About Culinary Tides
Culinary Tides, Inc. Profile
Suzy Badaracco is the President of Culinary Tides, Inc. and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminalistics, Associate degree in Culinary Arts, and Master of Science degree in Human Nutrition. Suzy is trained in military intelligence, Chaos theory, and predictive analysis techniques and has been practicing trends intelligence and predictive forecasting for more than 18 years. Using these techniques, Culinary Tides, Inc. has successfully predicted and profiled government, technology, adversary and ally, consumer, industry, health, flavor, food, and beverage trends. Culinary Tides, Inc. helps food industry partners navigate trends by revealing relevant patterns allowing them to create products that connect with customers. They specialize in foretelling a trend’s birth and forecasting its trajectory, personality, and longevity. The forecast results are used to create entrance, navigation, and exit strategies.
Culinary Tides, Inc. utilizes Military analytics which creates three-dimensional views of trends. Each diagram type cross analyzes dozens of pieces of research in a single picture, allowing a client to get to their own best answer more quickly and confidently. They specialize in working as a personal Think Tank for each client thereby tracking each client’s portfolio on an ongoing basis, always keeping them out ahead of trends 2-3 years. This prevents clients from being blindsided when trends are born, shift, or fade away. Innovation and Review Workshops are then employed to create new products or update/modify current product lines.
It is not enough to know a trend exists – unless you understand “Why” it is occurring there is no way to create strategic navigation. Many forecast services can answer the question “What”… What is the trend? New Products? Sales? Consumer Opinion?
But can your current forecast services tell you:
- When the trend was born & Who are its parents?
- What is its personality?
- Who are its allies & adversaries?
- How long will it live, How disruptive will it be, How to navigate it?
- Where else will it materialize…what other categories?
- What is coming next? BEFORE surveys & sales data can report its birth.
This is where Culinary Tides, Inc. fits in.
About Us
Culinary Tides, Inc. was created in 2005 and has grown to include a team dedicated to pattern recognition. Using a unique compilation of military intelligence and chaos analytics, they have been able to successfully predict and profile trends affecting the food industry including food, beverage, consumer, health, government, technology, packaging, adversary & ally, and competitor trends.
Culinary Tides, Inc. is a private forecasting think tank which engages with all facets of the food industry including food service, retail, ingredient manufacturers, and suppliers.
How does a former toxicologist and criminalist end up forecasting trends for the food industry?
Suzy Badaracco is a toxicologist, chef, and registered dietitian. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminalistics, an Associate degree in Culinary Arts, and a Master of Science degree in Human Nutrition.
She began her career as a criminalist and analytical chemist but returned to school to pursue her passion for food which led her to become a corporate chef, dietitian, knowledge manager, and then a trends forecaster for the food industry – which she has been practicing since 1992. Suzy was trained in military intelligence and predictive analytics, which she combined with her culinary and dietetics training upon entering an industry think tank in 2000. Following the directive, “Instead of tracking serial killers, we want you to track cereal bars…”, a new forecasting style was introduced to the food industry which remains unique to Culinary Tides, Inc.
We were faced with a time-sensitive assignment of providing market data to one of our largest customers, in which they had very specific requirements. Suzy and the Culinary Tides team jumped on the opportunity and delivered a highly technical, detail orientated report that they walked us through page by page to make sure we were able to present appropriately to our clients. The level of customer services provided was unparalleled!
As head of Research, Development and Innovation for a successful privately held company, my strategy was to allocate resources to four areas: Defend; Extend; Create and Innovate. I hired Culinary Tides to provide insight to help with new product innovation, but soon discovered that the wealth of information they provided was useful in all areas that a critical to running a successful R&D department.
Suzy and her team helped us identify trends in our category that allowed us to create new products and packaging for our customers across channels and providing them with new ideas relevant to what their customers were looking for.
Culinary Tides sifts through the countless bits of trend information so that we don’t have to. Even better. Culinary Tides finds the patterns and relations in the complex world of trend influences. We are much better equipped to see the future as a result.
Our team
Our self-directed and virtual team members all have one thing in common – they are verified pattern recognizers. They use technology and their specific skill sets to achieve project goals while speaking the common language of pattern recognition.
Our Clients
Due to the nature of our intelligence work, we don’t publish our client list. A few of our client testimonials are listed above. If you are curious about who else we work with, please ask.
What We Do - Think Tank | Speaking | Workshops | Trends Foresights Report