Hormel Foods — the company behind SPAM, Skippy peanut butter, and Dinty Moore stew — is using AI to figure out which peppers will make you sweat.

And be delighted about it.

Their latest product development strategy combines big data, social listening, cultural anthropology, and ghost peppers to predict what consumers will crave next year.

This isn’t your grandpa’s food company throwing random ingredients at the wall to see what sticks.

Lisa Selk, who leads Hormel’s innovation hub Brand Fuel, describes a systematic approach that would make tech bros jealous.

They use AI-driven analytics to identify emerging food trends, employ a dedicated cultural anthropologist to study consumption habits, and maintain a Culinary Collective of chefs who test early prototypes.

The result: they spotted the viral hot honey trend when it was still bubbling up from Brazilian food culture into New York pizza joints.

This led to a 2023 partnership with Mike’s Hot Honey and the launch of Fontanini Hot Honey Sliced Sausage earlier this year.

What’s cool is how Hormel has systematized the translation from cultural signals to commercial products.

Most companies either rely purely on data (missing the human context) or purely on intuition (missing the scale insights). Hormel has created a hybrid approach that captures both the quantitative patterns and the qualitative meaning behind changing consumer behavior.

In I Need That, I tell you how successful products emerge from understanding not just what customers want today, but why their preferences are shifting. The companies that consistently innovate go way beyond monitoring sales data — they’re monitoring cultural data.

Product Payoff: Frito-Lay uses a similar cultural intelligence approach, employing ethnographers and trend forecasters alongside traditional market research. This methodology helped them identify the “better-for-you” snacking trend years before competitors, leading to successful launches like Baked Lay’s and PopCorners.

Their cultural anthropologists noticed health-conscious consumers were seeking “permissible indulgence” — snacks that satisfied cravings without guilt. This insight helps protect market share from startup brands by proactively positioning themselves as healthier alternatives.

Action for today: What is your trend identification process? Are you monitoring cultural signals alongside sales data? Consider implementing systematic social listening, engaging with industry professionals who work at scale, and finding ways to test concepts before full development.

The goal is to develop systems that help you spot meaningful changes while they’re still emerging rather than after they’ve peaked.

How does your organization balance data-driven insights with cultural intuition in product development?

Tap that spicy reply arrow and share your experience combining quantitative trends with qualitative understanding.

Or reach out to my team of brilliant product go-to-market strategists at Graphos Product.