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One of the biggest challenges food industry marketers, consultants, brand managers and retailers face is finding a common meaning in the trends swirling around us.

For example, most of us have a keen sense that developments falling loosely under the rubric of "fresh" are fundamentally transforming the food business as we know it. Our beloved center store—long the driver of sustained revenues in the CPG world—seems to be disappearing faster than the polar ice sheets our climatologists are so very concerned about. Meanwhile retailers are rapidly transforming their store perimeters to take advantage of the increasing consumer desire for "all things fresh."

Yet our understandings of what the term "fresh" means—and, more importantly, how consumers understand and react to that notion—still vary widely. For example, in our ongoing dialogue with marketers and product managers we are continuously surprised to discover that many maintain a very literal, common-sense interpretation of the word "fresh." For these folks the term "fresh" refers to an objective status or distinction with a definition something like:

Fresh foods are those in their most natural state without any processing, preservatives and minimal, if any, packaging.

According to this perspective, case-ready meats are fresh, while packaged salami is not so fresh. Hot soup available to go in the deli is fresh, while prepackaged soup in a refrigerated cooler is not so fresh. And finally, an ear of corn in the produce section is fresh, while frozen corn is most certainly not (so fresh).

In short, fresh appears to be a fundamental, product-level distinction resistant to further nuance. As a famous justice of the Supreme Court once intoned, "I know it when I see it..."

And not surprisingly, many of the CPG marketers and product managers we speak with regarding the trend toward "all things fresh" express frustration at how best to market to this phenomenon. Short of abandoning the CPG business for the more service-burdened commissary business, how is a marketer to respond?

Fortunately (for CPG marketers and product managers), things are rarely as simple and straightforward as they may seem.

Case in point:

One of the most consistent, compelling findings to emerge from our years of consumer research regarding food, eating habits and shopping behavior suggests that—at least for consumers—the word "fresh" is actually a complex indicator of broader lifestyle orientations toward food quality than an objective food distinction.

But to better understand the critical role fresh plays with today's consumer, it is important to first understand the historical trajectory of such interest—a history that can best be characterized by shifts in evolving understandings of food quality.

For those at the core of the food world in the late 1980s and early 1990s, organic was one of the primary drivers of food quality perceptions. Moving away from the core and toward the larger number of consumer occupying the mid-level of food worlds, we find that consumers during this era understood quality more as an expression of "natural." Not surprisingly, as this orientation became common knowledge to food marketers and product managers in the 1990s, we witnessed an attendant explosion of "natural products."

But if we fast forward to our current epoch, we find that things have changed quite dramatically. The "organic" distinction, once the hallmark indicator of food quality, has now fallen from its state as the pinnacle of quality, at least with mainstream consumers, as we begin to see new terms representing food quality taking its place. For example, while "organic" still has meaning and has favorable impressions to many, other terms, such as "fresh" and "local" are replacing organic on its throne of "highest quality food experience."

It's what we've been saying for years, that the term "organic" has importance in its own right, but its symbolic definition—the underlying cultural component that represents an aspirational lifestyle—may be more important and is continually replaced with new and more relevant markers. From natural to organic, fresh to local, what's really important is the fundamental outcome of all those terms—"The Redefinition of Quality" toward a continuum of high quality food experiences.

Likewise, "natural," has become so diluted as to be rendered almost meaningless as a marker of quality food experiences. What little relevance "natural" still enjoys is relegated to the (relative) small number of "food inexperienced" consumers comprising the periphery of food worlds.

Taking the place of "organic" and "natural" at the core and mid-level, respectively, of today's food world, we find more-evolved markers of food quality. In this case we find those at the core seeking out "all things local," while the majority of consumers occupying the mid-level are in pursuit of "all things fresh."

From a broad, macro-cultural perspective we could suggest what has happened is that as consumers' understandings of food culture have evolved and become increasingly sophisticated, their markers of "food quality" have themselves broadened away from specific product attributes of health and wellness (organic and natural) to include quality rubrics more relevant to an indigenous food culture. Organic and natural arose from health food stores and food co-ops, while local and fresh come from the world of food. And for those of us who remember eating in food co-ops during the '80s and '90s, the evolutionary trajectory makes more than a little intuitive sense.

Would you like some soy butter on your spelt bread French toast?

Briefly, consumers have come to rely "fresh" as a broad marker of high quality food lifestyle. Here fresh is not so much an objective distinction as it is a straightforward repudiation of the processed packaged foods that were favored for much of the late 20th century.

Currently, there is no one single dimension that triggers "fresh" perceptions in all consumers. Instead, there exist a multiplicity of underlying dimensions capable of signaling fresh. While each may trigger this perception on their own, they also have a pronounced additive effect. Some of these dimensions include:

• Appearance of minimal processing
• Cues of naturally sourced ingredients
• Location in perishable and perimeter food categories
• Use of natural color palettes and natural packaging materials
• Product narratives emphasizing people, places and traditions
• Connection to indigenous culinary traditions

But most important—from a CPG perspective—is the fact that the products in question need not be truly "fresh" to appeal to consumers interested in high-quality food experiences.

Safeway's "Signature Soups" are a perfect example. The soup in question does not need to be any "fresher" than that packaged by Campbell's—at least in an objective sense. But by packaging that same soup in opaque, plastic containers and displaying it in refrigerated product sets, consumer's believe the product to be of a substantially higher quality level—and worthy of bigger price premiums.

Many CPG manufacturers and product managers might make the critical mistake of believing that by canning their soup weekly, within regional distribution networks and front-staging expiration dates on the cans, they might be signaling fresh. Quite to the contrary, there is simply something about soup in a can, a can bearing the label of a legacy CPG brand, that signals a lower quality food experience.

And strangely, canned food products themselves need not necessarily suffer under the increasing consumer proclivity for fresh. In their earliest days, Muir Glen went to fanatical lengths to effectively communicate to consumers the fact that their tomatoes were harvested and processed at the peak of ripeness. This work continued, unabated, for years to the point that today mainstream food consumers believe the product in the can is "fresher" than that of their competition. And more than a few mainstream food magazines (e.g., Fine Cooking) have gone so far as to suggest they believe Muir Glen's tomatoes may be of a higher quality level than those available in produce sections at mainstream grocery retailers—especially during the tough winter months.

The bottom line here is that, well, almost any food can be re-imagined to tap into the current consumer desire for "all things fresh." What determines success will not be the abject freshness of the product but, rather, the marketer's/product manager's ability to convince the consumer that the product in question is "of the highest quality possible."

Here legacy CPG brands are at an almost painful disadvantage. For compared to the number of maverick upstarts in packaged foods, as well as ever more compelling retail experiences in prepared foods, the CPG brands of yesteryear appear woefully dated.