Keeping Pace with Changing Consumer Demands: Market Trends Every Food & Beverage Production Planner Should Know

The Food and Beverage (F&B) industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Consumer demands are shifting rapidly—driven by health trends, environmental concerns, personalization, and the growing expectation for convenience. For Production Planners in F&B manufacturing, these shifts aren’t just about adjusting recipes—they directly affect how facilities operate, how production schedules are built, and how agile your entire supply chain must be.

In this landscape, planning tools like PlanetTogether Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS), especially when integrated with robust ERP platforms like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Kinaxis, or Aveva, offer a competitive advantage by bringing speed, transparency, and adaptability into production planning.

Let’s take a deep look into the major consumer-driven market trends and explore how Production Planners can keep up—and even get ahead.

1. Health-Conscious Consumption: The Rise of 'Better-for-You' Products

Health and wellness are no longer fringe movements—they're mainstream. Consumers are looking for clean-label, organic, low-sugar, high-protein, plant-based, and functional foods (think probiotics and adaptogens). As a Production Planner, that means:

More SKUs: You're not just producing “yogurt,” you’re managing vanilla, strawberry, low-fat, dairy-free, and probiotic-enhanced variants.

Shorter runs: With greater product variety and smaller batch sizes, optimizing production sequences becomes crucial to minimize changeover time.

Tighter shelf-life: Many of these products are fresh and have shorter expiration dates, increasing the importance of precise production timing.

How PlanetTogether Helps:

PlanetTogether’s finite scheduling engine dynamically sequences production runs based on shelf life, allergen changeovers, and demand forecasts. When integrated with SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, it ensures you’re working with the most up-to-date customer demand and material availability, automatically adjusting your plan when trends shift or promotions spike.

2. Sustainability and Transparency as Market Drivers

Consumers are voting with their wallets for companies that care about the environment. Whether it’s sustainably sourced ingredients, waste-reducing packaging, or carbon-neutral operations, your production plan needs to align with sustainability goals.

Production Planning Impacts:

Source local ingredients, potentially with longer lead times or irregular supply.

Optimize runs to reduce energy and water usage.

Plan around reuse and recycling processes.

How PlanetTogether Helps:

When integrated with Aveva or Oracle, PlanetTogether can support energy-aware scheduling by identifying and prioritizing low-energy production slots. It also helps track material usage and waste, aligning planning with corporate sustainability metrics and consumer values.

3. The Personalization Wave

“Mass personalization” is no longer a contradiction—it’s the new norm. From customizable beverages to on-demand bakery items, consumers want choices tailored to their tastes, diets, and even lifestyles.

Planning Challenges:

Explosion in SKU complexity.

Increased reliance on demand-driven manufacturing.

Need for quick turnarounds without sacrificing efficiency.

How PlanetTogether + Kinaxis Solves This:

PlanetTogether integrated with Kinaxis enables concurrent planning, where supply and production planning are aligned in real time. As demand signals come in (from e-commerce, POS data, or promotions), your production plan updates accordingly. You’ll be able to fulfill personalized product demands while maintaining efficiency and inventory targets.

4. Convenience and On-the-Go Consumption

Consumers crave convenience—ready-to-eat, single-serve, frozen, or snackable formats. This doesn’t just impact packaging—it requires new production flows, often involving additional steps like freezing, sealing, or custom boxing.

What it Means for Production Planners:

Complex multi-line operations.

Coordination between primary and secondary packaging.

Accurate sequencing to ensure freshness and minimize rework.

How PlanetTogether Supports You:

With integrated visibility into both production and packaging lines, PlanetTogether APS allows you to model multi-stage operations. Integration with Microsoft or SAP helps you understand dependencies in real-time, so packaging doesn’t lag behind production—or vice versa.

5. Digital-Native Brands and DTC Acceleration

Smaller, agile brands that sell direct-to-consumer (DTC) are redefining how food gets to market. Whether it’s a subscription snack box or a TikTok-viral protein bar, Production Planners in contract manufacturing or co-packing environments must respond fast and flexibly.

Production Planning Realities:

Quick onboarding of new brands and products.

Forecasting from limited data.

Tight deadlines and shorter order cycles.

Why PlanetTogether is Critical:

With quick scenario planning and capacity analysis tools, PlanetTogether helps you determine whether you can meet an unexpected order or onboard a new SKU without affecting core customers. Oracle or SAP integration enables fast BOM access and materials verification, so your team doesn’t waste time on manual checks or last-minute surprises.

6. Global Supply Chain Disruptions: Planning for the Unplannable

Pandemics, port delays, weather disruptions—global supply chains are under constant threat. F&B manufacturers are increasingly reshoring or diversifying suppliers to mitigate risk, but that brings planning complexity.

Implications:

Material availability is variable and volatile.

Production must flex around logistics delays.

Risk of downtime or overproduction increases.

Where Integration Pays Off:

With PlanetTogether linked to SAP or Microsoft Dynamics, you can build constraint-based schedules that account for material availability, transportation timelines, and even regional production capacity. The system flags potential bottlenecks before they cause disruptions—letting you adapt with confidence.

7. Regulatory Compliance and Labeling Demands

From nutrition facts to allergen declarations and origin labels, compliance is becoming a production planning factor. Especially when exporting or serving diverse markets, label accuracy must be maintained batch by batch.

Planning Pain Points:

Allergen changeover time.

Region-specific production planning.

Managing compliant labeling across variants.

How PlanetTogether Handles It:

PlanetTogether’s allergen-aware sequencing engine allows you to minimize changeover times while maintaining food safety. When paired with data from SAP or Aveva, your plan stays synchronized with recipe rules, label requirements, and region-specific documentation.

With tools like PlanetTogether tightly integrated into your enterprise ecosystem, you're not just reacting to consumer trends—you’re anticipating them and planning for growth. By integrating with leading ERP systems like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Kinaxis, and Aveva, PlanetTogether creates a centralized planning hub that bridges strategic goals and shop floor execution.

Ready to Align Your Plan with Consumer Demand?
Let’s talk about how PlanetTogether can help modernize your production planning—book a demo today.