Ingredients matter. Price matters. Convenience matters. But for many consumers, particularly multicultural consumers, what they eat and drink carries information that has very little to do with nutrition. Food can be memory, family, migration, celebration, neighborhood, aspiration, comfort, status, and identity all at once. That makes food and beverage one of the most emotionally loaded categories in consumer marketing, and one where brands can misread the audience while believing they have the strategy exactly right.

This is where traditional segmentation starts to get a little uncomfortable. A Black consumer buying a particular hot sauce may be making a practical choice, but they may also be choosing something that reminds them of home. A Hispanic consumer choosing a beverage may be responding to flavor, but also familiarity, family ritual, language, heritage, or the way the brand shows up in their community.

A Gen Z consumer might choose a restaurant because the food is good, but just as importantly because the brand understands the cultural world they want to inhabit. These motivations can overlap, contradict one another, and change depending on the moment. That is precisely why food and beverage brands need cultural intelligence alongside conventional consumer data. Research has repeatedly found that cultural identity can influence perceptions of food, brands, authenticity, and ultimately loyalty.

The mistake brands make is assuming that culture is primarily about what something tastes like. It is much bigger than that. Culture shapes what feels familiar, what feels indulgent, what feels aspirational, what feels authentic, and what feels like an intrusion. It can determine whether a brand’s attempt to enter a cultural space feels welcome or merely opportunistic. And because food is often consumed in such intimate settings, those judgments can become remarkably personal. People do not simply consume food. They consume memories and meanings attached to it.

That emotional layer is becoming increasingly important as food and beverage brands compete for loyalty in a crowded market. Consumers have endless choices, and switching costs are usually low. A different restaurant is a few taps away. A different beverage is sitting on the next shelf. A different snack can arrive tomorrow. Product quality can get a consumer to try something. Emotional relevance gives them a reason to come back.

Jembe’s broader consumer research points to the same dynamic. 40% of respondents in our recent Jembe Intelligence study stated they are somewhat more likely to trust a brand that publicly aligns with social or cultural causes. That finding is not specific to food and beverage, but the category makes the implication particularly visible. Consumers are constantly deciding whether a brand’s presence in culture feels meaningful or manufactured. A food brand that supports a community, reflects its traditions, understands its humor, or participates naturally in its rituals can build a very different relationship from one that simply inserts multicultural imagery into a campaign. The difference is not necessarily louder marketing. It is greater cultural proximity.

This is also why the language of authenticity can be so limiting. Brands often ask whether a product is culturally authentic, as though there is one correct version of a culture just waiting to be replicated. Consumers rarely experience culture that neatly. Multicultural identities are layered, hybrid, and constantly evolving. Food is one of the clearest places where that complexity shows up. A dish can be traditional and reinvented. A flavor can be familiar and completely new. A consumer can love the food their parents grew up with and still spend Friday night at a restaurant built around an entirely different cultural reference point.

The brands that understand this do not necessarily try to become cultural authorities. They understand their position in the consumer’s life. Taco Bell, for example, has built cultural relevance through humor, experimentation, affordability, and an understanding of how younger consumers remix culture rather than simply inherit it. Other brands win through ritual and familiarity, becoming associated with family gatherings, celebrations, weekends, or specific neighborhoods. The strongest relationships often emerge when the brand gives consumers something they can incorporate into their own cultural lives rather than telling them what the brand believes their culture should look like.

That distinction matters because multicultural consumers are increasingly shaping mainstream food culture rather than simply participating in it. Flavors move from neighborhood restaurants to national menus. Food rituals become social content. Regional dishes become national trends. Creators turn family recipes into mass cultural moments. What begins within a specific community can move through TikTok, Instagram, restaurants, grocery aisles, and major CPG portfolios with extraordinary speed. Culture is no longer something that trickles down from brands to consumers. Increasingly, it moves sideways and upward from communities into the mainstream.

For brands, that creates an obvious opportunity and a difficult challenge. The opportunity is to understand the emotional signals behind those shifts before they become obvious to everyone else. The challenge is that traditional research is often designed to categorize consumers after the behavior has already happened. Cultural intelligence asks a more useful question: what is happening underneath the behavior, and what does it tell us about where consumers are going next?

Jembe Intelligence research also shows why this matters beyond food. Only 13% of respondents in our recent Jembe Intelligence study indicated that most advertising campaigns reflect their lived experience as a Black consumer very well. For food and beverage marketers, that gap should be particularly alarming. Food is one of the categories where lived experience is sitting directly inside the purchase. When a brand’s advertising, product, packaging, pricing, retail environment, or social voice feels disconnected from that experience, consumers notice the distance immediately.

The opportunity is therefore bigger than creating more multicultural campaigns. It is understanding the cultural contexts in which people actually eat, shop, celebrate, socialize, and make decisions. What does value mean to different consumers? What does indulgence mean? Which foods feel like home? Which brands feel like they belong in the household? Who gets trusted when a new product enters the market? What makes someone willing to try something unfamiliar, and what makes them immediately reject it? These are not demographic questions. They are questions about meaning. And meaning is where emotional connection begins.

The food and beverage brands that build the strongest relationships will be the ones capable of seeing consumers as culturally complicated rather than commercially convenient. Black consumers are not one audience. Hispanic consumers are not one audience. Gen Z is not one audience. Each contains different generations, identities, cultural influences, levels of acculturation, regional experiences, and relationships to food. Treating those differences as noise leaves both money and insight on the table.

The next generation of food and beverage loyalty will belong to brands that understand that a consumer’s relationship with a product does not end at the point of purchase. The product enters a life already full of meaning. It gets served at someone’s birthday, packed into a child’s lunch, or becomes part of a late-night ritual with friends. It reminds someone of a place they left, a person they miss, or a version of themselves they still carry. That is an emotional asset no media buy can manufacture.

Ingredients matter, of course, but identity matters, too. And the brands that understand the difference will be much better positioned to understand what consumers choose, what they reject, and what they eventually make part of their lives.

Jembe Intelligence helps brands understand the cultural and emotional forces behind consumer behavior, giving food and beverage marketers a clearer view of what is actually driving trust, choice, and loyalty across multicultural audiences.

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