With all the post-holiday hubbub, I didn't have a chance to air my forecast for 2012. It's a shame because the task is outrageously easy this year. Every major trend boils down to "better."
Not "better" in terms of business conditions, though the National Restaurant Association yesterday forecast a slightly easier time for the industry in 2012 (apparently I wasn't the only laggard in presenting year-ahead predictions. Until a few years ago, the issued its annual economic preview during December of the preceding year. Now the data isn't released until we've torn the first page off the New Year calendar.)
The byword is "better" because it's the G-string that gets the consumer's dollar these days. Palms get all sweaty when shoppers spy something of truly superior quality at a can-do price. It's as unavoidable as admiring Mitt Romney's hair.
The industry has been jabbering for years about redefining value as affordable quality. This year, talk has given way to unprecedented action. Much of the chain-related restaurant news to date has centered on better food, better service, better environment and better business practices.
Wendy's is upgrading its burgers--again. Taco Bell is "reinventing" the taco and striving to match the quality of Chipotle. Jack in the Box is installing fireplaces as part of a design overhaul. Domino's is hawking artisan pizza and a better signature side.
McDonald's is crowing about a personal connection with the farmers who grow its food. Chipotle's spin-off Asian concept features high-end small-batch beers. Panera Bread is currently promoting salmon.
On the full-service front, Ruby Tuesday is providing fresh bread and tossing its Caesar salads tableside.
The whole gourmet-burger craze is built on the concept of providing what's better. It, in turn, is part of a larger movement by high-end chefs into fast-food, where they hope to make a name (and a bagful of loot) by providing white-tablecloth-quality fare. Late last year the NRA cited that emerging fast-fine segment as one to watch.
The problem is, "better" is relative. What's a notch above the usual today becomes tomorrow's norm. So what will be the new manifestations of better?
--Better sodas. Everyone is infatuated with the fast-casual market, where several of the standouts have spec'd small-batch artisan colas and flavored soft drinks. Skinny Pizza, for instance, offers a fountain version of Boylan Diet Black Cherry soda, a favorite that I've never seen in fountain form before. Expect to see more of those high-craft drinks populating the coolers of limited-service brands, including some of the big names.
--Better condiments. There have been fits and starts in that direction, and the foodservice supplier community is certainly anticipating the process, with better mayo, catchup and salsas already in distributors' warehouses. But that might be only the start.
--Better packaging. When was the last time you said, "Wow, that's a really cool takeout package we're using"? Customers frequent a place because of the food, the convenience or the price. But a truly breakthrough sort of packaging could help in delivering that overall sense of "better."
--Better French fry alternatives. The apple slices are now a standard. Carrot and celery sticks are tight there, too. So what's next? Sweet potato fries are certainly cropping up everywhere (and are rumored to be in test by Wendy's). A personal plea: Please, someone add raw broccoli florets as an option so I can get my sister off my back.
--Better veggie options. I'm talking about new choices from the mainstream chains and brands. It's time to go beyond veggie burgers and sandwiches with the meat omitted.
--Better pizza. This isn't a swipe at Domino's, since I've not tried its new artisan pies. it's directed at all the pizzerias in the eastern regions of the U.S., and New York in particular, that have coasted on the strength of their ovens for decades. They've turned pizza into a commodity, instead of striving to do something different. Like something better than the mass of pie makers out there.
--Better prices on better drinks. I'm not lost in some nostalgic dream about nickel candy bars, but a $12 beer is overpriced, especially when I know it retails and wholesales at a completely different tier. Wine prices are also getting crazy. A $40 tab for two glasses of wine on the way home for work just doesn't make sense.
--Better office catering. I say that as a consumer. More flavorful and extensive choices, please. The portable taco bar is the last innovation I can remember in that realm.
Showing posts with label restaurant trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant trends. Show all posts
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Friday, January 7, 2011
Sociologists in the dining room
Restaurateurs have to master a slew of jobs if they hope to succeed: Marketer, artist, trainer, buyer, motivational speaker, equipment repairman, even plumber. Now market conditions are requiring them to add a new title to the list: Sociologist.
Economists and politicians have noted during the new-year fit of prognostication that two seismic shifts are our shaking our culture. Both promise to profoundly change who restaurants serve, and how.
Indeed, the impact of one is already evident in New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the other wellsprings of mainstream trends. Experts give it names like “income gap, “ “wage discrepany” and “economic polarization.” Simply put, it’s the tendency of the rich to get richer while the middle and lower classes struggle harder to hold onto what they have.
