NRA State of the Restaurant Industry. The National Restaurant Association publishes the annual State of the Restaurant Industry report. The 2024 edition projected U.S. restaurant industry sales of $1.1 trillion and forecast the addition of 200,000 jobs. The franchise is the operational template for category-trade research that anchors annual cycles across Nation’s Restaurant News, Restaurant Business, QSR Magazine, FSR Magazine, and the broader business press.
FMI U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends. FMI The Food Industry Association publishes the annual U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report — the canonical reference inside grocery and CPG trade media on shopper behavior, channel mix, private-label adoption, and inflation response. FMI also publishes the Power of Produce, Power of Meat, Power of Seafood, and Power of Frozen franchises annually.
Technomic Top 500. Technomic’s annual Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report ranks U.S. restaurant chains by sales and unit count and is the single most-cited foodservice ranking in trade media. Technomic also operates the Consumer Brand Metrics franchise tracking consumer perceptions across 130+ chains and the Global Foodservice Navigator covering 25+ international markets.
Datassential Foodbytes and MenuTrends. Datassential operates Foodbytes (consumer flavor and ingredient research) and MenuTrends — the largest U.S. menu database, tracking 80,000+ restaurant menus across 4,000+ chains and 100,000+ independents. The Datassential 2030 forecast research and the annual Flavor Forecast are heavily cited inside menu-development and product-innovation coverage.
Circana (IRI + NPD). The 2023 IRI/NPD merger produced Circana, the largest U.S. CPG and foodservice point-of-sale data operator. Circana’s Total Consumer reports, the National Eating Trends franchise (50+ years of continuous diary-based consumption tracking, the longest-running U.S. consumer-eating dataset in existence), and the weekly CPG share data are the operational backbone of F&B earned media on category trends.
NielsenIQ State of the Consumer. NielsenIQ publishes annual State of Snacking, State of Beverage, and the broader State of the Consumer franchises. The 2024 State of Snacking (in partnership with Mondelez) is the canonical reference inside snack-category coverage.
Mintel Global Food and Drink Reports. Mintel produces the most-syndicated F&B consumer research outside the U.S. trade-association layer, including the annual Global Food and Drink Trends report. The 2025 edition named “Rule Breakers,” “Hybrid Harvests,” and “Chain Reaction” as the three lead trends — coverage compounded across hundreds of trade outlets globally.
Innova Market Insights. Innova publishes the annual Top Ten Trends report — the canonical reference inside global product-launch and ingredient innovation coverage, tracking 200,000+ product launches per year.
Kantar Worldpanel + Numerator. Kantar Worldpanel operates the global CPG household purchasing data infrastructure across 60+ markets, with continuous panels covering 25 million+ households. Numerator, the receipt-based consumer-insights platform, publishes the quarterly Consumer Sentiment research and category insights heavily cited inside CPG and retail trade coverage.
Specialty Food Association State of the Specialty Food Industry. The SFA publishes the annual State of the Specialty Food Industry report — the canonical reference inside the $207 billion specialty-food category, anchoring annual Fancy Food Show coverage and the specialty-retail trade press.
Tastewise AI consumer intelligence. Tastewise publishes ongoing AI-driven consumer-trend research synthesizing social, menu, and recipe signals — emerging as a credible third operator in the F&B trend-prediction layer alongside Mintel and Datassential.
The Brand-Operated Franchises (The Short List)
F&B brand-operated survey research is structurally thinner than tech or hotels. Most major F&B companies — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, General Mills, Kellanova, Unilever — buy data from Circana, NielsenIQ, and Kantar rather than publishing proprietary annual franchises. The brands that do operate documented research:
Whole Foods Market Food Trends Forecast. Whole Foods publishes an annual Food Trends Forecast every October, sourced from category buyers, product developers, and supplier intelligence rather than survey methodology. The 2025 forecast highlighted “Sip Swaps,” mushroom-forward products, ingredient-led desserts, and “Mocktail 2.0.” The franchise has run since 2015 and is the canonical retailer-led F&B research asset.
