The Artisanal Food Renaissance
By Fabio Parasecoli — August 3 2025
4 MIN READ
This article is featured in the Magazine “Exploring Origin – The Importance of Knowing Where Food Comes From”, created in collaboration with Global Retail Brands. You can find more insights about the Magazine and additional articles here.
Darjeeling tea from India, Taleggio cheese from Italy, and Baena extra virgin olive oil from Spain: over the past few decades, consumers in the Global North have shown growing interest in artisanal ingredients, traditional culinary customs, and heritage foods from all over the world.
The more obscure and less known, the better, it would seem. Knowledgeable consumers often express a desire for culinary specialties that ensure great taste, quality, but also opportunities for discovery and exploration. Ingredients, dishes, and practices that have maintained connections to places, the people that live in them, and the traditions they have developed over generations do not risk any longer to be forgotten in a global food system that is increasingly standardized. Instead, they have become objects of curiosity and, at times, passion.
The value of provenance
Enter geographical indications and other products that can be clearly and reliably connected to their soil, their climate, their precise locations, the communities that inhabit them and the production method that they have developed to respond to their needs in that specific context.
In fact, the market value of products with specific and identifiable provenance has been increasing. This may come across as a paradox at a time when mass production and industrial technologies dominate our contemporary food systems, at least from a quantitative point of view. This transformation is a crucial historical development that should not be discounted, because it has allowed for increased food availability around the world, making hunger and famines less prevalent, although unfortunately still occurring. However, issues of sustainability, labor justice, and nutrition have come to the fore with mass production; moreover, new research is pointing to the health dangers of hyper-processed foods. Due to these concerns, growing numbers of consumers are turning to purchases that provide more than just affordability and convenience.
The globalization of artisanal foods
Not only advertisers and marketers but also distributors, retailers, and restaurateurs are well aware of these dynamics and the shifting preferences of their customers. Crops, specialties, and dishes whose growth or manufacture was usually limited to small areas and were available only near the production location, can be appreciated anywhere, if their supply chains reach far enough.
Products coming from the most far-flung corners of the planet are now widely available in dining establishments and shops and have become increasingly visible in media, thanks to social networks and the active role consumers have played in their expansion. New segments of consumers with relatively high spending power are learning to appreciate the manual skills and know-how of artisanal food producers and their historical ties with local cultures, and they are ready to pay more for products that embody those traits.
The experience economy of food
Pleasure comes from the flavors and textures of ingredients and dishes; however, the stories connected with them are also important. The value of products is often determined not only by their inherent material and sensory characteristics, including their objective and memorable qualities – but also by the promise of something else: joy, indulgence, and feeling part of something larger. For affluent consumers in postindustrial societies, preoccupations with availability and access to food are being replaced by a longing for the consumption of experiences rather than just material substances. Shopping and eating become arenas for what Joseph Pine and James Gilmore defined in the late 1990s as the “experience economy,” pointing to how production, business, and services have shifted toward providing forms of personal engagement -intellectual, emotional, and sensory– and the memories that follow them. The value of such experiences increases proportionally with their uniqueness and intensity.
Food and cultural identity
Marketing research, as well as scholarly investigations, suggest that consumption contributes to customers’ construction of their sense of self and their cultural and social identity. As purchasing choices play an increasingly important role in defining who we are as individuals and as members of communities, food has moved to the center of political issues, social dynamics, and cultural preoccupations. Far from being perceived as embarrassing leftovers from a backward past, rural and artisanal traditions are appreciated as anchors against the globalized and seemingly unstoppable flows of goods, people, finance, and ideas. They can also become sources of inspiration and emotional sanctuary: the sense of cultural loss and a lack of direct relationship with the origins of what we eat often lead consumers to look for forms of tradition and authenticity.
This yearning is also behind the growth of culinary tourism, in which food becomes a fundamental component—if not the main motivation—for traveling. Visitors not only want to get decent meals; they want to enjoy the distinctiveness of the new location through its culinary products and gastronomic traditions. This interest in exploring different realities through food reflects the desire for a cosmopolitan lifestyle that allows individuals to consider their openness to encounters with the unfamiliar as a mark of their sophistication and cultural capital.
Probably for these reasons, similar dynamics are also emerging in developing countries of the Global South, where burgeoning middle classes are embracing food connoisseurship and access to specialty products as a relevant element of their cultural identity. Of course, these dynamics change from country to country, and at times from region to region, responding to the specific cultural contexts and historical developments that make the meanings and practices attached to traditional and local foods so varied and complex. Such localized dynamics are now the object of a growing body of study and research.
Ingredients, dishes, and practices that have maintained connections to places, the people that live in them, and the traditions they have developed over generations no longer risk being forgotten in a global food system that is increasingly standardized.
Of course, the interest in artisanal and traditional foods brings its own causes for anxiety, traceability and safety being the first ones. From this point of view, geographical indications are in general well-positioned. Concerns in terms of treatment of farmers and other laborers involved, especially in less developed countries, have acquired great relevance.
Last but not least, we need to take into consideration the environmental consequences of the growing demand for certain crops or animal breeds, as well as the impact of climate change on their agronomic and economic viability. That said, opportunities to leverage artisanal and traditional foods exist in terms of socio-economic development: it is up to the communities involved to figure out the best and fairest ways to take advantage of them.
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