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.

Random thoughts II

Two weeks ago I gave a presentation on restaurant concepts to a class at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. It was the second time I’ve guest-lectured at the facility, which is one of the under-appreciated gems of the New York culinary scene.

Like last time, the students seemed obsessed with Chipotle, particularly its distinction as a sizeable chain that didn’t make them cluck in disapproval.

Unlike last time, I was asked during this guest lecture for my opinion of what chains are leading the pack in their green efforts. I cited Starbucks, Burgerville and McDonald’s. Interestingly, the mention of McDonald’s drew nods of agreement, not dumbfounded surprise.

Shifts in the dining-out infrastructure?

The swing back to eating at home is old news by now. But that’s not the only way in which restaurants’ social role is being challenged. The industry rightly describes itself as a cornerstone of the community. Look hard and you’ll see where that foundation caught a few hammer whacks in recent days.

For instance, the trade takes justifiable pride in the charity work it does. Indeed, the propensity to raise money and awareness for public causes—large or small, national or local—is part of the business’ very essence. Dining out and a giveback mentality are as intertwined as Starbucks and coffee.

Consider, then, the announcement on Monday of a new charitable campaign: Dine-In to Fight Childhood Hunger. Stouffer’s, one of foodservice’s most revered suppliers, has teamed up with Reader’s Digest, the Walter Cronkite of media, to alert consumers that they can help hungry children by eating at home. Participants are encouraged to host a Dine-In Dinner for friends and family, where the participants can discuss the problem of hunger and how they can help. If they donate to a group called Feeding America, Stouffer’s will chip in another $5 per contribution.

It also helps to make the dinner a success by donating a “toolkit” to the host family. Included are activity suggestions, discussion points and relevant information provided in a format peculiar to restaurants, the table tent.

Call me a cynic, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Stouffer’s launched a new retail line the week earlier called Stouffer’s Corner Bistro, consisting of six meals “that bring the restaurant experience to your table or desk.”

Hey, anything that fights childhood hunger is a great thing. But I think I’ll stick with Share Our Strength and Taste of the Nation as my means of assisting. It’s especially important now because participants say the children of families that depend on the restaurant industry for their livelihood are showing up more often among the beneficiaries. It’s a matter of the industry helping its own as we trudge through these grueling times.

Good times will no doubt return, but they’ll undoubtedly be different ones for the restaurant industry. Consider what’s happening in culinary education. It’s still the mill that supplies the nation’s restaurant kitchens with talent. But a new generation of institutions is springing up, with a focus on teaching people to cook at home rather than for profit. They sport names like the Taste of Home Cooking School, or Come Home to Cooking. There’s even a new franchise chain, the Creative Cooking School, that aims to put recreational and professional chefs through the same education process.

The industry is pre-occupied with the shift to dining at home and the resulting drop-off in traffic. But it also needs to be aware of how the situation is being altered on a more fundamental basis to favor home cooking.

Mich. hospital's Rx for ill economy: New culinary slant

In Michigan, where unemployment has already topped 10%, chefs, culinary educators and a hospital are collaborating on a project the Obama Administration should unabashedly steal and duplicate. It creates jobs, bolsters health, provides a new career path for displaced blue-collar workers, and meets a demand that will undoubtedly soar as the Baby Boomers age. They’ve started the first culinary school that’s devoted to teaching students how to prepare healthy hospital fare.

This is no Birkenstock & Yogurt U. The center is an initiative of the Detroit area’s new Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, which functions in part on the principle that food is essential to health. Left unasked is the question, Why doesn’t it get more attention from the healthcare industry?

The center, which is slated to open in March, will reportedly take such steps as providing healthy cooking classes to patients, with demos provided by chefs. The foodservice will be provided by local but nationally renowned restaurateur Matt Prentice. When I interviewed Prentice last year for a Nation’s Restaurant News story, he explained that he felt obliged to do something about healthcare feeding after a teenaged daughter was hospitalized. The food, he stressed, was abysmal.

Prentice told The Detroit News that his patient, staff and visitor feeding operations will feature organic and natural fare, without a fryer in the facility. He also noted that halal, kosher, gluten-free and vegetarian meals will be readily offered.

The News story notes that a culinary school, run in cooperation with Schoolcraft College in nearby Livonia, will be part of the 80-acre complex. “This will bring additional revenue to the area as students from across the country will come to spend a week learning about this new industry of healthy hospital food,” Gerard van Grinsven, the Ritz-Carlton Hotels alumnus who serves as Henry Ford CEO, told the News.

Other culinary schools might disagree, noting that their courses provided the know-how to provide healthy hospital fare. Many could likely cite alumni who now work in healthcare feeding.

But the Ford program may be the only one that focuses not only on hospital fare, but healthy hospital food.

And it’s certainly the only one that was conceived in part to help Michigan’s beat-down economy, where conditions have been recessionary since long before Washington, D.C., started thinking about bail-out packages.

It may be a much-needed bright spot in an otherwise grim situation.