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. |
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