You don’t have to make regular changes to key ingredients and seasonings to add interest to your menu. Even adding unexpected textures, adjusting pasta shapes and swapping in new colors of produce can help elevate a dish into something people are more excited to order. As you review your menu, where are there easy opportunities to make a dish into something more special – something a step above what a person might prepare at home?
As the weather cools, you can keep guests cozy by adding some spice. Foods with a little kick are also on trend right now – and can help you transform the vegetables and proteins you have on hand. John Brewer of Excaliber Seasoning told Supermarket Perimeter recently that its warming seasonings and marinades have been popular this year – including habanero, cinnamon, mushroom, green tea, whiskey and citrus – as well as those with an international flair, like Szechuan, Gochujang, harissa and piri piri.
The New Year is always a time when people refocus on their health and that may be especially true after 2020. Salads are a natural meal or side option for people looking to boost their health and consume more nutritious foods. Could your salad options use some innovation in 2021? Elevate your greens and vegetables with a mix of hearty grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, or – now that salad bars are a relic of pre-COVID times – consider making your entrée salads customizable with those items.
Want to create an interesting, satisfying dish that also happens to look Instagram-worthy on a plate? People already have stuffing on the brain at this time of year. Why not take it a step further and use it to help elevate your entrées? You can combine your favorite spices and in-season ingredients into signature stuffing for foods as wide-ranging as pork, poultry, seafood and produce. There’s even room for creative adaptations on the dessert menu. Think of stuffing as a vehicle for adding warmth to your menu in the cooler months ahead.
Couldn’t we all use a little comfort right now? Research has confirmed that Americans have turned to comfort foods more regularly since the start of the pandemic. As the holidays and colder weather approach, look to add items to your menu that customers will crave for comfort on a night in. And your comfort foods don’t have to be unhealthy. Maybe you can experiment with global spices and sauces to create a new twist on an appetizer – or invent a new dish by combining two of the popular items on your menu.
Offering plant-based items on your menu isn’t just about having a veggie burger on your sandwich menu or offering to substitute vegetables for animal protein in your pasta dishes. It’s also about finding ways to use plant-based ingredients to make a vegan or vegetarian dish as rich and satisfying as any other entrée on your menu. Think about how you can harness the properties of plants to make soups heartier and sauces creamier. When done well, your guests won’t miss the meat.
If you’re looking to appeal to flexitarians and offer a strong gateway to the plant-based foods on your menu, chicken can serve you well. Not only is it a lean protein that can benefit a person’s muscles, bones, mood and cardiovascular health, but it can also be seasoned and prepared in many of the same ways as the vegetables on your menu, making it easy to create different variations on a single dish.
As the weather cools, it’s time to crank up the heat on your menu. That’s especially true if you’re among the many operators looking to extend outdoor dining as late as possible into the colder months this year. Add spice and other smoky seasonings to your marinades and sauces to elevate the depth, flavor and warmth of the meat, poultry and seafood on your menu. It can help you create the feeling of curling up by the fire.
Are you serving up (or packaging up) Thanksgiving meals at your restaurant this year? While Thanksgiving is one of those holidays where people enjoy eating traditional dishes year after year, you can help your menu stand out by offering alternatives that don’t stray far from the classics but still add interest to the menu. Instead of trying to sell guests on creative new main dishes and sides, try incorporating special marinades, gravy and on-trend spices and flavors that will elevate – but not distract from – the classic foods consumers crave.
If you were to deconstruct your menu and assess the key nutrients included in each dish, where does your menu over-deliver (or under-deliver)? Having this detailed level of knowledge about the foods you serve will soon be a key advantage in foodservice – if it isn’t already. Mintel’s new Global Food and Drink Trends 2030 report, which forecasts what the next decade will look like in food and beverage consumption, predicts technology will play an increasingly important role in providing consumers with in-depth, customized information about their health and nutritional needs. What’s more, consumers will become more comfortable sharing their personal data if it means they are getting information tailor-made for them in return. Imagine struggling with anxiety and depression – or an autoimmune disease, or high blood pressure – and knowing which specific foods and restaurants in your neighborhood can provide you with the best combinations of nutrients your body needs to function at its best, while omitting harmful additives? Of course, the current climate is so challenging for restaurants that many operators aren’t focusing on menus at the level of nutrients. But people will always need food – and are becoming more conscious about their needs and willing to support the businesses that accommodate them. Could you create several versions of a dish based on varying nutritional profiles? A range of meal kits that accommodate different diets? If you can step back and take a longer view of what your customers want and then market those benefits, you are likely to earn their loyalty for life.
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