Reading Asia's
Palate Early
A trend is only useful if you can launch against it before it peaks. We watch what is genuinely shifting in the region's eating, then translate it into profiles that survive your process and your price.
Most Trend Reports
Arrive Too Late
By the time a flavour direction appears in a published trend report it is already on shelf somewhere, which means the window to be early has closed. What is left is the option to follow.
Asia also does not move as one market. A profile that is climbing in Jakarta may be established in Bangkok and unheard of in Manila, and treating the region as a single trend line produces launches aimed at nobody in particular.
We have been creating for these markets since 1971, and we spend more time on what people are actually eating locally than on what is being forecast globally. That is a slower kind of listening and it tends to be right earlier.
Regional markets watched separately, not as one trend line
Creating for the Asian palate since
Directions tested on a trained panel before we recommend them
From Signal to
Something Launchable
A trend is only worth telling you about if it survives contact with your process, your cost and your market.
Watching the Right Things
Street food, regional retail, local category launches and what our own customers are briefing. Early signal in this region shows up in what people are eating well before it shows up in a report, and it shows up differently in each market.
Translating Into a Profile
A cultural observation is not a flavour brief. The work is deciding which sensory elements actually carry the idea, and which are incidental, so what you launch reads as the trend rather than as a literal transcription of a dish.
Testing Before Recommending
A direction goes to a trained panel and into a real application before we put it in front of you. We would rather kill an interesting idea internally than have it fail in your matrix after you have committed a line to it.
Honest About Timing
Some shifts are durable and some are a season. We will say which we think a direction is, and we will tell you when we think you have missed the window rather than sell you a profile that arrives late.
Directions in Play
The shifts we are currently seeing move across Southeast Asian categories.
Tell Us the Category
You Are Watching
If you are weighing a direction for a category, we will tell you what we are seeing in your specific markets, including when we think the answer is to wait.