Fine-dining places have noticed. Many are resorting to the sort of big-ticket indulgences that we saw in the 1990s—astronomically priced meals, decadent specialties and beverages, and high-priced experiences like having the chef devoted for the night to a single party’s service.
Some are installing a mini-restaurant within their dining rooms to serve the financial wildcats who’re collecting six and seven-figure bonuses again. In Las Vegas, high rollers can indulge at Shaboo, a dining room inside BarMasa, an outlet of famed sushi chef Masa Takayama. In Washington, D.C., powerbrokers vie for one of the few seats at Minibar, the exclusive sub-eatery of Jose Andres’ Café Atlantico.
Ironically, that tangent is coming as the rest of the industry veers in the direction of value. The Sonic drive-inn chain recently explained to investors that it was keeping the introductory reduced price of a revamped hotdog, even though the freeze kept check averages flat. Then again, maybe that’s the objective, given consumers’ ongoing propensity to sticker shock.
Consider that even fast-casual chains like Fazoli’s are adding lower priced (and lower calorie) small plates.
A new study commissioned by Tyson Foodservice shows that the five strongest draws for restaurant customers today are all value-related (in descending order, two-for-ones, dollar menus, discounts, price promotions, and full-service restaurants' combo deals.)
All things considered, you can’t help but conclude he industry is drifting toward either end of the socio-economic spectrum, just like society itself.
At the same time, and not coincidentally, some commentators have noted an historic shift in the earning potential of blue-collar Americans. When U.S. automobile factories and steel mills were booming, workers could afford a comfortable middleclass life. Now many of those jobs have disappeared, and plenty of the remaining manufacturing line posts are paying far less. There’s less money left for dining out.
Yet virtually every mainstream fast-food concept would attest that its core user—the legendary superheavy user—is a blue collar male between 19 and 35 years old.
That foundation market may be eroding, which explains why there’s a clear drift in the design of quick-service places toward more residential designs. They’re trying to position themselves as the places where youngsters can comfortably hang out and be entertained while they munch and sip. The settings are intended to make moms comfortable, too.
Both trends are slow moving. The restaurant industry appears to be adjusting quickly. Just ask any sociologist.
Economists and politicians have noted during the new-year fit of prognostication that two seismic shifts are our shaking our culture. Both promise to profoundly change who restaurants serve, and how.
Indeed, the impact of one is already evident in New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the other wellsprings of mainstream trends. Experts give it names like “income gap, “ “wage discrepany” and “economic polarization.” Simply put, it’s the tendency of the rich to get richer while the middle and lower classes struggle harder to hold onto what they have.
Fine-dining places have noticed. Many are resorting to the sort of big-ticket indulgences that we saw in the 1990s—astronomically priced meals, decadent specialties and beverages, and high-priced experiences like having the chef devoted for the night to a single party’s service.
Some are installing a mini-restaurant within their dining rooms to serve the financial wildcats who’re collecting six and seven-figure bonuses again. In Las Vegas, high rollers can indulge at Shaboo, a dining room inside BarMasa, an outlet of famed sushi chef Masa Takayama. In Washington, D.C., powerbrokers vie for one of the few seats at Minibar, the exclusive sub-eatery of Jose Andres’ Café Atlantico.
Ironically, that tangent is coming as the rest of the industry veers in the direction of value. The Sonic drive-inn chain recently explained to investors that it was keeping the introductory reduced price of a revamped hotdog, even though the freeze kept check averages flat. Then again, maybe that’s the objective, given consumers’ ongoing propensity to sticker shock.
Consider that even fast-casual chains like Fazoli’s are adding lower priced (and lower calorie) small plates.
A new study commissioned by Tyson Foodservice shows that the five strongest draws for restaurant customers today are all value-related (in descending order, two-for-ones, dollar menus, discounts, price promotions, and full-service restaurants' combo deals.)
All things considered, you can’t help but conclude he industry is drifting toward either end of the socio-economic spectrum, just like society itself.
At the same time, and not coincidentally, some commentators have noted an historic shift in the earning potential of blue-collar Americans. When U.S. automobile factories and steel mills were booming, workers could afford a comfortable middleclass life. Now many of those jobs have disappeared, and plenty of the remaining manufacturing line posts are paying far less. There’s less money left for dining out.
Yet virtually every mainstream fast-food concept would attest that its core user—the legendary superheavy user—is a blue collar male between 19 and 35 years old.
