Top Foodie Trends

It’s no secret that the concept of “foodies” and our overall obsession with food related topics has increased greatly over the last decade.  More than ever before, we are encountering and interacting with food in places outside of the dinner table.  So, this post is going to focus on what the numbers tell us about emerging “foodie” trends and how ShareASale can help our Foodie Affiliates reach their full potential!

With the advent of shows like Top Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, Iron Chef America, Bizarre Foods, and anything on the Food Network, we have become obsessed.  These programs allow us to see not only what but how.  I know what a roasted chicken is but how do I cook one?  Food and culture can now be delivered straight to your living room, 24-7.

So what are the biggest “foodie trends” lately?

I have pinpointed three that I feel have really taken over in the past few years:

1. Celebrity Chefs
2. Vegetarian/Veganism
3. The concept of “Gourmet at Home”

So to get started …

1. Celebrity Chefs

The concept of a “celebrity chef” is an interesting one.  We have come a long way from the instructional videos of Julia Child.  Now it seems like everywhere you turn there is a celebrity chef endorsing some kind of kitchen product or appliance.

Doing a simple product search within ShareASale can help illustrate my point here.

A product search in the Affiliate interface for celebrity chef “Paula Deen” pulled up not 1, not 2, but 329 product results!  We have 329 products that match this one lady!

To give you a point of reference here, I did another search for “Michael Jordan” and pulled up less than 1/3 of the results that I did for Mrs. Deen.  I’m not kidding, these chefs are taking over the world!

The reach these celebrity chefs have is crazy! They appeal to every kind of audience out there. These competitive cooking shows, like Top Chef, have us rooting for the underdog one minute and ordering their cookware line off of Wayfair the next!

Millions of viewers tune into these shows.  Seriously, millions.

See the Top Chef viewership chart below to see what I mean:

2. Vegetarian/Veganism

The most recent survey on StatisticBrain.com (LINK) states that as of October 2012, 7.3 million Americans were vegetarians.  Millions! 

People are becoming more health conscious every single day and it seems that vegetarianism can be linked to that movement.

Searching our ShareASale interface for “vegetarian” will pull up over 2,000 products and over 70 Merchants as results.  We love those leafy greens!  We are vegetarian friendly too!

3. Gourmet at Home

With all this celebrity chef talk comes the popular question, “how can I do that?”

The answer to this seems to lie in solutions like culinary school. Eater.com reported in 2011 that for profit culinary schools had seen an increase of 20% in enrollment each year for the past two years.  More people than ever are trying their hand at the culinary arts.

So what can ShareASale do to help all you foodies do this at home?

Well, a simple search for “kitchen” will pull up over 43 THOUSAND product options and over 300 Merchants.

And we even have Merchants that carry some of those crazy appliances you see on TV!  What on earth is that immersion blender contraption they were talking about on last night’s Top Chef episode?  Well, do a search and you’ll see we have several options for all the foodies out there!

No matter what your interests are, ShareASale has a solution for you.  I may be the biggest food obsessed nerd (self-proclaimed) in the office and even I am amazed at how many food based product and Merchant options are available for promotion within our vast network of Merchants.

So, foodies, you can now confidently get out there are show everyone what it means to be a foodie!