“Folks make enjoyable of me concerning the fridges,” mentioned Tassos Stassopoulos. “I’m fridge-obsessed.” Because the founder and managing accomplice of Trinetra, a London-based funding agency, Stassopoulos has pioneered an uncommon technique: peeking inside fridges in properties around the globe so as to predict the longer term—and monetize these insights.
By the point of his refrigeration revelation in 2009, Stassopoulos had already gained a popularity for his maverick course of: The place different buyers sometimes relied on market information and forecasts from huge consumer-products corporations to infer what folks in, say, India would possibly begin buying sooner or later, Stassopoulos spent days touring across the nation, asking them himself. He discovered the ethnographic course of fascinating and threw himself into it, visiting casual settlements and working-class neighborhoods to speak with folks for hours—however he nonetheless wasn’t getting the data he wished. “The issue is that I used to be asking folks, ‘OK, assume you get a wage improve. How will your weight-reduction plan change?’ They’d all say, ‘I wouldn’t change something,’” Stassopoulos defined. “However we all know that as folks get richer, their diets change.”
One afternoon he was within the metropolis of Aurangabad, a pair hundred miles inland from Mumbai, interviewing a lady who had simply given him that actual response. Her household was fairly poor, and what little meals she had in the home was very conventional—pulses, rice, and pickles. On a whim, Stassopoulos requested the girl if she’d thoughts taking him buying. He gave her some rupees and adopted her to the nook store, the place she purchased Cadbury chocolate bars, Coca-Cola, and a few packaged savory snacks—objects that had been very totally different from the meals she at the moment fed her household, however that Stassopoulos had repeatedly documented within the fridges and cabinets of individuals one socioeconomic class above hers. “I spotted that the reply is the fridge!” he mentioned. “The fridge may inform me how folks would behave as soon as that they had some extra cash—earlier than they even understand it themselves.”
Stassopoulos began grouping his pictures of fridges by revenue to see how their contents developed. What emerged was a journey, beginning with a poor household’s acquisition of their first fridge. “For them, it’s an effectivity machine,” mentioned Stassopoulos. They use it to retailer both the components to make conventional dishes or the leftovers from these dishes. Upon their ascent into the center class, the fridge begins to incorporate treats and worldwide manufacturers—smooth drinks, beer, and ice cream. “You may have some disposable revenue for the primary time,” mentioned Stassopoulos. “You wish to present all these items that your loved ones was beforehand disadvantaged of, and also you wish to showcase whereas doing it.”
As soon as a household turns into actually prosperous, their fridge will shift once more. The place one model of ice cream within the freezer was an indulgent deal with for all of the household, a number of manufacturers of ice cream reveal that frozen desserts at the moment are regular sufficient that particular person relations can dislike one another’s most well-liked flavors. “Earlier than, it was simply, Sure, we are able to get ice cream,” he mentioned. “Now all of it turns into about me: I like chocolate and I don’t like strawberry.” Elements from totally different cultures in addition to objects marketed as wholesome—fat-free, weight-reduction plan, or probiotic meals—additionally present up on fridge cabinets at this revenue stage, reflecting, in Stassopoulos’ rubric, a want for self-improvement and, beneath it, a transition towards individualistic, Western values.
The head of his pyramid is reached as soon as a fridge accommodates meals that categorical collective advantage: fair-trade, natural, cruelty-free merchandise in reusable packaging. “That is the place the Nordics are,” he mentioned. “India is generally on this effectivity stage, China is on the indulgence stage, and Brazil is already on the wholesome stage.” Primarily based on Indian fridgenomics, he determined to spend money on dairy processors, corporations that flip milk into butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. He predicted that these had been the objects Indian households would add to their diets as their incomes elevated—and up to date information exhibiting double-digit development in gross sales of value-added dairy merchandise, to not point out his above-benchmark returns, have confirmed him appropriate.
