Mouthfeel joins flavor as a food industry focus to satisfy consumers craving extra texture

Texture is having a crunchy, gooey moment in the food and beverage industry. “It is reshaping how consumers evaluate food and make purchasing decisions.”The trend is a global one. Stretchy yogurt is a fast-growing trend in China, while Swedish confectioner Cloetta just released Sprinkled Foamies, which have a crunchy coating and a marshmallow center.

People are thinking about the whole experience,” said Tana Davila, the chief marketing officer at Dutch Bros Coffee. beverage chain lets customers customize their drinks with toppings like a sweet and creamy whipped foam and juice-filled balls that pop when bitten into.Interest in texture goes back centuries and extends beyond foodTexture is so integral to the act of eating that people often describe how a food feels when they’re asked how it tastes, said Patrick Kalotis, the executive vice president of texture and healthful solutions at Ingredion, an Illinois-based ingredient provider.“You know, ‘This drink is fizzy’ or ‘I love the creaminess of the yogurt,’” Kalotis said. “They think they’re talking about taste, and of course the texture helps propagate the taste, but they’re actually describing texture.”Food makers have long played with consistency.

Pillowy Japanese mochi and stretchy Turkish ice cream date back centuries. Bubble tea, with its chewy tapioca boba pearls, was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s. In the 1990s, high-end European restaurants whipped up culinary foams flavored with things like tr…