That foundation market may be eroding, which explains why there’s a clear drift in the design of quick-service places toward more residential designs. They’re trying to position themselves as the places where youngsters can comfortably hang out and be entertained while they munch and sip. The settings are intended to make moms comfortable, too.
Both trends are slow moving. The restaurant industry appears to be adjusting quickly. Just ask any sociologist.
Friday, October 8, 2010
The food industry's future, in high def
In the course of covering the restaurant business, I routinely hear savants proclaim what sorts of places and foods will catch the industry’s fancy in the months and years ahead. The future they’re sketching bears little resemblance to the one young kitchen talents are already setting out to build.
I say that after listening for three days to the business plans of 21 would-be graduates from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. As a final exam of sorts, the students develop an idea for a business and pitch it to the class. Invited to attend are three industry veterans who act as if they’re prospective investors, asking questions, providing feedback and generally helping the students sharpen their presentations. I was one of the industry elders tapped to play constructive critic.
The students had spent the six-month semester developing their business concepts, and it showed. The lot were brilliant—creative, finely detailed to demonstrate their viability, and decidedly real world, reflecting what the students had learned in the field as well as the classroom.
I won’t divulge any of the ideas because this is an industry of thieves. Then again, most of the restaurateurs I know would have trouble copycatting concepts that pivot on marshmallow, faro, free shots, egg creams, cowgirls, German sailors, and broke hipsters. (If you want an explanation of those elements, contact me and I’ll either pass you along to the student or shed as much light as I can without giving away the idea.)
Indeed, if restaurateurs were looking for ideas to pinch, they’d have found few suitable for their world. The presentations left little doubt that tomorrow’s chefs are choosing food shops, not restaurants, as the galleries for their arts.
More than a third of the pitches I heard dealt with retailing in some way. Several of the concepts were out-and-out storefronts, selling everything from flasks and coffee to Romanian vintages for wine virgins.
Other students aired their intention to sell a retail product via food or specialty shops. One already had an operation lined up to carry her product. Another brought in a gift basket of her wares.
The class’ instructor, the former restaurateur Alan Someck, explained to me that the students had witnessed the rigors of running a restaurant or a high-volume kitchen during their internships and work in the industry. That lifestyle might not hold the appeal it once did for youngsters aspiring to earn lots of green in whites. They were clearly more open to alternative paths, like the food and restaurant-focused web site that one student planned to open.
But the students also seemed to lack the black-and-white attitude of yesterday’s restaurant industry, which saw itself as a world apart from food retailing. The ones who planned to open a restaurant after graduation almost to a person included a retail component in their brainchild. Those stations would sell everything from meat to customized gifts.
Along the same lines, a goodly number of the plans broke out sales projections for catering, even when their signature product wasn’t something you’d associate with that sort of service—drink flights, for example.
And quite a few presenters said they intended to use trucks, carts and stands to offer their products where would-be customers are likely to be, a further departure from the dining-room mindset of past generations.
I have absolutely no doubt that many of the students whose plans I evaluated will be extremely successful in their ventures. They’re going to be tomorrow’s stars, albeit in a much different industry than the one we see today.
I say that after listening for three days to the business plans of 21 would-be graduates from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. As a final exam of sorts, the students develop an idea for a business and pitch it to the class. Invited to attend are three industry veterans who act as if they’re prospective investors, asking questions, providing feedback and generally helping the students sharpen their presentations. I was one of the industry elders tapped to play constructive critic.
The students had spent the six-month semester developing their business concepts, and it showed. The lot were brilliant—creative, finely detailed to demonstrate their viability, and decidedly real world, reflecting what the students had learned in the field as well as the classroom.
I won’t divulge any of the ideas because this is an industry of thieves. Then again, most of the restaurateurs I know would have trouble copycatting concepts that pivot on marshmallow, faro, free shots, egg creams, cowgirls, German sailors, and broke hipsters. (If you want an explanation of those elements, contact me and I’ll either pass you along to the student or shed as much light as I can without giving away the idea.)
Indeed, if restaurateurs were looking for ideas to pinch, they’d have found few suitable for their world. The presentations left little doubt that tomorrow’s chefs are choosing food shops, not restaurants, as the galleries for their arts.
More than a third of the pitches I heard dealt with retailing in some way. Several of the concepts were out-and-out storefronts, selling everything from flasks and coffee to Romanian vintages for wine virgins.
