Ahead of its opening in Germany, a major US fast food chain tasked its US research team with reading the market at street level. Four of them spent a week in Berlin, with me advising as their cultural strategist on a bespoke Trend Trek.
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The groundwork was a comparative briefing on the German landscape: ingredient standards, late-night eating culture, how Germans see American fast food, and sustainability, a value German consumers take seriously.
The Trek then took the team out of the conference room and into Berlin's nightlife districts and busiest hubs, neighborhood by neighborhood, to see those values in practice: how the city eats, how local chains compete for the late-night crowd, and how much of social life here happens out together, in the real world.
The chain has now opened in Germany, a market where late-night food is part of a social life lived in person.