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Growing global appetite for culinary mash-ups like Korean tacos and Laksa chicken offer a taste of how Asian and South American flavours are taking the lead on global menus.
“Thanks to our in-house expertise and close contact with food operators all over the world, we saw this wave coming,” says Star Chen, CEO of Unilever Food Solutions (UFS).
As our chefs-for-chefs business, UFS supports professional kitchens around the world with trusted brands, quality solutions and, once a year, a Future Menus Trends book that offers a privileged insight into the world’s culinary state of play.
Thanks to input from 250 in-house UFS chefs and more than 1,100 foodservice professionals, the Future Menus initiative not only keeps chefs up to date on the latest industry trends but also helps them turn these into growth opportunities.
By boosting product visibility and strengthening customer loyalty, this initiative is also driving growth for UFS.
In fact, Future Menus is a key ingredient in UFS’s success story that has seen turnover reach nearly €3 billion, volumes surpass pre-pandemic levels and growth hit high-single digits led by volume with positive price in 2024. The result is that today UFS accounts for over 20% of Unilever’s Foods business.
Since its launch in 2023, Future Menus has also contributed to a 12% increase in new customers, generating 81,000 new leads in 2024 alone.
Consistently high customer satisfaction is undoubtedly behind this success, as reflected in its remarkable Net Promoter Score (NPS) that showed that 70% of customers would recommend the business to others.
So what makes the Future Menu Trends book so successful?
For Star, it is its ability to go beyond simply signposting trends.
“Thanks to Future Menus and our superior products, we can help our customers leverage trends to sustain long-term success and profitability in a fast-changing and challenging foodservice landscape,” he says.
This year’s trends for example – Borderless Cuisine, Street Food Couture, Culinary Roots and Diner Designed – are all linked by an overarching shift away from traditional European culinary strongholds like France and Italy and towards Asian and South American cuisines.
More specifically, Chinese and Japanese cooking now rank among the top five global favourite cuisines across all age groups, while for younger demographics Korean and Mexican flavours are increasing in demand.[a]
Thanks to products like Hellmann’s Real Ancho Chipotle Sauce and Spicy Mayo, UFS is inspiring US chefs, for example, to turn these trends into customer opportunities by providing simplified ways to create favourites like tacos, burritos, spring rolls, dumplings, bao buns and Korean corn dogs.
And UFS is not limiting itself to kitchen ingredients.
“Matching our on-table condiments to trending flavours offers a marketing win for us,” says Star, explaining that research has shown that 59% of US operators report consumer demand for a wider variety of sauces, condiments, and dressings.[b]
Responding to this need, UFS has launched a US pilot scheme testing out a
new range of Spicy Mayo, Chili Lime with Tajin, and Chipotle-flavoured products that align with the trends spotlighted by the Future Menus initiative.
Authenticity, versatility and efficiency are equally important when it comes to tapping into trending Asian cuisines that demand complex flavours and cooking techniques.
To this end, UFS has recently launched a range of cooking sauces and pastes that cover 88% of Thai cuisine – from stir-fries and curries to noodles, salads and grilled dishes.
Helping chefs streamline kitchen operations while preserving traditional flavours, the new range currently enjoys a more than 95% user satisfaction rate.
Innovations such as these are possible in large part thanks to UFS’s access to R&D powerhouses, including a Chinese centre specialising in fermentation which can produce high-performing authentic products that align with market needs.
Star highlights the recent launch of Knorr Soy Sauce in China, the first soy sauce designed specifically for professional chefs and foodservice applications.
“The feedback we were getting from chefs was that retail soy sauces often lacked the needed intensity of umami flavour or was too high in salts,” explains Star. “So we made a special one exclusively for chefs.”
Not only is Knorr’s soy sauce hitting the mark for chefs in China but it is also allowing UFS to further tap into important markets in North Asia, Thailand and the Philippines.
And this growth does not stop at the restaurant door. Trends that start in professional kitchens do not stay there.
“Culinary trends, top dishes and new flavours move from restaurants and professional kitchens to supermarkets, eventually making their way into home kitchens,” says Star.
“As a result, I would say that the Future Menus Trends initiative is shaping the future of dining in restaurants while also fuelling the retail side of our business by ensuring that Unilever brands are staples of both professional and home cooking.”
To read the full report, click here
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