Natural products consultant Tim Avila sees the food industry getting smarter about how to develop new products. Consumers' preferences, he says, fall along a spectrum in four key areas of experience—sweetness/bitterness, supertaster/non-taster, crunchiness/softness, and convenience/inconvenience. The successful food companies of the future will identify their product's placement along these axes and make adjustments according to the specific demographic or lifestyle preferences of their target consumers.