Choosing quality over historic brand in the global food game

In the world of food, coming up with a ‘name’ for a product is a gold mine. I’m not talking about regular ‘brands’, like Coca-Cola or Danone, whose perceived superiority is backed by million-pound ad campaigns and class-leading branding and marketing. I am referring to the more subtle and subconscious domain of geographical ‘world brands’, such as Champagne or La Rioja wines or cheeses such as Feta or Manchego.

These brands stem largely from a recognized historical trend for specific areas to excel in the production of a specific product, be it wine, cheese, rice or crackers. Slowly, the area becomes one with the product, like La Rioja for Spanish red wines. Recently, in the midst of the commercial era, it has become the norm for producing areas to try to cement their competitive advantage and exclude newcomers to the market by establishing various types of quality standards, producer associations and guarantee of origin marks – In Spanish food production, for example, the ‘Denominación de Origen’ (DO) is applied to hundreds of different products, from wine to artichokes, from beans to nougat.

The DO is mostly positive for the consumer, encouraging good production standards and guarding against falsely labeled products. However, the efforts of DOs, producer associations and local export consortia to promote your brand can have an overall negative effect on the consumer psyche, compounding the idea that only one type of product is worth buying. product and limits perceived choice. In the UK, where Spanish food is just beginning to make a name for itself, consumers deviate little from the well-known classics: the wine is La Rioja, the cheese is Manchego, everything else is chorizo. But times, tastes and production methods change and what could have been the best (or only) product 200, 100, 50 or 25 years ago may no longer be. It’s time to start ignoring historical bias and branding and start looking for real quality.