![]() Sriracha varieties are on the National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot list for the year — and in addition to being popular with guests, they’re also a versatile, cost-effective item to have in your toolbox. Sriracha sauce mixes well with such commonly used condiments as ketchup, mayonnaise, honey and butter. From there, you can translate it into a wide range of applications and menu categories. Whip up a dipping sauce, sandwich topping, chicken marinade or snack seasoning, or use to it add some spice to soup or brownies. ![]() They’ve become the secret weapon for kitchens serving up vegetarian dishes. Mushrooms have the ability to give meaty texture and umami flavor to a vegetarian burger or bolognese sauce, while weaving in plant-based nutrition. As closely as manufactured animal protein replacements have come to replicating the taste and mouth feel of their traditional counterparts, your guests may want their plant-based foods to be less processed. Mushrooms can help (and they’re environmentally friendly to produce too). Try them across day parts and menu segments — both in disguise within dishes or out front with their flavors on display. ![]() Just a few years ago, virtual restaurants were on the rise and considered by many in the industry to be a sensible, flexible means of getting restaurant-quality food to consumers while cutting back on the high real estate and operational costs that traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants generate. Now, while there are still successful examples of virtual brands, much of the enthusiasm for the trend has dampened. Granted, the market has become confusing to consumers and has. eroded trust, with many redundant, misleading listings and poorly rated operations mixed in among the stronger ones. (Uber Eats recently wiped several thousand virtual brands off of its site for this reason.) Consumers have also expressed a preference for knowing their food was prepared in a traditional restaurant kitchen. To be sure, restaurants still need the ability to operate flexibly and find ways to promote their brand in ways that feel genuine and build trust. So what’s the best way to approach that in the current environment? In addition to finding ways to reduce the costs of running a brick-and-mortar restaurant — such as optimizing your use of real estate to ensure every square foot you pay for is paying you back and meeting the needs of various categories of customers — using your tech stack can provide some added flexibility without diluting your brand. For example, it can help you manage traffic coming from different order streams, allowing you to give your curbside pickup business a boost in promotion on a night when your dining room is full. Looking at your business and the various traffic streams it generates, is there an opportunity to recalibrate those streams based on what’s happening in your business on a given day? Doing so could help you gain flexibility and also capitalize on the different ways you’re able to get food to people. ![]() For many years, vegan consumers were left wanting at restaurants. Unless they were eating at a vegetarian restaurant accustomed to creating dishes that were naturally delicious without the animal products, they generally had to dissect restaurant menu offerings and eat something that had been altered from how the chef intended it. But the tide has turned in recent years, with sales of plant-based foods surging and more consumers actively seeking restaurants that offer fully curated vegan meals – across different restaurant types and across menu categories too. If you’re serving more guests who like plant-based options, are you offering some vegan standouts – or at least some options that are just as tasty with the animal protein removed if requested? ![]() Speed-scratch foods can be a restaurant operator’s best friend when labor is tight. Are you going as far with them on your menu as you can? While you should be more careful about cutting corners on your signature items, everything else on the menu is fair game for streamlining. Think par-baked breads, frozen items that need minimal cooking time, soups and stews that just need to be heated and served, pre-cut dessert portions, and dry mixes for baked goods or dry mix-ins that can elevate a wide range of sauces, dressings and marinades. ![]() Offering what feels like a worthwhile experience to guests is important at U.S. restaurants, particularly as restaurant inflation continues to outpace grocery store inflation. One way restaurants are approaching this is through menu innovation. According to new research from Datassential, only 16 percent of restaurant operators are not planning to change their menus this year. Making updates can boost the intrigue of your restaurant and make dining out (or ordering out) an easier decision for people. But as you innovate, it’s important to find ways to make the new dishes tempting by relating them to something familiar. For example, according to Datassential, a growing number of Latin American restaurants are enticing American guests to try birria by describing it as a twist on the French dip sandwich – an American favorite that also feels experiential because of the dipping involved. The Latin American approach, on some menus, involves quesadillas or tacos served with a brothy soup for dipping instead of a beefy sandwich served with au jus. So a dish that could feel adventurous (but maybe a little out of reach) to a guest feels comfortably adventurous because of the connection to a French dip. As you innovate your menu this year, consider your menu favorites. What dishes could be appealing templates for introducing the new flavor profiles that upgrade the experience you offer? ![]() So many consumers are eating with a conscience these days – scaling back on meat in an effort to lighten their carbon footprint and paying more attention to the sustainability of the foods they eat. Seafood is playing a new role here, with such items as seaweed and bivalves gaining traction in restaurants for their environmental and nutritional benefits. They both provide a number of key benefits to underwater ecosystems – and farming them has minimal ecological impact. While seaweed’s dietary benefits vary by variety, it’s generally a rich source of minerals and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as vitamins B, C, E and K. Bivalves contain more protein than many meats and plants, as well as omega-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc and magnesium. A recent Restaurant Business report predicts that restaurants could play a significant role in motivating more American consumers to integrate sea vegetables and bivalves into their diets. ![]() Are you skeptical that your guests may want to try microcultural foods or particular flavors beyond the mainstream? You may be surprised at how they respond. In a recent webinar from Datassential, experts suggested foodservice professionals look to some very mainstream sources – amusement parks and state fairs, for example – for a clear sense of how the general public responds to on-trend flavors. For example, at Six Flags Great Adventure, a “Flavors of the World” promotion happening this summer offers guests a sampling of food and drink from Mexico, Korea, Greece, France, Italy, the Caribbean and India. Guests can try such items as kheer, visinada and escargot en croute, among other options. If you’re interested in stretching the boundaries of your menu with flavors from around the globe, consider tempting your guests with some related limited-time offers and monitoring their responses. ![]() Once upon a time, a person could return to a restaurant year after year and see the same assortment of menu items. Inflation and supply challenges have turned that idea on its head, making rotating menus a more common experience. But even if the macroeconomic environment stabilizes, there are big benefits to keeping dynamic menus around. They spark ongoing interest from guests. What better reason to visit a restaurant more often than to discover the latest changes to the menu? They allow you to flow with the seasons and offer ingredients more apt to be local and plentiful. New menus naturally offer you content to promote online – you can entice people to come in before your menu options change and again when you’re unveiling new items. Finally, they keep your operation nimble. You’re able to respond more creatively, flexibly and cost-consciously when there is a shortage. A restaurant with a regularly changing menu can’t be shouldering a lot of waste. ![]() As more businesses adopt environmental goals as part of their corporate practices, restaurants and related vendors are doubling down on waste management too. Chipotle recently announced that it is expanding composting across its more than 3,200 stores – and CNBC reports that waste management is one of the goals that the restaurant’s executive compensation bonuses are based on. For their part, Uber Eats is also offering restaurants grants worth $10,000 to switch to sustainable packaging as part of its plan to remove all unnecessary plastic waste from deliveries this year. How do sustainable practices factor into your operations this year? |
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