Anna Boisseau

Today’s consumers have returned to some pre-pandemic eating habits such as convenience — and also are embracing new ones they’re finding on TikTok and other social media platforms. 

As processors gravitate toward natural colors, they should keep in mind certain pitfalls of using these clean-label ingredients.
 

Ice cream processors should pay attention to conflicting consumer needs — from nostalgia and indulgence to wellness — to maintain growth momentum.  

Inclusions — visible ingredients that add extra flavor, texture, and color into a food or beverage product — have been used to jazz up dairy offerings for years. 

Back in 2020, food service certainly was one of the earliest and hardest-hit casualties of the coronavirus shutdowns. 

Considering that Wooster, Ohio-based Green Field Farms is run by a cooperative of Amish and Mennonite farmers who still use traditional on-farm methods, you might think that the company’s milk processing plant would also harken back to older times. 

The Amish community is often associated with its continued embrace of traditional agrarian values, and in that sense, Wooster, Ohio-based Green Field Farms fits the bill. 

When it comes to probiotics and prebiotics, you could say today’s consumers are very pro. In fact, according to a 2020 report from Hyderabad, India-based Mordor Intelligence titled “Probiotics Market — Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact and Forecasts (2021-2026),” the global probiotic market is expected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.08% during the forecast period of 2020-2025.

In 2020 — when sales accelerated across most dairy categories — cultured dairy found itself on a divided highway. 

After years of riding in the slow lane, the retail milk category got a pandemic-related jump last year. But since COVID-19-related panic buying subsided and some normalcy returned in 2021, milk sales felt the gridlock once again.