Why traditional panels no longer reflect the reality on the ground in foodservice
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
For a long time, panels acted as a compass for Insights teams. They helped structure how markets were read, establish a shared language across teams, and provide reference points considered reliable for managing categories, tracking their evolution, and securing strategic decisions.
And yet, a feeling persists among many analysts and decision-makers: something is slipping through the analysis, as if part of reality were hiding behind the indicators.
It’s not that foodservice panels are wrong. It’s that they no longer tell the whole story.
When the average becomes a smokescreen
By nature, a panel works through aggregation. It adds up, smooths, consolidates—and in doing so, reassures by offering a stable, readable view of the market.
But the on-trade market does not smooth out. It fragments, specializes, and becomes increasingly polarized.
Between a neighborhood bar, a premium rooftop, a high-traffic downtown restaurant, or a tourist venue subject to strong seasonality, realities can be radically different—whether in terms of consumption, pricing, product mix, or growth dynamics.
And yet, all of these situations are often ultimately blended into a single average.
What an Insights Manager sees, then, is a category that appears “stable.” What field teams experience, on the contrary, are sometimes completely opposing dynamics depending on location, consumption moments, usage occasions, or customer profiles.
This is precisely where the disconnect begins to take shape.
The issue isn’t error, it’s the blind spot
Traditional panels don’t tell false stories. They tell incomplete ones.
They are extremely effective at explaining what is already established—what is large enough to be visible at a national level. By contrast, they are far less effective at capturing what is shifting, transforming, or emerging locally.
An innovation, for example, may take off very strongly in certain types of outlets or during specific consumption moments, without ever appearing as a clear signal at the national level. In the same way, a category may seem sluggish in the overall numbers, even as it is being deeply reshaped across channels, price tiers, or consumption contexts.
By aggregating too much, you end up losing the rough edges. And it is precisely those rough edges that make up the reality on the ground.
On-trade is not a single market, it’s a mosaic
Talking about “on-trade” as a single, homogeneous block makes less and less sense today. The market has become a juxtaposition of micro-realities, each with its own codes, constraints, and opportunities.
Very different types of outlets, multiple usage occasions, and consumption rhythms that vary widely depending on the time of day, the day of the week, or the context.
A traditional panel provides an essential macro-level view. But it does not always make it possible to understand where value is really being created, or where the key trade-offs are being made.
For a Category Manager, this raises a central question: how can you recommend a relevant strategy when the market reading does not reflect the diversity of concrete situations experienced in the field?
What Insights teams are looking for today
What is most lacking today is not an additional data point. It is the ability to connect analysis to the reality experienced by outlets.
Understanding not only what is growing, but also where it is growing, how, and in which specific contexts. Identifying local dynamics before they become visible at scale. Restoring depth and texture to categories that appear flat when viewed solely through national averages.
This is where insight becomes a true decision-making lever, rather than just a numerical observation.
From foodservice panels as truth to foodservice panels as a starting point
Panels remain essential. They provide structure, methodological consistency, and valuable historical continuity for tracking markets over time.
But they can no longer be the sole lens through which the market is read. They now need to be complemented by data that is closer to the field, more granular, and—above all—more contextualized.
Approaches like those developed by Fyre make it possible to observe the market no longer as an abstract average, but as a collection of concrete realities, rooted in outlets, usage occasions, and moments of consumption.
The goal is not to replace panels. It is to restore their truly operational meaning.
Reconnecting insight with reality
An insight only has value if it resonates with what sales teams, field partners, and ultimately the outlets themselves are actually experiencing.
When analysis finally puts words and numbers on what the field observes but cannot always measure, the conversation shifts. The debate is no longer about the numbers. It becomes about the decisions to be made.
And perhaps the real question to ask today is not just:“What does the panel say?”
But rather:“What am I not seeing yet… that is already shaping the market?”
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