Looking Back: Food & Drink
02 : 01 : 19

Throughout 2018, we kept a keen eye on the news around Brexit and how it might affect the nation’s food supply chain. It was the basis for our last macro trend of the year, Uprooted Diets, which examines how politics is affecting our access to the global pantry, why climate change is changing what ends up on our plates.

The trend, which will also dominate the conversation in 2019, offers context on how consumer diets have shifted thanks to a global network of supply chains, but also questions what might happen when these networks are compromised. While nationalist policies and hotter climes are forcing us to rethink where our food comes from, there will be exciting new narratives emerging around provenance and what sense of place for food and drink truly means.

While we saw some interesting adverts this year – special mention goes to Thai rum brand Sangsom’s Drink Don’t Dumb ad which had clever twist on the ‘drink responsibly’ mantra of alcohol adverts – the most successful campaign of the year has to be a television ad that was never aired.

Iceland made headlines in November when they stated that they had intended to use Greenpeace’s Rang-tan film as its Christmas spot for 2018, but had been prevented by the Advertising Standard Authority. While cynics believe the whole thing to be a PR ploy, whether or not Iceland calculated that the ad would never air is besides the point. It created a national news story, resulting in in not only millions of views of the film, but also turned the budget grocer into an environmental hero. On December 1st, Iceland managing director Richard Walker penned an open letter thanking consumers for their collective action in stopping palm oil deforestation.

Over the last couple of years, Instagram has become s driving force of interior design for many sectors, and food and drink has not been impervious to the trend. Photogenic restaurants and bars all have similar tropes of succulent plants, neon signage and cheeky menus, which served to encourage guests to post to their social media, and acts as a form of crowdsourced marketing. But one space stood out in 2018 for defying the focus on Instagrammability.

In New York, the bar Existing Conditions opened in August with a stripped back aesthetic and aim to put the focus squarely on the technical execution of the drinks. The space itself is almost bare in its design, with classic wooden high top tables, stools and tufted banquette seating. ‘We’re not here to shock and awe anyone,’ says co-founder Don Lee. ‘We want people to come in and feel comfortable as if it's their living room.’

Now that you know the best in the year for fashion, find out what is on the horizon for 2019. Download our Future Forecast 2019 report here.