In the new report, “Food Industry Transformation: The Next Decade,” Technomic shares insights into how the industry can evolve and steps it can take to best prepare them for the future.

Five ways analysts say the industry can get ready include:

1. Reimagine, Reinvent, Reallocate, Repeat: Manufacturers must fundamentally reimagine how they go to market and reinvent themselves with a sense of urgency. Resources must be reallocated to account for consumer shifts and preferences such as more healthful, fresher offerings and increased use of digital platforms to buy and distribute product.

2. Act Small to Grow Big: Food companies must accelerate their pace of change and speed to market and must act and think like a small company—or acquire small brands nimble enough to meet shifting demands quickly.

3. Embrace Digital and Big Data: A buildup of research and predictive-analytics teams for consumer and trade customer insights is a must for food brands. This will meet consumer demand for transparency and food integrity.

4. Anticipate and Preempt the Demand for a Health-Focused Food Supply: Consumers' definitions of health will continue to evolve, and descriptors like "fresh," "local" and "sustainable" will lose their elitist associations and be insisted upon by all consumers, not just the affluent and the activists.

5. Boost Your CSR Quotient: Radical transparency will be the price of entry for consumers, not just on food companies' ingredient labels, but also on their identities as good corporate citizens. Manufacturers that ignore societal and environmental issues do so at their peril, and they must audit their policies on the three P's (people, products, planet)—but still be mindful of the fourth P: profitability.

 The full report can be accessed here.