Food
Food trends and recipes to keep menus fresh
Food
Value in varietals & sangria
It wasn’t that long ago that Americans were still pronouncing the final T in Cabernet and didn’t realize it was the major grape in Left Bank Bordeaux. Well, maybe they still don’t know a lot about Bordeaux but they can order a Cab (and Merlot) without stumbling. The chart below offers help on other tongue-twisting varietals.
Food
Glassware goes creative
It may be hard to outdo Chicago’s Boarding House restaurant for a nontraditional use of glassware—9,063 wine glasses are suspended from the ceiling as part of a shimmering light fixture. While that may be a bit “over the top,” many restaurants are using glassware for other things besides beverages.
It’s been done with hamburgers, with cocktails, with Mexican QSR. Take a familiar concept, one with a degree of built-in familiarity and consumer acceptance, and differentiate it—around the ingredients, the menu, the presentation, the service model. Make it unique and craveable, make it stand out from the competition; just don’t make it so strange that customers don’t know what to make of it.
The big trend in soft drinks is do it-yourself—an offshoot of prolific mixology programs. With a spritz of seltzer, housemade infusions and syrups do double duty in sodas as well as cocktails, commanding a markup. Even Starbucks is testing artisan sodas as the coffee giant tries to diversify its beverage offerings.
How do restaurant customers define value? While "quality for the price" tops the list, fresh ingredients and a variety of choices are close behind, according to a recent NPD report entitled Defining Value: Where Consumers Choose to Eat Out. The report identifies five segments of diners, the largest of which are not driven by low pricing and deals.