Other students aired their intention to sell a retail product via food or specialty shops. One already had an operation lined up to carry her product. Another brought in a gift basket of her wares.
The class’ instructor, the former restaurateur Alan Someck, explained to me that the students had witnessed the rigors of running a restaurant or a high-volume kitchen during their internships and work in the industry. That lifestyle might not hold the appeal it once did for youngsters aspiring to earn lots of green in whites. They were clearly more open to alternative paths, like the food and restaurant-focused web site that one student planned to open.
But the students also seemed to lack the black-and-white attitude of yesterday’s restaurant industry, which saw itself as a world apart from food retailing. The ones who planned to open a restaurant after graduation almost to a person included a retail component in their brainchild. Those stations would sell everything from meat to customized gifts.
Along the same lines, a goodly number of the plans broke out sales projections for catering, even when their signature product wasn’t something you’d associate with that sort of service—drink flights, for example.
And quite a few presenters said they intended to use trucks, carts and stands to offer their products where would-be customers are likely to be, a further departure from the dining-room mindset of past generations.
I have absolutely no doubt that many of the students whose plans I evaluated will be extremely successful in their ventures. They’re going to be tomorrow’s stars, albeit in a much different industry than the one we see today.
Friday, July 16, 2010
The jug is up
Did I miss the pronouncement of a change in the standard serving procedures of New York restaurants? The tweak may be minor, but it’s the sort of shift that throws sport diners into fits of chatter and blogging. Global warming was likely worsened exponentially by the fatuous yakking about common tables and square dinner plates. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find so much as a tweet about the wholesale shift to water jugs.
Yet the proof of an overnight changeover is everywhere. The last four times I dined out, in Manhattan and in the burbs, our table was provided with menus, a greeting, and then the literal vessel for the trend, some type of refillable water container. One night, it was a green screw-top bottle that looked as if it could’ve once held olive oil. The next, we refilled our water glasses with what looked like an old-fashioned beer bottle, complete with swivel-type stopper. On that same day, a runner outfitted our table with a bread basket and what could’ve also served as a vase for long-stem roses, though it was filled with drinking water instead.
All were riffs on what appears to be the trend standard, a wine carafe filled instead with tap water.
The reasons for no longer serving water glass by glass are easy to deduce. Providing a table with a whole jug spares the runners considerable wear and tear. No longer do they have to scramble just to keep the glasses filled.
If other customers are like me, patrons appreciate that they no longer have to depend on the runners or a server for refills.
There’s very likely a green benefit to the new hydration approach, though it’s not as crystal clear as the output of a mountain spring. The same number of glasses have to be washed, and plenty of water will be wasted. Still, eco enthusiasts would probably prefer tipping a few ounces down the drain to unscrewing a bottle of water that was shipped from thousands of miles away.
I’ve rummaged through the U Store It stalls of recent memory for a recollection of seeing water jugs in the cities I’ve recently visited. None registered.
So the wave may still be rolling west. But the speed with which it infiltrated New York suggests it’ll be flowing through the mainland with Category 4 velocity.
Yet the proof of an overnight changeover is everywhere. The last four times I dined out, in Manhattan and in the burbs, our table was provided with menus, a greeting, and then the literal vessel for the trend, some type of refillable water container. One night, it was a green screw-top bottle that looked as if it could’ve once held olive oil. The next, we refilled our water glasses with what looked like an old-fashioned beer bottle, complete with swivel-type stopper. On that same day, a runner outfitted our table with a bread basket and what could’ve also served as a vase for long-stem roses, though it was filled with drinking water instead.
All were riffs on what appears to be the trend standard, a wine carafe filled instead with tap water.
The reasons for no longer serving water glass by glass are easy to deduce. Providing a table with a whole jug spares the runners considerable wear and tear. No longer do they have to scramble just to keep the glasses filled.
If other customers are like me, patrons appreciate that they no longer have to depend on the runners or a server for refills.
There’s very likely a green benefit to the new hydration approach, though it’s not as crystal clear as the output of a mountain spring. The same number of glasses have to be washed, and plenty of water will be wasted. Still, eco enthusiasts would probably prefer tipping a few ounces down the drain to unscrewing a bottle of water that was shipped from thousands of miles away.
I’ve rummaged through the U Store It stalls of recent memory for a recollection of seeing water jugs in the cities I’ve recently visited. None registered.
