Salted caramel spent roughly 50 years travelling from a Parisian chocolatier to a British supermarket staple. Nduja took a decade. Kimchi felt like an overnight success, but it wasn't. So when a flavour trend lands on a developer's radar, how do you know whether you're early, right on time, or already too late?

The answer, our expert panel suggests, is rarely found in data alone. It lives in the gap between what a trend tracker can tell you and what a developer's gut tells them. And knowing how to triangulate the two is one of the most underrated skills in food innovation.

In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, we explore how both a major retailer and a multi-brand manufacturer approach the now, next and future framework for flavour trend tracking.

Our panel debates the cuisines that have genuinely crossed over and the ones that are still waiting.

And they dig into the tension between authenticity and accessibility, the power of the silent ingredient, and why calling something a tortilla instead of a Spanish omelette can be the difference between a product that flies and one that sits.

If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com