With their market share being chipped away on all sides US restaurants won’t find it easy in the 12 months ahead, but that won’t stop a plethora of trends impacting the market. Kerstin Kühn reports
US restaurants are set for a rough ride in 2017, amid stiffer competition from supermarkets and delivery services, as well as rising labour costs and rent prices. The fast-casual boom seems to be slowing down and only upscale-casual restaurants offering a unique experience continue to draw well-employed young people with few financial commitments. Hearty breakfast dishes and healthy bowls are the hot menu items for the coming year and vegetables and altern-ative proteins are starting to give meat a run for its money. Here are the top food trends for 2017, according to New York-based food and restaurant consultancy Baum + Whiteman’s latest trends report.
Restaurant recession
Falling food prices might sound like good news for restaurant operators but ironically they’re having an adverse affect on the US hospitality industry, with some analysts predicting an ongoing ‘restaurant recession’.
Wholesale prices for meat, chicken, eggs and other essential commodities have tumbled, but many restaurants aren’t seeing the benefits. Instead, lower food prices are giving supermarkets, which pass those savings directly on to customers, an edge, while restaurants are hiking prices as they grapple rising costs for labour, rent and health care, which far exceed any savings they get from lower food prices.
“The big danger? If food prices continue falling, restaurants will be compelled to lower menu prices precisely as other costs spiral upwards. This year alone more than a dozen restaurant chains went Chapter 11 [protection from creditors] or Chapter 7 [bankruptcy] and lots are on the edge,” Baum + Whiteman warns.
Fast-casual overload
The US fast-casual restaurant movement has appeared unstoppable over the past few years. Until 2016. Fast-casual sales started to slump towards the end of the year, and Baum + Whiteman suggests this might be due to incessant repetition and an excessively formulaic customer experience. After all, how many fast-cas pizza chains and artisan hamburger outlets can the market support? What’s more, although there has been a proliferation of culinary genres in the segment — from Indian to Korean, Mediterranean, lobster rolls, poke and ceviche — they’re “mostly dumbed down”.
Baum + Whiteman predicts that to differentiate one chain from another, operators will need to innovate. This could be “that décor will shift up a couple of notches to mimic casual-dining environments; the addition of cocktails and other alcoholic beverages from full bars with appropriate décor; or delivery of food to tables, which will make these places more like restaurants; or the addition of drive-thru service, which will make them more like fast food. Or both.”
Too hot to fail?
But as most restaurants are under stress, upscale-casual restaurants with pretensions of gastronomy and good PR agents are living in an alternate universe, Baum + Whiteman insists. These restaurants “continue opening because they are the beneficiaries of our economy’s well-educated high earners who own little, [have] no mortgages, no car payments, few familial responsibilities, and are blessed with good discretionary income,” the firm says.
Virtual restaurants
After the “Uberisation” of food delivery last year, Baum + Whiteman predicts that “restaurants without seats, and seats without restaurants” will add another dimension to the sharing economy next year.
Indie start-ups such as David Chang’s Maple and Ando in New York or Munchery in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, are redefining meal delivery. Operating from commercial kitchens in offbeat, low-rent locations, they are low-investment restaurants with no seats and the sole purpose of efficient meal delivery to tired diners who have discerning tastes but want to eat dinner in their pyjamas.
“Meanwhile e-start-ups around the country are assembling networks of home cooks to prepare meals and deliver them to other people’s dining rooms,” adds Baum + Whiteman. Examples include Yuma in Montreal, Umi Kitchen in New York, Foodieshares in Los Angeles or Trype in London.
Finally, a trend that’s been dubbed the “Airbnb of Food” has seen the rise of start-ups like Feastly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which connect locals who love to host dinner parties with adventurous tourists and locals alike.