So the wave may still be rolling west. But the speed with which it infiltrated New York suggests it’ll be flowing through the mainland with Category 4 velocity.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
My crystal ball has some static
Call me old-fashioned, but there’s something perverse about running Christmas commercials during World Series broadcasts. Marketers are so determined to get a jump on the all-important sales season that we can only hope they’re flogging gift ideas for this year’s holidays, not 2010’s.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the year-end prognosticators are breaking out the tea leaves and animal entrails a bit earlier this year. It’s only Dec. 1, but at least seven lists of next year’s restaurant trends have already been divined and released by wise seers.
They vary greatly, to a degree I intend to explore here when the forecast tally climbs to 10, or probably sometime tomorrow morning. But suffice it to say we’re heading into a year where restaurants will simplify their menus, use more animal innards, and hawk fried chicken the way they ballyhooed sliders in 2009. Yes, fried chicken is widely expected to be the next pork belly, or the new bacon, depending on which forecast you read.
What surprises me on first flush is how few noted the two trends that will certainly be on my predictions list, which is on the to-do list right after “Finish leftover cranberry sauce.” Perhaps that’s because they’re not really great leaps from what was happening in ’09.
Chefs and restaurants at all price levels will continue to showcase burgers, to be sure. But, as a colleague from Restuarants & Institutions noted in a recent Twitter posting, tacos are replacing burgers as the low cost/high flavor item that’s being taken up by fine-dining chefs. Rick Bayless is featuring them at Xoco, Paul Kahan is showcasing his riff at Big Star, and today brought news that Traci Des Jardins will extend her early lead in the taqueria wave by opening a second Mijita in San Francisco.
The other prediction is more of a stretch, though there is some evidence to support my supposition. I think we’re going to see the opening next year of what, for lack of a better term, I’m calling whim restaurants—places were chefs can forego a set menu and instead indulge their creativity with whatever’s seasonably available and they feel like cooking. It’s sort of like being invited over to their home for dinner.
It’s exactly what Thomas Keller is doing to great effect at his Ad Hoc in the Napa Valley, or close to what Tom Colicchio has attempted with Tom: Tuesday Dinner, one of the more creative responses we saw last year to the economic freefall. When private-room bookings tanked at Colicchio’s Craft in New York City, the chef turned one of his function spaces in a restaurant-within-a-restaurant twice a month that he called Tom: Tuesday Dinner. The hook was that he’d plan the dinner and cook it himself while you watched, just as you might at the home of a friend. Except in considerably posh surroundings, with a polished staff waiting on you.
Tom: Tuesday Dinner was only open on two non-successive Tuesdays per month. Today Colicchio told Eater NY that he plans to open a restaurant next year that will use the same approach as the limited-time Tom: Tuesday. He suggested that the menu might not change nightly, a result of what he learned with Tuesday Dinner. He explained to Eater that he and his staff needed some time to master each dinner roster. Yet it was all for naught because then the menu would change. So they decided to stay with a menu for at least two successive Tuesday sessions, he recounted.
It remains to be seen if other chefs follow those two kitchen gods in developing concepts where they can indulge their creativity as the spirit moves them.
Fortunately, with probably a few dozen more forecasts to go, we may get an indication as to whether it will happen in 2010.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the year-end prognosticators are breaking out the tea leaves and animal entrails a bit earlier this year. It’s only Dec. 1, but at least seven lists of next year’s restaurant trends have already been divined and released by wise seers.
They vary greatly, to a degree I intend to explore here when the forecast tally climbs to 10, or probably sometime tomorrow morning. But suffice it to say we’re heading into a year where restaurants will simplify their menus, use more animal innards, and hawk fried chicken the way they ballyhooed sliders in 2009. Yes, fried chicken is widely expected to be the next pork belly, or the new bacon, depending on which forecast you read.
What surprises me on first flush is how few noted the two trends that will certainly be on my predictions list, which is on the to-do list right after “Finish leftover cranberry sauce.” Perhaps that’s because they’re not really great leaps from what was happening in ’09.
Chefs and restaurants at all price levels will continue to showcase burgers, to be sure. But, as a colleague from Restuarants & Institutions noted in a recent Twitter posting, tacos are replacing burgers as the low cost/high flavor item that’s being taken up by fine-dining chefs. Rick Bayless is featuring them at Xoco, Paul Kahan is showcasing his riff at Big Star, and today brought news that Traci Des Jardins will extend her early lead in the taqueria wave by opening a second Mijita in San Francisco.
