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How Do You Give Consumers Something Real?

Cut Through the Noise

Today it seems like everything is a subscription – online news sources, computer software, apps, phone service, shopping sites, direct-to-consumer goods, health clubs, gaming services, the list goes on. Modern consumer lives have gotten unimaginably complicated. The average consumer is delivered a whopping 74 GB of information a day. That’s the equivalent of what a highly educated person would have consumed in their entire lives 500 years ago.

And so much of that content is not very valuable or interesting. “The internet is rapidly being overtaken by AI slop,” reported The Guardian, which said it’s slowly killing the internet. And so much of the noise, misinformation, and confusion is about food. Social media is filled with influencers and self-proclaimed experts making a wide range of suspect and ever-changing claims about food and ingredients.

Knowing how complicated and full of noise your customer’s life is begs the question – how can you be a respite from this abundance of complications that define their days? How can you remove friction and pain points from the restaurant, shopping, or product experience?

Celebrate What Makes Me Unique

“Cringe culture” has come to define modern life for many social media users across every generation. They live in a constant state of surveillance and fear, their lives scrutinized for anything that might be wrong or out of the norm. Will someone take a video of me dancing and post it to TikTok? Will I call a food by the wrong name online? With that fear in the back of their minds, they sand down their edges, afraid to be themselves or be unique.

As social psychologist Adam Mastroianni notes in his essay “The Decline of Deviance,” this has led to a lot of same-ification across every aspect of culture and society, as everyone is too afraid to take a chance or fail. Movies are all sequels, prequels, or reboots. Book covers all have the same designs. Company logos are all in the same sans-serif fonts. Even cars have gotten less colorful – they’re all mostly black, grey, or white today.

Slowly but surely, consumers are pushing back. Everyone wants to be at least somewhat unique and showcase their singular identity, so how do you help them do that?

For many consumers, food is one way they showcase their identity and express themselves. – the flavors they like, the foods of their region or heritage, their aesthetic, the community they want to be a part of, etc.

Create Human to Human Understanding

Consumers today feel that too many experiences are transactional and impersonal. Instead of speaking to them like a real human being, brands offer patronizing, disingenuous customer service. They never truly feel seen.

But a lot has changed for consumer demographic groups in recent years. A younger cohort of consumers went through a pandemic, growing up and learning at home, missing out on much of the socialization that other generations grew up with. Millennials are now well into adulthood, moving up in their careers and raising families. The youngest Gen X consumers are overlapping with many of those same life events that Millennials are experiencing, while the more senior members are considering retirement. And while some Boomers are continuing to work, others are enjoying retirement and experiencing a brand new chapter in their lives. Yet, no matter the age group, every consumer just wants to know that someone out there understands them and their unique needs. They want to know that someone is listening.

Many consumers today are also seeking to bring their social circle closer in. Distrustful of large companies, irrelevant content, and faceless recommendations, they’re opting for ideas and suggestions from friends and family. Or they’re looking for micro-influencers that speak to the town they live in or the group they’re a part of.

So how can your staff, brand, or operation create and nurture that sense of community and belonging?

Create More Meaningful Experiences

78% of brands could disappear and consumers wouldn’t care. That’s according to HAVAS’ Meaningful Brands Report. Those brands are essentially meaningless in many consumers’ lives.

It’s not just brands. So much of the information we come into contact with is meaningless and irrelevant — or worse, slop. And too many food experiences are forgettable, with disengaged consumers scrolling on their phones as they eat their meal. A whopping 41% of Gen Z consumers say they are usually on their phone when eating a meal. This is hardly the recipe for a meaningful, engaging experience. That’s why some consumers are looking to break free from their devices.

And food has a very meaningful part to play in our lives. Food connects to memory, emotion, experience, family, culture, history – the list goes on and on. We’re lucky to work in an industry that plays such a meaningful role in consumers’ lives, yet too often we take that for granted.

So how do you make every food experience a little more meaningful and a little less transactional?

Give Me Someone to Trust

Consumers continue to distrust just about every facet of life, from politicians to companies, celebrities to scientists.

That distrust carries over to the food industry. Many consumers today think the food industry today is filled with nefarious actors trying to convince them to eat dangerous, unhealthy foods. They are skeptical of ultra-processed foods, artificial flavors and ingredients, ingredients they can’t pronounce, seed oils, etc. They’ve seen a seemingly endless parade of foods being recalled because they are making people sick or are filled with foreign materials. Social media is filled with creators claiming that restaurants use the same frozen ingredients from the same huge distributors. Who can they trust?

For the modern consumer, actions speak louder than words now. How do you measure and prove that you can be trusted? Are you performing trustworthiness or are you actually trustworthy?

It’s not about cheap prices and combo meals, but about long-term brand value. Why are the menu items and ingredients you have selected trustworthy and worthy of the consumer’s dollar? When it comes to sustainability, do you put your money where your mouth is – can a customer trust that ingredients won’t be wasted, or that sustainability overall is woven throughout the brand? Who are the real people behind the brand – the humans that your customers are placing their trust in?

Download the Full 2026 Consumer Needs Report

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