Diaspora & Supplier Futures — Live Inquiry
We're running a live inquiry into how diasporas reshape global food supply chains.
Client: Self-funded inquiry, with corporate research partners
Sector: Food industry / Foresight
Service: Foresight (Live Inquiry)
Location: Global · Year: 2026
Results so far: A practitioner network of 25+ interviewees across five continents — from Singapore's wet markets to the kitchens of Quito, from Filipino diaspora networks in Dubai to Mexican supplier ecosystems in Mexico City — translating field signals into concrete strategic questions for corporate food teams.
Diasporic communities have long been an early-warning system for how food demand changes. Ingredients that show up in a Filipino kitchen in Dubai today often appear in mainstream retail in five years.
Suppliers that learn to serve diaspora networks early often become category-defining brands. Yet most corporate food intelligence misses these signals entirely — they don't show up in standard sourcing data, syndicated panels, or category reports.
Most research takes signal from a community and doesn't come back. We're trying to build the opposite. Insights flow first to the practitioners who shared them with us — fully attributed, with space to push back before anything goes public.
Then, any future profit from the published report and the corporate briefs that follow funds microgrants for other researchers exploring the tensions our interviewees flagged: under-investigated questions, voices not yet heard, communities that deserve their own sustained inquiry. The work compounds. The network grows. Insight stays close to the people who created it.
The Challenge
How might we anticipate how migration and diasporic networks are reshaping food demand and supply — well before formal signal catches up?
How we tackled it
Scoping
We began the design phase in Januray: defining geographic spread, network composition, and the categories of question we'd put to interviewees.
Network activation
We composed a small interview panel from across our 100+ practitioner network and beyond — chefs, food entrepreneurs, retail buyers, foresight strategists, anthropologists, and community organisers across diasporic communities. By May 2026, structured interviews were running across India, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Sweden, the US, Brazil, Mexico, Lebanon, Croatia, and Spain.
Field research
Each interview is structured around three things: what ingredients and food practices are crossing borders right now; what supply-chain weaknesses or gaps interviewees are watching; and where they see the next category, brand, or product shift emerging. Practitioners are credited openly — never anonymised — and every interview produces both an attributed transcript and a synthesis brief.
Synthesis & strategic questions
We translate the field signals into concrete strategic questions for corporate clients: "Where does your current sourcing map miss the diasporic demand corridor between X and Y?" "What category is most likely to be reshaped by the Filipino-Singaporean-Dubai supplier flow in the next 36 months?"
Outputs in development
A public report, a series of strategic briefs for corporate teams, a workshop format (scheduled for September 17, 2026).
Meet the Team Involved
Daniel Riveong
Estefania Simon-Sasyk
Siddhi Ashar
Jennibeth Panigliawan