The other prediction is more of a stretch, though there is some evidence to support my supposition. I think we’re going to see the opening next year of what, for lack of a better term, I’m calling whim restaurants—places were chefs can forego a set menu and instead indulge their creativity with whatever’s seasonably available and they feel like cooking. It’s sort of like being invited over to their home for dinner.
It’s exactly what Thomas Keller is doing to great effect at his Ad Hoc in the Napa Valley, or close to what Tom Colicchio has attempted with Tom: Tuesday Dinner, one of the more creative responses we saw last year to the economic freefall. When private-room bookings tanked at Colicchio’s Craft in New York City, the chef turned one of his function spaces in a restaurant-within-a-restaurant twice a month that he called Tom: Tuesday Dinner. The hook was that he’d plan the dinner and cook it himself while you watched, just as you might at the home of a friend. Except in considerably posh surroundings, with a polished staff waiting on you.
Tom: Tuesday Dinner was only open on two non-successive Tuesdays per month. Today Colicchio told Eater NY that he plans to open a restaurant next year that will use the same approach as the limited-time Tom: Tuesday. He suggested that the menu might not change nightly, a result of what he learned with Tuesday Dinner. He explained to Eater that he and his staff needed some time to master each dinner roster. Yet it was all for naught because then the menu would change. So they decided to stay with a menu for at least two successive Tuesday sessions, he recounted.
It remains to be seen if other chefs follow those two kitchen gods in developing concepts where they can indulge their creativity as the spirit moves them.
Fortunately, with probably a few dozen more forecasts to go, we may get an indication as to whether it will happen in 2010.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Getting hives from all this buzz
Years ago, a foodie friend complained that chefs were hounding him for liquid nitrogen, the prep aid any kitchen wanting to be hip at the time just had to try. They figured a guy as haute as him would have plenty at his disposal, my bud explained, letting me know how plugged-in he was.
I wonder if he’s being pressed these days for clover blossoms or live honeysuckle vines. To be on the current culinary edge, you have to be thinking about high-craft fresh honey, preferably from bees working just for you.
Having your own hive is a new phenomenon, embraced at present by only a few truly avant-garde restaurants, hotels and other feeding establishments. Right now it's still riding the coattails of other trends. Some of the converts have incorporated hives into their rooftop garden, a more noticeable manifestation of urban farming. The Fairmont lodging chain, for instance, has buzzing boxes atop at least three properties.
Beekeeping is also catching on as a component of student gardening, a veritable trend unto itself on college campuses. The University of Connecticut, for instance, uses some of its campus-produced honey as a sweetener in foodservice operations, with the balance sold in the college bookstore to visiting parents.
But the movement is clearly picking up some velocity. In what’s shaping up as its ongoing coverage of the bee boom, Epicurious.com reported two weeks ago that a British company is now selling an urban hive kit that produces up to 50 jars of honey a year. It sells for about $760. The supplier, called Omlet, is already known to urban farmers as the seller of a self-contained chicken-coop kit.
Meanwhile, if you don’t want to get your hands all sticky (or stung), you can pay to have a hive managed for you in New Zealand, with the output going exclusively to you. If private reserve honey is still too much of a commitment, you can buy into a syndicate arrangement, where the hive is owned for a year by up to 10 parties.
As interest in “estate” honey moves in from the fringes, beekeeping is certain to generate considerable buzz (ugh) in the restaurant community. And that’s going to be a good thing, given how fascinated patrons will likely become with propriety hives.
The process is indeed intriguing. I grew up on a estate, owned by a millionaire and superintended by my father. That meant he took care of all the gardens, which were far more extensive than a single family could use, even with their extravagant dinners and parties.
Toward the end of my father’s tenure, back in the early 1980s, the family decided that it wanted to put some bee hives on the 200-acre property. My father had to learn about it, and passed on a little of what he absorbed to me.
Not that I ever touched the hives. A worker was designated to be the beekeeper, largely because he had to foster a relationship with the bees. They had to come to trust him, if you can believe it. He wore gloves and a pith helmet with netting, but expected to be able to go bare-skinned once some familiarity had been established.
When this whole beekeeping thing started to get some attention from chefs who were interested in sustainability, I started looking into buying myself a hive kit. I never got around to it, largely because of the cost, but it did give rise to a memorable laugh.
I told my wife that I wanted to get a beehive. She looked at me a long time, her eyes darting upward for a second, then back down to meet mine. “I don’t think you have enough hair to make that work,” she said.
