SheeFood

What's a Kid to Eat?

The holy grail of the restaurant menu is efficacious kids fare. Planning a kids menu requires navigating a mine field of faux paus, veto votes and the omnipresence of the PC police.

For any operator contemplating a new or improved kids menu, the first question to answer is, “Are we targeting the kid or the parent?” It’s hardly lost on anyone that today’s kid has a Millennial parent. And thus, in some cases, kids are being shut out by the restaurant marketing department’s Millennial focus.

Take Panera Bread. Its website boasts, “At Panera we believe kids shouldn’t have to imagine what’s in their food.” When you click to learn more, you find a list of what a “kids meal should be.” But really, it’s a list of what it shouldn’t be—to the horror of children everywhere. Here we go:

• Clean: No artificial flavors, preservatives, sweeteners or colors from artificial sources.
• Nutritiously Paired: Growing bodies need a meal complete with nutritious sides. Not fries, not onion rings. Options like organic yogurt, sprouted grain rolls or apples.
• Worthy of Trust: No gimmicks. No distractions. No cartoon characters, crazy colors, toys or toy-shaped food. (I’m not making this up.)

What kid do you know who would see that list and beg to go there?

How about a responsible happy medium between gimmicks, cartoons, crazy colors, toys… and a few nutritious options?

Last night I attended a sampling event featuring some new menu options at Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs (with 80+ locations throughout eight states). Among kids menu items are the new rainbow bread sandwiches (pictured) available in turkey and cheese; ham and cheese; and PB&J. The meals come with a choice of apple slices, cookie or chips and a kid’s drink of milk, juice or a small fountain drink. Now is there anything so offensive about that? I think Millennial parents would find it Instagram-worthy.

Kids like to play with their food, so why not make it playful? Denny’s is onto that with its latest kids menu item, Chicken on a Stick with dipping sauces. They also have dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. To me, that smacks of processed, but I’m not a kid, and I can see a little boy playing with the dinosaur, dipping it and biting off the head. The company ties into DreamWorks kids movies and features Kids Eat Free Tuesdays from 4-10 p.m. at some locations. This is the stuff of family restaurants.

And speaking of that, IHOP has its own interactive thing going on with its Create-A-Face Pancake on the kids menu. They get a buttermilk pancake with strawberry eyes, a whipped topping nose and a smile made with banana slices. To make it fun, the pancake comes with a tube of low-fat strawberry yogurt for the child to finish decorating the pancake—say with “hair” or cheek color. It’s a great gimmick.

I guess my point is, with the kids menu, don’t be too serious. Use some imagination.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

A Splash of 2017 Foodservice Trends

I’ve been watching 2017 food and foodservice trend predictions, and here’s a fireworks display of what we can likely expect:

• Global flavors. We’ve always had them, but they are becoming more unpronounceable. Global flavors will be on trend lists for years to come (until it becomes too boring to mention), fueled by the vastly multicultural GenZ (age 5 to 20 right now).
• Fermented foods. Spare me.
• Using underutilized cuts of meat. That’s been on lists for awhile. With a morphing sustainability mindset, this will go beyond trend and become normal.
• Seaweed as the new kale. Asians are all about this, so let’s give them credit for bringing this to us.
• Flavor trends favor items we can’t pronounce, but for the next Sriracha, I’m hearing sambal from Southeast Asia. Also watch for avocado oil to arise.
• Edible cannabis, anyone? Not for me.
• Sustainability leads to zero-waste kitchens. Here’s a shout out to Chef Sean Telo at 21 Greenpoint in Brooklyn who wants all chefs to get on board with this one. On Sunday evenings, he feature the 21 Sunday Dinner in which guests receive a six or seven course tasting menu for $21 made from all the ingredients left in the kitchen. For an upcoming article I wrote, he told me, “It’s a great way to go through the inventory so there is no waste. We send a selection of creative and mindful dishes created from overlooked edibles.”
• Let’s see, where was I? Trendy ingredients. Watch for more sorghum, cucumber and jackfruit. That last one… I don’t know how we’re going to see that fresh. I don’t think it can be shipped mainland without irradiation, but I could be wrong. At any rate, maybe we’ll see it processed.

What I didn’t see on any trend list is quick-serve restaurants offering more healthful food. I guess that’s not sexy enough to write about, but I see it starting to happen—with Chick-fil-A as an emerging posterchild for this, which I discussed a few blog posts ago. I also addressed it in my Nov/Dec 2016 article (to the right) “Quick-Serve Gets Healthy” in The National Culinary Review.

Let me predict that more bowl-meals will come to fast food—a little something from the fast-casual play book. Bowls provide the opportunity for a healthy foundation (brown rice or lettuce) and a flavorful combo of nearly anything with a sauce that can borrow from any global cuisine.

I’m not going to let fast-food get by with cage-free, hormone-free, anti-biotic free, free-range, etc., as their effort toward a healthy menu. Yes, Millennials think that’s what healthy means. But let’s start speaking in terms of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, minimally processed, low-no sodium and less fat.

Tell me what you think.

Jody