulation. If there’s a common thread between nutrition, flavor, sensory and formulation, I feel that’s the ticket that will get people to commit to using it.
I always had a joke that if you slap on the word tech, plant-based, AI or blockchain, you can raise half a million more dollars per buzzword. Probably not now, but I do expect AI to be a new thing a lot of companies are going to use to sound cool. Be skeptical on who says it and who does it.
2.Plant-based meat will go soul searching
Unfavorable environments, missing product expectations, and confusing messages on health hit plant-based meat hard. What used to be the hot young thing on the block quickly got old.
So what do hot young things do when they find out that they really didn’t have it all? They go through various stages of grief and then they reinvent themselves. They go on an Eat, Pray, Love type journey, check themselves, and then they find their tribe to fit their vibe.
You’re going to find a lot of scales back next year in the United States through other countries seem to be growing their alternative meat business due to either macroeconomic forces (like Europe just not being able to afford meat) or because they want to be cool like the United States and follow the trends (generally, every other country).
New incumbents will differentiate themselves by trying to find a way to connect with consumers as they’ve been bombarded with a million articles saying that plant-based meat marketing sucks. I expect to see more vegetable-forward products entering as we continue to blur the lines about what’s healthy and not healthy. I welcome this because I swear if I have to eat another burger or chicken nugget in this space….. well let’s just say I welcome the differentiation.
3.Food Tech Meccas will be Established
Singapore and San Francisco/Bay Area are primed based on the technology proximity and regulatory wins to launch private tastings and products in their respective cities and I expect a large number of events and activations to litter the city.
Other cities and countries will do events too, but due to the vast amount of resources per mile in both Singapore and San Francisco, it’s more convenient and of more value to do activations there. From my travels, I’ve seen just how important the agreeableness of governments and the proximity to resources matters when it comes to speed.
With COVID either ending or not being too much of a hot topic these days and investors wanting to see actual progress, expect a lot of interesting events that will show off the fruits of decades of labor in precision fermentation and cultivated technology. From what I’ve learned executing tastings for important people, and tasting the actual work of your labor can shift a whole board meeting around. It’s like magic.
Expect a few spectacular tasting events and expect a consistent amount in the Bay Area and Singapore as companies from around the world start to submit their paperwork to the regulatory bodies there.
4.South Korea will be a Surprising Contender for Food Tech
I was shocked and surprised at how much potential South Korea has for food tech and alternative proteins. A lot of hidden activity is going on there. The government seems to be proactive, their young user base seems to care about the environment, and they generally like to copy the United States on trends.
A lot of companies see South Korea as a formidable market that has a big enough population to launch something and provide feedback.
South Koreas also love meat. When I was there, the place is littered with places to cook your own meat.
A lot of food tech sees an opportunity in Korea and you are probably going to see a lot of marketing trial and error in Korea as companies take this country seriously.
South Korea is also home to huge product manufacturers like Pulmone and CJ which are also looking into plant-based products.
Generally from what I’ve seen visiting Korea and talking to some of the local experts is that South Korea is very trendy and fashionable. They are also hungry for innovation in a way where they want to try something new.
However, when I was talking to Jennifer Stojkovic, who just did a talk about cultivated meat in South Korea while I was there, b she stated that barely anyone has ever heard of this technology.
Though South Korea has a long way to go, foundationally, they are primed to innovate very fast. They have the market, the tech, and the drive.
5.Cracks in Conventional Meat
So when I say conventional meat, I mean the factory-farmed stuff.
We all know the conventional meat industry has some pretty bad externalities, yet we as a society still eat it. There are murmurs that beef futures aren’t doing too hot, which is a general predictor that beef’s going to skyrocket in price. Futures are basically “locked-in” commodities that people who trade professionally like to lock in so they get a good deal year down the line. The futures market is pretty hidden from the rest of the world but some of the information coming out of there are pretty scary.
The meat industry is generally pretty padded with subsidies from the American government so consumers don’t really feel the brunt of this.
Coincidentally, media from Ezra Klein and Chloe Sorvino (still going through her book) shed some more light on the externalities in industrialized meat. What really resonates with me is that industrial meat harms a lot of people and hopefully, this becomes more of a focal point. However, any improvement to the already stressed-out meat supply chain will increase prices. Can you bear the burden?
In all countries, especially in America which is coined as consuming the most meat per individual, meat is an extremely valuable resource that when taken away, can apparently cause riots and upheaval so this needs to be handled extremely delicately. I’m not sure how to do this but I know the solution won’t be quick or even be a silver bullet.
An accumulating number of forces are stressing out the conventional meat machine and it will break eventually. Turkeys, chickens, beef already have had issues this year with rising prices. Generally, the governments know what’s going to happen to their food.
Though there seems to be a lot of infighting on the regenerative agriculture and food tech strategies used to grow cows (by the way, a very Wizard and the Prophet type of battle) both products are generally around 1-2% of the market share as factory farmed meat and most regenerative agriculture players say that we should reduce our meat consumption but a lot of the pundits that are uselessly fighting on LinkedIn think both sides are doing this all-or-nothing approach.
I ignore them because my skillset is to make better products. However, since this is a prediction piece, expect this discussion to keep on dragging and get more divisive as more people get frustrated on climate change killing the planet.
Overall, these are my thoughts. But I’m also a true believer in contributing to this future. I’m working on a new project that will tackle some of these predictions and test my assumptions. To put my money where my mouth is.
After all, the only way to predict the future is to make it.