McDonald’s Voice of the Customer + Velocity Growth Plan data. McDonald’s publishes consumer research selectively, primarily through its annual report and investor materials. The 2024 investor materials documented 65 million daily global customers across 41,800+ locations and the Accelerating the Arches strategy. McDonald’s does not operate a public-facing annual research franchise comparable to Edelman or J.D. Power.
Starbucks Coffee at Home + Beverage Trends research. Starbucks publishes selective consumer research through its Stories blog and investor communications, including periodic Beverage Trends releases tied to product launches. The 2024 Cold Beverage research documented that cold drinks now represent 75% of U.S. company-operated beverage sales — a figure that anchored a six-month coverage cycle. Starbucks also publishes annual North American Coffee at Home insights through its CPG partnership with Nestlé.
Chipotle Real Foodprint + Consumer Research. Chipotle publishes periodic consumer research, primarily tied to product launches and menu innovation testing. The 2024 Real Foodprint sustainability research, the Gen Z employment research, and the annual Career Award scholarship data generate documented earned-media cycles.
Kerry Taste Charts and Taste Forecast. Kerry Group, the Irish taste-and-nutrition supplier, operates the annual Taste Charts and Taste Forecast — supplier-level flavor research syndicated across the food-manufacturing trade press. The 2024 Taste Charts named tamarind, ube, and yuzu as the lead emerging flavors. Kerry is the operational template for the supplier-research-as-press-tactic model inside the food-manufacturing layer.
Beverage Marketing Corporation + Brewers Association data. The Beverage Marketing Corporation publishes annual category data on bottled water, energy drinks, ready-to-drink coffee, and adjacent segments. The Brewers Association publishes annual U.S. craft beer production, sales, and economic-impact data. The 2024 BA report documented craft beer at 13.3% of total U.S. beer volume and $28.9 billion in retail sales.
Wine Market Council + Distilled Spirits Council. The Wine Market Council publishes annual U.S. wine consumer research; the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) publishes the annual U.S. Spirits Industry Briefing — the 2024 edition documented spirits at 42.2% of total U.S. alcohol revenue, overtaking beer for a third consecutive year. The IWSR (International Wines and Spirits Record) is the global benchmark.
National Confectioners Association State of Treating. The NCA publishes the annual State of Treating consumer research, the canonical reference inside confectionery-category trade coverage. The 2024 edition documented 81% of consumers participate in seasonal candy occasions.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo selective releases. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo publish selective consumer research through investor communications and brand campaigns, but neither operates a public-facing proprietary annual research franchise. The Coca-Cola System’s 2024 Annual Report documented 200+ owned brands and 30+ billion-dollar brands; PepsiCo’s 2024 Annual Report documented 23 billion-dollar brands globally.
The IFIC, NRA, and Mintel Cadence
The three franchises that produce predictable annual F&B coverage cycles:
- IFIC Food and Health Survey — released May/June, anchors summer health-and-nutrition coverage.
- NRA State of the Restaurant Industry — released January/February, anchors annual restaurant-industry outlook coverage.
- FMI U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends — released June, anchors grocery and CPG trade coverage.
- Mintel Global Food and Drink Trends — released October/November, anchors the next-year category-forecast cycle.
- Whole Foods Trends Forecast — released mid-October, owns the retailer-led trend-prediction window.
- Innova Top Ten Trends — released November/December, anchors product-launch and ingredient-innovation coverage.
- SFA State of the Specialty Food Industry — released June at the Fancy Food Show, anchors specialty-retail trade coverage.
Brand teams operating in F&B should map their research calendar against these windows. Launching proprietary research during the NRA, IFIC, or Mintel cycles risks the coverage being absorbed into the larger franchise. Launching against the dead windows (March, April, July, August) produces cleaner share-of-voice.
The Sustainability and ESG Research Layer
A growing share of F&B earned media now anchors on sustainability and ESG research. The canonical operators:
FAIRR Initiative. The FAIRR Initiative publishes the annual Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index, ranking the world’s 60 largest publicly listed animal-protein companies on ESG performance. The franchise is heavily cited inside food-industry investor and sustainability coverage.