I wonder if he’s being pressed these days for clover blossoms or live honeysuckle vines. To be on the current culinary edge, you have to be thinking about high-craft fresh honey, preferably from bees working just for you.
Having your own hive is a new phenomenon, embraced at present by only a few truly avant-garde restaurants, hotels and other feeding establishments. Right now it's still riding the coattails of other trends. Some of the converts have incorporated hives into their rooftop garden, a more noticeable manifestation of urban farming. The Fairmont lodging chain, for instance, has buzzing boxes atop at least three properties.
Beekeeping is also catching on as a component of student gardening, a veritable trend unto itself on college campuses. The University of Connecticut, for instance, uses some of its campus-produced honey as a sweetener in foodservice operations, with the balance sold in the college bookstore to visiting parents.
But the movement is clearly picking up some velocity. In what’s shaping up as its ongoing coverage of the bee boom, Epicurious.com reported two weeks ago that a British company is now selling an urban hive kit that produces up to 50 jars of honey a year. It sells for about $760. The supplier, called Omlet, is already known to urban farmers as the seller of a self-contained chicken-coop kit.
Meanwhile, if you don’t want to get your hands all sticky (or stung), you can pay to have a hive managed for you in New Zealand, with the output going exclusively to you. If private reserve honey is still too much of a commitment, you can buy into a syndicate arrangement, where the hive is owned for a year by up to 10 parties.
As interest in “estate” honey moves in from the fringes, beekeeping is certain to generate considerable buzz (ugh) in the restaurant community. And that’s going to be a good thing, given how fascinated patrons will likely become with propriety hives.
The process is indeed intriguing. I grew up on a estate, owned by a millionaire and superintended by my father. That meant he took care of all the gardens, which were far more extensive than a single family could use, even with their extravagant dinners and parties.
Toward the end of my father’s tenure, back in the early 1980s, the family decided that it wanted to put some bee hives on the 200-acre property. My father had to learn about it, and passed on a little of what he absorbed to me.
Not that I ever touched the hives. A worker was designated to be the beekeeper, largely because he had to foster a relationship with the bees. They had to come to trust him, if you can believe it. He wore gloves and a pith helmet with netting, but expected to be able to go bare-skinned once some familiarity had been established.
When this whole beekeeping thing started to get some attention from chefs who were interested in sustainability, I started looking into buying myself a hive kit. I never got around to it, largely because of the cost, but it did give rise to a memorable laugh.
I told my wife that I wanted to get a beehive. She looked at me a long time, her eyes darting upward for a second, then back down to meet mine. “I don’t think you have enough hair to make that work,” she said.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
What I learned today about the restaurant industry
The day wasn’t rife with ah-ha moments, but there were a few hmm-worthy points. Here, boiled down to snack-sized portions, is what I learned about the restaurant industry during Back to School Week:
The road ahead in the green movement may really be the road ahead. By now, even primitive tribes of the Guatemalan jungle have heard about Burger King’s test of an electricity-generating drive-thru speed bump. In essence, the device moves up and down as cars roll over it, generating kinetic energy in the process. The power could be sufficient to power a nightlight in the manager’s office.
The more promising route to restaurant economy could be the technology that’s being developed with a new $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The agency wants to see if an upstart company can develop a solar panel tough enough to serve as a road surface. If it can be, restaurant parking lots, access roads and drive-thru lanes could become energy generators. Throw in a few speed-bump power plants and you could get enough juice to light Las Vegas.
What’s our diagnosis of the healthcare situation? Quick, what’s the restaurant industry’s position on healthcare reform? If you can peg it, please grab a megaphone and blare it to the rank and file. They’ve largely been left in silence by the trade’s usual town criers on public affairs—a puzzling muteness, given the issue’s financial import to the nation’s second largest private-sector employer.
Hopefully we’re just not hearing a voice that’s ringing loud and clear at the negotiations table. But it certainly would be calming to know what our representatives think of the proposals that are currently being considered. How alarmed, if at all, should an average owner-operator or chain executive be? And what arguments are being put forth to protect the industry’s interests? It sure would be nice to know what’s happening on our behalf up on Capitol Hill. And something is, right?
Restaurant tables are being put to unusual use. Apparently there’s a lot of sex taking place in restaurants’ under-filled dining rooms these days. And we’re talking about the Full Monty sort, with partners and all.
Basketball coach Rick Pitino has drawn enough media glare for his professed dalliance with a woman in a Louisville, Ky., in 2003 (she alleges the coach raped her, an accusation dismissed by authorities and a witness to the scene). And that was six years ago. Even if it was atop a table, it probably should be skipped here.
