Hospitality Paradigm

In the last five years pasta sales dropped 8% in Australia, 13% in Europe and 25% in Italy. It isn’t a crisis in the U.S. yet but pasta’s down 6% as Americans focus on proteins and shed carbs, or shun gluten. Even carboholics have more nutritious alternatives, including quinoa, chickpeas, lentils, spelt, barley, chia. So it certainly looks like a trend. Vegetable spiralizers are selling like, well, hotcakes. Chefs will experiment with vegetables ribbons – zucchini, asparagus, beets, sweet potatoes, for example, replacing pasta. And look for pastas offering a full serving of vegetables such as purees of spinach, tomatoes, carrots incorporated into the dough. Maybe spaghetti squash will have its limelight moment.

After watching aggressive consumers attack Big Food companies over chemicals and additives (eg Maggi Foods – Nestle), Restaurants are all-of-a-sudden dumping some artificial (and other bad-for-you) ingredients from their menus. We’re looking at the “healthification” of fast- and fast-casual food. A recent survey found that 36% of consumers worried about “chemicals” in their food; in another survey, 40% of consumers report it’s “very important” that foods use all-natural ingredients, free of GMOs and artificial flavors or colors. But it won’t be enough. Consumers no longer equate pictures of pastured cows and leaves of grass on menus with health and wholesomeness. They’re searching for more holistic initiatives from restaurants such as control of waste, water conservation, human treatment of animals (and employees), and a host of other eco-social issues. Next culprits: sugar, salt and fat present even greater challenges.

There is a revolution in high-speed food delivery. Consumers will have access to the world’s largest (virtual) drive-thru window without ever leaving home! Tech-driven delivery is 2015-2016’s Big Disrupter of food retailing and food service aimed at the ultimate consumer convenience – food brought quickly to homes, offices and even hotel guests. Smartphoners, latching onto the ease of locating a restaurant, ordering, paying, and getting loyalty points without ever speaking to a human being are driving this revolution. Muscling into high-speed food delivery are so many established & startup companies nowadays that one cannot keep count anymore. None actually make food as they are middlemen connecting restaurants and customers, collecting fees and personal information about who orders what, when and from which restaurants – all valuable additions to what they already know about you. In contrast, some startups are building commissaries in cheap rent locations.