EAT-Lancet and Planet-Friendly Diet research. The EAT-Lancet Commission’s 2019 Planetary Health Diet research continues to anchor sustainability coverage; the 2025 EAT-Lancet 2.0 release produced a multi-month coverage cycle across The Guardian, BBC, Financial Times, and the broader environmental press.
Good Food Institute alternative-protein research. The Good Food Institute publishes annual State of the Industry reports on plant-based, fermentation, and cultivated meat — the canonical reference inside alternative-protein category coverage.
Edelman Trust Barometer F&B cut. The Edelman Trust Barometer — surveying 32,000+ respondents across 28 countries annually — produces an F&B sector cut that anchors annual trust-in-food and trust-in-grocery coverage. Edelman is the canonical template for what a category-defining annual research franchise looks like, and the franchise the major F&B brands compete against rather than build alongside.
The Open Category: What a Proprietary CPG Franchise Should Look Like
The structural gap in F&B research is operationally specific. The brand that wants to close it has a clear template:
- Annual cadence, multi-year commitment. Edition-numbered (Year 1, Year 2, Year 20) — the math compounds in year three, not year one. Salesforce State of Marketing is in its 10th edition. IBM Cost of a Data Breach is in its 19th. Edelman Trust Barometer is in its 25th. F&B has no equivalent brand-operated franchise.
- Defensible methodology. N=5,000+ respondents, multi-market (U.S. + 5–10 international), third-party fielded (Ipsos, YouGov, Morning Consult), publicly documented methodology page. Methodology is the ceiling on long-term Citation Share.
- Category-claim ownership. One franchise = one category claim. Whole Foods owns the trend-prediction question. IFIC owns the consumer-attitudes question. NRA owns the operator-outlook question. The open lanes inside F&B: the affordability question, the protein-and-nutrition question, the AI-and-food-discovery question, the Gen Z food-attitudes question, the household-food-economics question, and the trust-in-food-brands question.
- Distribution kit. Every release ships as a multi-format kit — flagship report, executive PDF, PR Newswire release, op-ed program, trade-coverage seeding, social-distribution pack, sales-enablement assets. The franchise that distributes wins Citation Share; the franchise that PDFs-and-prays does not.
The structural reading: the first major CPG operator — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Kraft Heinz, Unilever, Mondelez, General Mills, Mars, Kellanova, Tyson, ConAgra, JBS, Diageo, AB InBev, Constellation — to commit to a 10-year annual research franchise wins the long-term Citation Share. The economics are favorable: a defensible annual franchise costs $250K–$750K to operate and generates earned-media value at multiples of that for a decade-plus.
The AI Communications Layer for F&B
When buyers ask the answer engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews — “what do consumers think about [F&B brand or category],” the engines retrieve the dated, source-attributable survey research the category has produced. The IFIC, NRA, FMI, Circana, NielsenIQ, Mintel, Datassential, Technomic, Kantar, and Numerator franchises retrieve heavily. Whole Foods Trends and Kerry Taste Charts retrieve in their lanes. Brand-operated research from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Kraft Heinz, Unilever, Mondelez, and General Mills retrieves thinly because the franchises do not exist. The structural implication: F&B brands have an open category to build a proprietary annual research franchise into. The first major CPG operator to launch a credibly methodologically rigorous annual consumer-attitudes franchise gets the multi-decade Citation Share that Edelman has built in the trust category and J.D. Power has built in automotive. The canonical doctrine on survey-as-Citation-Share is at the EPR Survey Research hub.
The Bottom Line
F&B brand surveys is a category dominated by third-party operators — IFIC, NRA, FMI, Circana, NielsenIQ, Mintel, Datassential, Technomic, Innova, Kerry, Kantar, Numerator, SFA — and underbuilt by the major CPG and restaurant brands. Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chipotle, and the supplier and trade-association layer operate selective research; most of the category does not. For brand communications teams in F&B, the strategic implication is direct: the white space for a proprietary annual F&B research franchise is open, and the first credible operator wins it.
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