1. 76% of new UK food products fail. The reason might surprise you.

Every year, more than 1,300 new food and drink products hit retailer shelves in the UK. And according to Nielsen, 76% of them quietly disappear within a year.

Not with a dramatic recall. Not with a PR crisis. They just... fade out...

1. Why safe flavours are losing you Gen Z customers

There's a belief that quietly runs through most food and drink product development conversations, and it tends to go unchallenged: keep the flavour familiar, keep it approachable, don't take risks with taste.

And here's what I genuinely think is ...

I remember sitting in meetings at McVitie's, listening to the marketing team go back and forth. "We don't want to upset our core consumers, they love the product." And then, almost in the same breath: "But we also want to attract Gen Z and millennials."

Both things. At the same time. From the same ...

186. That is the number of trials it took to get this product right.

I know what you are thinking. That is absolutely insane. But when you are developing a plant-based barista drink from scratch with a clean-label brief, no allergens, no seed oils, no stabilisers, and working with a client who know...

I have just come back from the Food & Drink Expo at the NEC Birmingham, and I came back with so much to share.

I watched StickyBeak present their insights from Expo West 2026, one of the biggest food and drink trade shows in the world. Nine trends, some of them I expected but some of them genuinely...