Breakfast revolution
McDonald’s all-day breakfast has inspired competitors to follow suit. Jack-in-the-Box has launched “Brunchfast” with an assortment of heavier items and Starbucks has spiced up its breakfast sandwiches and is testing weekend quiche and French toast. Meanwhile independent restaurants are introducing heartier breakfast options that qualify as round-the-clock meals, such as Eggslut in Los Angeles, which serves Wagyu tri-tip, fried egg, chimichurri, red onion and arugula on a brioche bun. The fried chicken sandwich is making its mark on breakfast menus, and Baum + Whiteman also suggests keeping an eye out for more creative breakfast tacos next year. “The very texture of breakfast is being transformed. Used to be that breakfast was smooth and soothing – think of soft scrambled eggs, buttered grits, custardy French toast, varieties of benedicts or oatmeal. Today’s textures (and tastes) are turning aggressive – crunchy fried chicken, sriracha, crispy chorizo, chimichurri, coarse whole-grain cereal.”
Bowl movement
“It all began innocuously with acai bowls for breakfast and then spread to fast-casual when chains discovered their customers were rejecting breads and wraps in favour of greens and grains,” explains Baum + Whiteman, adding that food in bowls is a trend set to grow big in 2017. From poke to ramen and Korean bibimbap, bowls are a hit with office workers as they are healthier than sandwiches and less likely to splatter on laps or keyboards, while chefs are finding that assembling a decorous bowl is easier and faster than the complexity of plating upscale entrées,” Baum + Whiteman says.
Vegetables are on the rise
“Vegetables in 2017 will extend their domination of the dinner plate, shoving animal protein to the edges or off the plate altogether,” Baum + Whiteman predicts. The firm points to chefs paying more attention to vegetables, as well as to the spread of vegetable-centric fast-casual chains such as Sweetgreen.
While kale is finally on its way out, beet greens, chard, turnip greens, mustard greens and carrot tops are all becoming more widespread and seaweed is gaining wider acceptance in part due to the ramen boom. “If we’re wrong, hedge your bets by exploring the world of squashes,” Baum + Whiteman adds.
Plant-based protein
With the health and environmental perils of red meat firmly engrained in the public consciousness, the momentum of fake bleeding meat is set to con-tinue in 2017.
Unlike vegetarian burger alternatives, which often look and taste nothing like meat, outfits like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have developed plant-based burger patties that mimic the look, smell, taste, and sound of hamburger patties sizzling on the grill. Impossible Foods, for example, created a veggie burger from wheat, coconut oil and potato protein, along with a substance called leghemoglobin or heme, mimicking the look and taste of a rare, bleeding burger. These companies are not only attracting investments from big companies and Silicon Valley but are also starting to make waves on restaurants menus.
■ Kerstin Kühn is a US-based journalist specialising in the hospitality sector
2017: The year of…..
★ Sandwich of the year:
breakfast sandwich
Restaurants are elevating the humble breakfast sandwich to new levels. Think breakfast sandwiches on dinner menus and Michelin-starred restaurants doling out egg sandwiches paired with exceptional latte art in
the morning.
★ Dish of the year: tartare
Beef and tuna tartare are widespread, but new takes on diced, raw food are emerging such as the bison tartare at Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis and beet tartare at The Oval Room in Washington, DC.
★ Cuisine of the year: Filipino
Influenced by a long history of culinary tradition and the flavours of India, Japan, Malay, China, and Spain, Filipino cuisine is getting its moment in the spotlight across the country.
★ Dessert of the year:
reinvented ice cream
It’s another arena for the culinary talents of modern-day chefs to expand into. The latest ice cream varieties include flavours such as matcha soft serve and Thai rolled ice cream shaped on ice-cold “anti griddles”.
★ Food city of the year: Los Angeles
The LA restaurant scene is booming but next year will see a huge influx of chefs, including Jessica Largey, former Manresa chef de cuisine, and Dave Beran, former executive chef at Next, to the city of angels.
★ Wine of the year: natural wine
It’s minimally processed, additive-free, and generally produced without adding or removing anything. Aimed toward the health conscious, prepare yourself for an influx of this funky fine wine.
★ Beer of the year: sour beer
Keep your eye out for Flanders red, Berliner weisse, gose - all types of sour brews that are taking the beer scene by storm. Restaurants and bars are welcoming entire menu sections devoted to the super sour brew.
★ Spirit of the year: sake
Craft sake breweries and bars are opening all over the us, educating customers on the intricacies of the spirit. Coinciding with the popularity of Japanese cuisine, it’s no surprise sake is on the rise.
■ Andrew Freeman & Co annual trend forecast
