As I look forward to 2018, I see a lot of game-changing blurring ahead. It’s already happening and is opening the door for innovation beyond traditional bounds. It’s an exciting time for operators looking for ways to differentiate. It’s a troubling time for those who want to keep doing what they’ve always done.
- Breakfast Inspires. Traditional breakfast items will appear elsewhere on the menu, and other meal staples will appear on the breakfast menu. We have all-day breakfast lessons to thank for this. I’m talking about things like Carl’s Jr.’s Breakfast Burger—a cheeseburger topped with bacon, egg, and a hashbrown and Bob Evans with its namesake burger on a potato bun stacked with a fried egg, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and Sriracha-avocado mayo and available all day. The chicken-and-waffles craze going on now is another example of sandwiching breakfast and lunch together.
- Appetizers Get a New Name. While fast food, fast casual and casual dining compete for the most recently identified snacking occasion, chef-driven operators watch and question traditional menu-section names. They are jettisoning the pigeon-holed appetizer title. I can name three restaurants that opened in 2017 with menus that replaced the word appetizer for that menu section. Café Du Pays in Boston and Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. in Charleston, S.C., call the section snacks, while Kemuri Tatsu-ya in Austin names the section munchies. Others are changing the menu similarly. It’s possible that culinary development of the bar menu partially necessitated the need to rethink the catch-all appetizer theme. Small plates hasn’t been entirely appropriate either. Start watching what happens with the naming of this menu section.
- Dessert Borrows from Lunch and Dinner. Indulgence isn’t limited to cake, ice cream, cookies and brownies. Proprietary signature desserts will reach into other menus and dayparts for vehicles to deliver sweet. Consider Dairy Queen’s Treatzza Pizza (fudge cookie crust layered with vanilla soft serve, candy pieces and a chocolate drizzle). The Original Dinerant in Portland, Ore., offers Ice Cream Nachos combining cinnamon sugar chips with mango salsa and ice cream. Coor’s Field in Denver serves Apple Pie Nachos. Boston’s Area Four serves Hong Kong waffles (egg-shaped protrusions vs. traditional indentations) like they do in Hong Kong as a dessert with ice cream and a fruit sauce.
- International Flavors and Ingredients Become American. The fame of hot Sriracha and fermented kimchee clued in operators that Americans will accept foreign flavors on their American food. So watch as the industry goes tip-toeing through foreign fields in search of the next cool ingredient, flavor and preparation technique. And so we see pickled hijiki seaweed and fermented tomato water at Denver’s Mister Tuna. Zoës Kitchen’s new expanded menu includes several new sauces, including Moroccan harissa described as a red pepper sauce with tomatoes and spices, including cardamom, cumin, and caraway. North Africa is the “it” place right now, but it could be anywhere on any American plate next year.
- Traditional Restaurants Become Obsolete. OK, that won’t happen in 2018, but the notion has been set in motion. Combine what’s happening with mobile ordering apps, delivery and new competing venues, and restaurants should start adjusting into new models to avoid self-destruction. It’s marketing 101. Food trucks, food halls, grocery store and c-store prepared foods and prep-only kitchens/off premises preparation locales may just be the beginning of imaginative ways consumers will have available to get food. Something as simple as Instagram will be the field leveler. Right now we think consumers want the experience of going out to eat, but will they always? Watch the upcoming generations.
Tell me what you think.
Jody
