Harris and Hayes hosted a bespoke food and drink trends event for our client, Vandemoortele. This London-based event was made up of two key parts:

A STUDY TOUR: We visited an eclectic range of Shoreditch venues in the morning, introducing the team to relevant trends and consumer behaviours, as well as flavours, formats and innovations in the UK and global market. We sampled products and spoke to founders to fully understand both the big picture and more granular issues impacting the bakery category. We shaped the tour around four key priorities, which we believe future-proof businesses must prioritise:

Structural Sustainability
Radical Flavour
Future Wellbeing
A Challenger Mindest

The agenda fed both minds and mouths with inspiration to direct Vandemoortele’s strategy and business moving forward.

A FUTURE TRENDS SYMPOSIUM: The afternoon session was an interactive expert panel. We collaborated with our network of industry experts to explore the near and far futures of food and drink. We invited three guests, all innovating in very different ways around our four key priority areas:

Ed Lees, co-founder of game-changing flavour-forward flour producer Wildfarmed. The regenerative farming company specialises in wild heritage flours, soil health, biodiversity and traceability.
Alternative honey producers, MeliBio. They create a premium, sustainable, bee-free honey that could revolutionise the food supply chain. It’s a world-first, patent-pending product.
Harrods Head Pastry Chef and Plant-based specialist, Phil Khoury, who brought his expert category knowledge and experience of innovating at scale within premium food halls and restaurants.

FEEDBACK: This is the second project we have worked on for the client, and they were again thrilled with the outcome and inspiration we provided. We will be hosting a different part of the team in Paris this month for a further study tour and trends symposium!

“I had very positive reactions from the whole group on the food safari. The format of the day was perfect and it provided us with lots of inspiration.” — Jean Vandemoortele

“I want to thank you for such an interesting Saturday! Both the safari and key note speakers were fantastic” — Nathaniël Van Waeyenberge