It shouldn't be a surprise to most grocers.
It's bananas.
Spoiler alert: That's the top item for pretty much every grocery store, and the No. 1 fruit purchased in the past 12 months by The Packer's Fresh Trends shoppers.
What I'm really looking at is the top wish list item for Amazon Prime shoppers:
The Instant Pot.
It was the No. 1 most gifted item on Amazon's Wedding Registry, the most Wish Listed item of the year, and the Instant Pot Cookbook was the most gifted book on Amazon. Amazon delivered Instant Pots to Prime members in 27,000 U.S. Zip codes last year.
I've talked about the Instant Pot (a countertop pressure cooker for those who aren't among the ONE MILLION-plus members of the Instant Pot Community Facebook group and its numerous offshoots) in presentations and food trend articles before, but I really want to talk about what I'm NOT seeing for the hottest appliance this side of a Vitamix blender.
Every recipe I find is for meat, beans, hard boiled eggs, and surprisingly – cheesecake. I even joined a vegetarian Instant Pot community on facebook, hoping for some fruit and veg recipes – it's a bean-filled desert out there, folks.
People are craving recipes to make their lives easier and healthier, but most of what I find is how to cook a frozen roast in 20 minutes.
A few marketers are hip to the Instant Pot phenomenon, but c'mon guys -- there have to be more out there. I've tried steaming broccoli (it takes zero minutes, btw), cooking cauliflower (which I turned into pizza crust-bound mush in about 5 minutes), potatoes (crunchy to done in about 10 minutes), and artichokes (steamed in about 10 minutes).
So, spam me with your produce-centric Instant Pot recipes, y'all. I'm trying to shake up my kitchen routine, and give retailers some pointers for their 2018 promotions.