One of the developments in foodservice that Farley Kaiser (second from right) has enjoyed watching involves spices.
“Spice isn’t going anywhere,” the senior director of culinary innovation at Temple, Texas-based McLane Co. said Aug. 19 at CSP’s 2025 Outlook Leadership conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “What we’re seeing in spice isn’t that it’s a trend, it’s a mainstay. It’s which pepper is next, and how are you infusing spice into different flavor formats and food?”
The session, Elevating Foodservice with Flavor-Forward Thinking, was moderated by Shayna Snyder (far left), McLane’s product marketing director.
Kaiser said she’s seeing a lot being done with fermented pickles both for the health benefits of the probiotics and as a general flavor trend.
“But truly, flavor itself, in my opinion, is a trend. It is the storyteller,” Kaiser said. “It is the thing that people are really reaching out for, and specifically some of our younger generations, they’re expecting that it’s out there.”
Because of this, there’s a lot being done with global street foods, including in portable, compact bowls, “all of those things telling that story,” she said. “Bold, complex flavors are at the heart of flavor trends in general, and people are really upping the ante with textures and topicals and different ways to add enough flavor in different ways.”
Thomas Talbert (far right), head of culinary–Away from Home, at Kraft Heinz, Chicago, added that in looking at the state of sauces in particular, “flavor is king, as we know. But when you think about your convenience store and what does a sauce strategy look like, one of the key things is getting the core right.”
“You’ve got your core flavor,” he said. “This appeals to the majority of your consumers. You’ve got ranch, you’ve got ketchup, you’ve got honey mustard, BBQ sauce. But then you think about it, you’ll never appeal to every single consumer. That’s a dream. But how do we get those consumers to come back more frequently, and how do we get a new consumer who maybe just comes in to grab the average to also go over to our prepared food section and get chicken or get a sandwich or get pizza so we get a higher ticket. And that’s where those flavors that Farley’s talked about come in. When you think about LTOS, you think about flavors that are differentiated from the core.”
The core sauces for chicken are ketchup (15%), barbecue (15%), honey mustard (17%) and ranch (14%), he said.
Other sauces necessary for current consumer expectations, however, include the Heinz offerings of mango habanero, cherri yaki, blackberry bourbon barbecue, Koren-style barbecue, maple whiskey barbecue, hatch chile ranch, maple sweet chili and creamy chimichurri, he said.
“Younger consumers or Gen Zs who are seeking these flavors, they come in for ranch one day, but then the next day, say, ‘Oh my gosh, I just got mango habanero sauce. Unexpected, but I got a delight.’ And sauce is able to deliver those flavors in easy formats,” he said.
Ivan Estrada (second from left), vice president of business and brand growth at Irresistible Foods Group, Gardena, California, which makes King’s Hawaiian baked goods and other products, talked about ‘swicy,’ the trend that combines sweet and spicy flavors.
“I think that’s the next iteration of what fried chicken looks like, the next iteration of barbecue,” he said. “How do we take that sweet? How do we take that spicy? For us, we’re a bread carrier, right, so, obviously, we all know that bread is a vehicle of getting proteins into your mouth.”
But Gen Z disagrees, he said.
“Gen Z thinks that the bread carrier is just as important as the protein, so we’re really diving into a lot of that, and it’s really driving how Chef Greg (Stockdale) on our team really comes at a menu innovation and how we can do more with less and not have to bring in 16 different SKUs,” Estrada said. “Although we would love that, right? But we know that our operating partners can’t do that, so that’s kind of how we’re looking at what it should be.”
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