The next up and coming food craze
If you are a fervent coffee drinker, you’ve probably heard of the pumpkin spice latte concocted by the reigning coffee maker in America: Starbucks. This drink appears yearly on the menu around the Thanksgiving period as a specialty drink and Starbucks has since sold more than 200 million pumpkin spice lattes since its conception in 2003. According to this Vox article (http://www.vox.com/2014/9/10/6126359/pumpkin-spice-latte-starbucks-season-trend), “in 2013, Americans spent $308 million on pumpkin-flavored products” from pumpkin-favored beer to bread and ice cream. How did the rise of pumpkin-flavored products come about?
In the consumerist society today, our tastes and preferences are largely dictated by capitalist forces and many other events, contexts and situations that influence us. The setting of trends and prediction of them can be explained through graph theory. The article first mentions Starbucks as the company that put this pumpkin craze into motion with their yearly “season” of pumpkin spice lattes. Secondly, the 2008 economic recession also played a part in the pumpkin craze as it fit in with the comfort food trend prevalent during bad times. People tend to crave comfort foods that remind them of better times such as how pumpkin spices is related to Thanksgiving and holidays. Apparently, there are other trends that pumpkin flavor is tied to, such as “the rise of heritage meats, the heirloom vegetable trend and the Native American cuisine trend” (these trends were identified by a chef in the article). Also, McCormick (the largest flavor and spice company) listed pumpkin spice as a holiday flavor in their 2010 flavor forecast and companies do take McCormick’s advice when they develop new products.
Picture a bipartite graph with one group consisting of nodes with major trends or driving forces – companies, the economy, holiday seasons, media, advertising, international influence etc. – and the second group consisting of food items or flavors. An edge would be connected across two groups if a node with a “trend” has any relation to the node with a food item. A company which is interested in predicting the next food craze can look at food items that have the most number of edges connecting them to trends. For example, Starbucks is a major trendsetter and has edges to many different kinds of drinks including the pumpkin spice latte. However, unlike the other flavored drinks, pumpkin flavor also has edges to the economy, Thanksgiving and other trends. As more companies pick up on this craze, and produce pumpkin flavored consumables, pumpkin will have more edges coming out of it, simply making it more popular and this is why we have pumpkin flavored Oreos today.