What is football season without the food? Whether your guests are indulging in their favorite appetizers at tailgates or around the TV, you can give people an extra reason to come together this fall. Try putting your own spin on some of the classic, craveable items of the season – or weaving in ingredients that are plentiful, in-season and less expensive. A recent report from Foodservice Director suggests guacamole elevated with roasted tomato and bacon, as well as pork and sweet potato quesadillas. When buffets were quietly closed during the pandemic, it might have been hard to imagine that in just a few years, they would come back better than ever in a number of ways. But that’s where we are now. According to a recent New York Times report, even though a number of buffet restaurants have closed in the past couple of years, sales, demand and investment are up at others and are catering to a wide range of budgets. Even if your restaurant hasn’t operated a buffet in the past, it’s a format worth considering. Innovations in buffet design and presentation in the past few years have made buffet service a labor-friendly, waste-reducing option for operators and an experience-rich option for guests. They are also a safe choice for groups trying to accommodate a wide range of dietary preferences and make everyone feel like they have gotten a good value. First, the service structure of buffets has evolved to include more individual portions and enhance food safety. It’s more common to see pre-portioned and -plated items that guests can grab and take with them — as opposed to dishing out large portions that are too much for them to finish. Presentation has also taken a step up, with more premium, Instagrammable options on offer, as well as food stations that lend themselves to theatrical food preparation by chefs. On the food safety side, the increased availability of self-contained hot and cold food storage units are helping operators maintain food temperatures with greater precision. The greater use of individual portioning supports food safety too, allowing guests to limit their time standing over (and likelihood of breathing on) the buffet line. Building a worthwhile dining experience isn’t just about the food. More restaurants and bars are trying to make the experience feel a little extra special — and well worth the cost of dining out — by changing up the glassware other elements of beverage service to help make the experience more memorable for both alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinkers. Consider the bird-shaped cocktail glass at Bohemien Bar in Brooklyn, or the Smoke on the London Roaster coffee cocktail served in a red telephone booth at Barquila in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Other restaurants are scoring points for presentation with creative fruit purées and garnishes. Everything from toasted marshmallows, to caramel apple slices, to strips of bacon, to gummy bears are appearing as fun finishing touches in drinks to make the experience of dining out feel more worthwhile. New data from Square has shown that more than 10 percent of all dining dollars are spent from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. So Saturday brunch has replaced Friday lunch as the top period for restaurant visits. As a result, there is opportunity in brunch. More restaurant operators are expanding their offerings or even launching a brunch menu for the first time. If you’re looking to draw more brunch traffic, consider expanding your beverage menu with some light, colorful beverages (boozy and non), as well as some shareable food boards and other options that appeal to groups and could give people a good reason to gather with friends. Sriracha varieties are on the National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot list for the year — and in addition to being popular with guests, they’re also a versatile, cost-effective item to have in your toolbox. Sriracha sauce mixes well with such commonly used condiments as ketchup, mayonnaise, honey and butter. From there, you can translate it into a wide range of applications and menu categories. Whip up a dipping sauce, sandwich topping, chicken marinade or snack seasoning, or use to it add some spice to soup or brownies. 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? |
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