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TREND REPORTS
Your customers have become ultra-sensititve to menu prices. What should your strategy be? And what does this have to do with meatballs? Instead of playing around with prices and portions, we're telling our clients to appeal to emotions. To tug at heartstrings. To talk about feelings. Here's how. The Need for Speed; Focus on Niche Markets; Live Fire Theatrics; Gastro-Bartenders: Innards and Odd Parts; Gastronomy for Children; Over-the-Top Burgers; Ethical Eating; Eggs; Korean Food We predict major dining trends for the year ahead: Tropical superfruits, chef-driven steakhouses, Peruvian cuisine, ethical eating, exotic salts, wildly flavored chocolates, and molecular gastronomy are on the menu for 2007. Buzzwords include: Marcona almonds, aji peppers, potatoes bravas, flavored salts, house-cured meats and fish, humanely raised cattle, bahn mi Vietnamese sandwiches, savory ice creams, slow cooking at home, matcha green tea powder. Are star chefs overturning classic steakhouse economics by grafting fancy cooking onto what's supposed to be a simple broiler business? "Participatory shopping" and mix-and-match ordering has operators deconstructing their menus. Is this the end of the three-course meal? How you can react now. International restaurant consultants Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. have forecast major new dining trends that will impact how Americans eat in the year ahead. Chocolate gets mass-market snob appeal; snacks muscle in on upscale restaurant menus; vinaigrettes are the new dressings; watermelon is the new tomato, fat is back, and others. Buzzwords for the year ahead. Striking designs, luxury materials, small-batch exhibition cooking are adding high theater to hotel ventures in Singapore, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Dubai. Where to next? |
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