Driving Food & Beverages Sales Through Color and Texture

11 color palettes for food and beverages products which can make a big difference in sales performance.

Color and texture are a central part of our visual experience, and food and beverages are not exempt from their powers.

Color provides a strong emotional connection with food, trigging infinitive memories in our brains, influencing consumers on the conscious level but also subconsciously. The colors of the products we consume give us infinitive clues, from whether the product is edible or not, to its identity, quality, and the flavor intensity.

For this reason, color plays a decisive role in driving food and beverages sales. Color influences our overall experience on the taste of the food and beverages we consume indicating a strong interaction between colors, texture, flavor, and aroma.

The color palette you select for food and beverages products can make a big difference in sales performance:

1.  Desaturated colors:

Usually perceived as tasty and appetizing. These tones make you think of savory flavors but are also suitable for sweet tastes like chocolate.

2.  Browns and natural earth tones:

Viewed as warm, appetizing, nutritious, and more natural but are also proper for sweet tastes like caramel or “dulce de leche.” As evidence of the appeal of this color, caramel food coloring is by far the global best seller in its category.

3.  Green:

Makes people automatically think something is as ‘natural and healthy’ as a full plate of vegetables.

4.  Bright colors:

Call attention: just think fruits, sweets, and desserts. Combining colors in unusual ways can make foods like candies even more appealing.

5.  Red and yellow:

Colors that call attention and incite an appetite for more. Just think about fast food brands!

6.  Orange:

Another dominant, energizing color that – when paired with red – can indicate spicy or hot food.

7.  White:

A color linked to purity, simplicity, and cleanness. Although, it needs to be used carefully as white foods are also associated with “the bad carbs” like sugars and baked products made with white flour. Some popular diets advise avoiding white foods entirely.

8.  Black:

Conveys elegance, premium and high-end. For food packaging, however, the color brown often takes the place of black as a more appetizing color, which can still be characterized by similar descriptors as black.

9.  Gold, Silver, and shimmery:

Colors will undoubtedly convey fancy and premium food.

10.  Purple:

A cool color tone that isn’t necessarily stimulating. It typically evokes a sense of calm and comfort.

11.  Blue

Can be unappetizing if used incorrectly. Aside from blueberries and a few blue-ish, purple potatoes, blue does not exist in significant numbers as a natural food color. Consequently, we don’t have a programmed appetite response to the color blue.

Furthermore, our instinct is to avoid foods that are dangerous or poisonous, since millions of years ago, when our ancestors were searching for food, black, grey, blues, and purples, were “color warning signs” of potentially harmful food.

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