It's Tuesday, January twelve. I'm oscar A Mirrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. Because of the pandemic, grocery friends are looking different this year. Instead of seeing large product lines or product innovations, there will be a focus on supply chain issues and keeping shelves stocked instead. Kara rosen Bloom, registered dietitian and president of Words to Eat By, joins us for what to look out for this year. Thanks for joining us, Carol
my planure, thanks for having me. Usually at this time we're talking about new food trends for the year, what to expect upcoming. But obviously because of the pandemic kind of everything's been thrown upside down a lot of companies. Instead of focusing on new innovation of products, we're looking more at product efficiency, focusing on the supply chain issues that arose throughout the pandemic, making sure that shelves are actually stocked, rather than, you know, a bunch of new
products coming on board. So Kara tell us a little bit about what we're seeing. That's exactly right, and I mean as a dietitian for the last twenty years, I loved December January time because I'm always looking at trends to see what new products are out there, and as I started writing for my trends report, there were so few new products because companies are distracted needfully on efficiency.
There are so many little gaps and little hiccups in the supply chain everywhere, along from the actual manufacturing even getting parts to do manufacturing, to getting things to the grocery store and then sales and grocery store. The coronavirus has put everything into a tailspin. So we're really seeing something different this year for the first time ever, and that's that the idea of getting products on the shelf period is more important than new products, and I've never
seen that before in my history. And one of the big things that we've seen throughout the pandemic really is companies cutting back on the number of products they are offering. We saw that with meat process seen plants, there weren't as many cuts available. I think in your article you mentioned a soup company dropping their varieties down from eighty down to forty, which is a ton, you know. So
these are some of the things we're seeing. There is this sort of overall idea that if you're going to get products two store shelves, you've got to get the most important products and the ones that sell the best.
So rather than having a variety of eight soups, can we pick the top forty that are the best sellers, Or rather than having you know, three varieties of chips and crackers and all these things on store shelves, there's an efficiency by saying, you know what, let's look at the products that sell the best, and let's focus on those and make sure we can get those two shelves instead of ensuring that there's hundreds of skews available. We just want to make sure we can get something on
store shelves rather than hundreds of other things. So experts think that the supermarkets themselves will look differently, the layouts will be differently. I think one person you spoke to you said that a lot of them might implement a reservation model where the front and the back of the store looked differently. How does that work? So I spoke
with Phil Lambert, who is a food industry analyst. He works with many different grocery stores and big food companies, and he was telling me what he's hearing from them. One of the things that grocery stores have found is that consumers have a lot of anxiety, of course, of going into a grocery store. Some people aren't wearing masks properly, some people aren't wearing masks at all, and so there's a bit of a fear and an anxiety when they're
shopping about their safety. So they want to either get in and out as quickly as possible, or they want to do online delivery or online or instat Carter, one of those sort of curbside options. So what he has found is some of the grocery stores have said they're now going to institute a reservation model where, similar to a restaurant, you book an advance and you have a time slot, and that will help them limit the number of shoppers that will be in the store at any
one time. He also is noting that some companies are going to start to change the layout of their store so that people can still shop for fresh foods like
fruits and vegetables and their cuts of meat. They can still browse and pick what they want, but that packaged item, so you know, anything from toilet paper to spread fast cereal to canned goods will be in the back of the store and that will be picked and packed for you while you shop, which would cut down on the amount of time people have to spend in the grocery store and make it more efficient. And he also mentioned those might not be picked impacked by humans that might
be robotic in the future. Yeah, I mean, he said that it could cut the average grocery shop time of twenty two minutes down to about ten minutes, which is beneficial on all parties. It looks like the other thing that we've seen this trend going on for a long time is more plant based items on the shelves. This is just kind of accelerating it and an interesting thing that I didn't know I haven't seen just yet. There's
blends of these things too. Let's say, on milk, you can get a fifty fifty cow's milk and almond milk blend. The extension of the plant based stuff is continuing exactly.
And I find that there are many companies who are experts in animal based products, companies who are you know, dairy or milk based, and they're seeing a huge draw been their sales because so many people are looking for plant based alternatives and they're probably saying to themselves, if we don't start doing something plant based, we're going to lose out. And I think that's where a lot of
these blends are coming from. It's to continue to move their products when they're finding such a decrease in their sales and an increase in the sales of plant based. But plant base is met with a lot of controversy as well, because a lot of the products that are coming out use the word plant based to almost give it a health halo, to make it seem very healthy that it comes from plant, when what's actually being made is a highly processed or ultra processed food made of
protein isolates and powders. And they're kind of moving away from being actual plants at this point. So you know, a chickpie is a plant, broccoli is a plant, but isolated p protein burgers that's no longer really a plant. And the last thing that we're seeing is functional foods and beverages one that you should be careful for to yeah, you know, make sure to check out the full list. These are things that are enhanced with cb D is really popular, but it could be a range of things.
There are different companies that are adding vitamins or minerals or other kind of supplements to their foods. And for certain people, if you're taking supplements like actual pills or liquids, they're actually taking supplements. You may be getting too much of certain vitamins and minerals. So it's just sort of a reminder that too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Kara Rosenbloom, registered dietitian and president of Words to Eat By, thank you very much for
joining us. My pleasure. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget days big news stories. You can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.