But there’s no shortage of other examples. Two weeks ago, for instance, a restaurant in Woodstock, Ga., was raided because the place allegedly doubled as the headquarters for a prostitution ring. Be grateful there isn’t a Zagat guide for the town or we’d be reading snippets like “not all the moaning is for the food,” or “the real place to have it your way.”
At the other extreme are the places that tsk-tsk such base carnality right on their signage. They’ve incorporated the phrase “better than sex” right in their names, be it Better Than Sex Cake Café in Chandler, Ariz., or the Better than Sex Dessert Café in Key West, Fla.
Then there’s the new blood (sausage) lust. At Nation’s Restaurant News, we had set criteria to determine what qualifies as a trend: Three examples of anything. By that standard, appreciation of blood sausage is a veritable craze.
You’ll find it on the menu of such hot new places as DBGB, Daniel Boulud’s downscale café on New York City’s Bowery, as well as higher end places like Chicago’s Avec, where the blood sausage figures into a pasta dish.
The tubes of congealed blood, usually described in a much more appetizing way than that, are showing up in particular in their Latino versions (Puerto Rican, or morcilla; Argentinean; Cuban; etc.).
It’s not yet made its way down to the casual chains, but we’re probably only months away from a Bloomin’ Bleeder appetizer.
The road ahead in the green movement may really be the road ahead. By now, even primitive tribes of the Guatemalan jungle have heard about Burger King’s test of an electricity-generating drive-thru speed bump. In essence, the device moves up and down as cars roll over it, generating kinetic energy in the process. The power could be sufficient to power a nightlight in the manager’s office.
The more promising route to restaurant economy could be the technology that’s being developed with a new $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The agency wants to see if an upstart company can develop a solar panel tough enough to serve as a road surface. If it can be, restaurant parking lots, access roads and drive-thru lanes could become energy generators. Throw in a few speed-bump power plants and you could get enough juice to light Las Vegas.
What’s our diagnosis of the healthcare situation? Quick, what’s the restaurant industry’s position on healthcare reform? If you can peg it, please grab a megaphone and blare it to the rank and file. They’ve largely been left in silence by the trade’s usual town criers on public affairs—a puzzling muteness, given the issue’s financial import to the nation’s second largest private-sector employer.
Hopefully we’re just not hearing a voice that’s ringing loud and clear at the negotiations table. But it certainly would be calming to know what our representatives think of the proposals that are currently being considered. How alarmed, if at all, should an average owner-operator or chain executive be? And what arguments are being put forth to protect the industry’s interests? It sure would be nice to know what’s happening on our behalf up on Capitol Hill. And something is, right?
Restaurant tables are being put to unusual use. Apparently there’s a lot of sex taking place in restaurants’ under-filled dining rooms these days. And we’re talking about the Full Monty sort, with partners and all.
Basketball coach Rick Pitino has drawn enough media glare for his professed dalliance with a woman in a Louisville, Ky., in 2003 (she alleges the coach raped her, an accusation dismissed by authorities and a witness to the scene). And that was six years ago. Even if it was atop a table, it probably should be skipped here.
But there’s no shortage of other examples. Two weeks ago, for instance, a restaurant in Woodstock, Ga., was raided because the place allegedly doubled as the headquarters for a prostitution ring. Be grateful there isn’t a Zagat guide for the town or we’d be reading snippets like “not all the moaning is for the food,” or “the real place to have it your way.”
At the other extreme are the places that tsk-tsk such base carnality right on their signage. They’ve incorporated the phrase “better than sex” right in their names, be it Better Than Sex Cake Café in Chandler, Ariz., or the Better than Sex Dessert Café in Key West, Fla.
Then there’s the new blood (sausage) lust. At Nation’s Restaurant News, we had set criteria to determine what qualifies as a trend: Three examples of anything. By that standard, appreciation of blood sausage is a veritable craze.
You’ll find it on the menu of such hot new places as DBGB, Daniel Boulud’s downscale café on New York City’s Bowery, as well as higher end places like Chicago’s Avec, where the blood sausage figures into a pasta dish.
The tubes of congealed blood, usually described in a much more appetizing way than that, are showing up in particular in their Latino versions (Puerto Rican, or morcilla; Argentinean; Cuban; etc.).
It’s not yet made its way down to the casual chains, but we’re probably only months away from a Bloomin’ Bleeder appetizer.
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