2011Trends

Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. Inc.
International Restaurant Consultants
912 President Street Brooklyn NY 11215
718-622-0200 baumwhiteconsult@mindspring.com
www.baumwhiteman.com
FOOD AND DINING TRENDS IN
RESTAURANTS AND HOTELS FOR 2011
FORECAST BY JOSEPH BAUM & MICHAEL WHITEMAN CO.
INTERNATIONAL RESTAURANT CONSULTANTS
Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. creates high-profilerestaurants around the
world for hotels, restaurant companies, major museums and other consumer destinations.
Based in New York, their projects include the late Windows on the World and the magical
Rainbow Room, Equinox in Singapore, the world’s first food courts, and five three-star
restaurants in New York, and numerous first-class hotels. Their 15 new predictions follow
…
1 Old Italian is NewlyRespectable: All those old Italian chestnuts,
from meatballs to eggplant parm, are getting new focus. The Meatball Shop in
New York (five kinds, four gravies) has endless lines and will generate lookalike
startups in 2011. Disney opened a Meatball and Beer Bar (also four kinds).
Totonno’s in Georgia is trying to franchise a meatball shop.
Fancy sandwich shops are nostalgically menuing them, alongwith eggplant
parm, as hero sandwiches with social aspirations. Lincoln, Jonathan Benno’s
(ex Per Se) new restaurant, has a rarified lasagna – in a $20 million facility.
Meatball Mondays and all-you-can-eat spaghetti nights are on the rise.
The Negroni is being rediscovered by bartenders and while it won’t be the drink
of 2011, it bears examining. Also growing: Consumer recognition ofancient
and regional Italian grapes: bonarda, aglianico, vermentino, negroarmaro.
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Artisan pizza boutiques are spreading everywhere, many adding mozzarella
bars to their menus, making the stuff in-house and serving it still warm.
Unfamiliar but authentic regional Italian ingredients are jazzing up old
favorites: lardo, mostarda (mustard fruit), burrata (this one’s important),salsa
verde (not the Mexican kind), speck (smoked prosciutto), tongue, oxtail, pigs’
feet, head cheese, guanciale (pork cheeks), tripe (I’m getting that offal feeling
again!). Look for more inventive pesto recipes, too.
Olive Garden, Carraba, Macaroni Grill and their competitors aren’t playing in
this ball field, which will widen the gap between Italian for the masses and
Italian for theclasses who, by the way, appear not to have been humbled by
the great recession and possess serious risk money to try these unfamiliar items
(see last sentence of Trend #2).
#2 Good News at the Top: With financial sector employees not feeling
the rest of the country’s economic pain, business will return to upscale
restaurants, especially contemporary ones. Average spend may not rebound
fully,and lunches will still be weak, but at least seats will be filled at dinner –
and not necessarily with coupon-bearing bargain hunters who are something of
a plague among recession-battered mid-priced casual restaurants (see Trend
#15).
#3 Stealth Competitors Creeping Up: The restaurant industry’s being
blind-sided by new forms of non-restaurant competition. Drug stores and
convenience storesare ramping up their food departments with newly
conceived fresh “grab-and-go” departments. Look for Walgreen’s to copy big
displays of branded items from its Duane Reade chain in New York, with other
drug chains already loading up their front-of-store reach-in refrigerators with
packaged salads, sandwiches and sweets. Convenience stores are doing the
same as both try taking a bite out ofsupermarket expenditures and – more
important to us – out of restaurant revenue.
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Most vulnerable are fast feeders, fast-casual operators and dinnerhouses that
promote curbside pickup – because they’re facing lower-priced alternatives for
consumers in a hurry. If C-stores increase their appeal to women, the damage
will get worse. Stores-within-stores: Watch fast food chains...