“Individuals make enjoyable of me in regards to 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 refrigerators in properties all over the world to be able to predict the longer term—and monetize these insights.
By the point of his refrigeration revelation in 2009, Stassopoulos had already gained a repute for his maverick course of: The place different investors usually relied on market knowledge and forecasts from large 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 needed. “The issue is that I used to be asking folks, ‘OK, assume you get a wage enhance. How will your food regimen 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 girl who had simply given him that precise response. Her household was fairly poor, and what little food she had in the home was very conventional—pulses, rice, and pickles. On a whim, Stassopoulos requested the lady if she’d thoughts taking him purchasing. 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 have 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 noticed that the reply is the fridge!” he mentioned. “The fridge might inform me how folks would behave as soon as that they had some more money—earlier than they even comprehend 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 gadget,” 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—delicate drinks, beer, and ice cream. “You have got some disposable revenue for the primary time,” mentioned Stassopoulos. “You need to present all these items that your loved ones was beforehand disadvantaged of, and also you need to exhibit 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 are actually regular sufficient that particular person members of the family can dislike one another’s most popular 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.” Substances from totally different cultures in addition to objects marketed as wholesome—fat-free, food regimen, or probiotic meals—additionally present up on fridge cabinets at this revenue degree, reflecting, in Stassopoulos’ rubric, a want for self-improvement and, beneath it, a transition towards individualistic, Western values.
The top of his pyramid is reached as soon as a fridge incorporates 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 usually on this effectivity stage, China is on the indulgence stage, and Brazil is already on the wholesome stage.” Based mostly 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 have been the objects Indian households would add to their diets as their incomes elevated—and up to date knowledge exhibiting double-digit progress in gross sales of value-added dairy merchandise, to not point out his above-benchmark returns, have confirmed him appropriate.
