The two most noteworthy trends in for 2016 have nothing to do with food
Big disrupters are a revolution in high-speed food delivery to homes and offices, and a conversation regarding tipping and pay disparities. Cleansing menus of additives won’t be enough. Why there’s a new obsession with fried chicken, plus at the end of the article you can find the strongest keywords when it comes to food and beverage for the year ahead.
Explore the most significant predictions about the hottest global food and beverage trends 2016 follow.
9. What Snacking Tells Us about Future Flavors
We're seem to be moving from three meals a day to ... none! Snacks are obliterating meals. It's not just millennials or dashboard diners ... growing numbers of Americans snack four or five times daily. Snacking increased 47% from 2010 to 2014. We raise this because snack flavor profiles are changing. Restaurateurs (and hotels with minibars and minimarkets) should prowl supermarket aisles. They'll find:
The ground is shifting away from sweet to savory ... and from high-carb to nutrient dense high-protein indulgent snacks ... evidence that sugar is this year's culinary Satan. Even when sweeteners are involved, they're often combined with spicy ... chili-spiked honey, for example. So sweet+heat is a winner and sweet+heat+smokey.
Spicy-salty-savory ethnic snacks are afternoon favorites and meal replacements ... hummus variations, flavored popcorns (like seaweed-and-sesame), chili-citrus potato chips, mango-chili-lime chips. For really creative stuff, look at Korean and Japanese food shops (photo, right).
Compound flavors are hot. Jerky ...with year-on-year double-digit sales increases in supermarkets and C-stores ... explains why Hershey acquired Krave, purveyor of Jeff's Famous Jerky, with flavors like sweet teriyaki, cranberry jalapeno ... branching into honey jalapeno bacon and buffalo chicken jerky.
Plant-based protein get lots of play with millennials (see #4, above: Vegetables Step Up to the Plate) ... bean bars, lentil bars, chick pea snacks. Also why General Mills just invested in Beyond Meat, which develops plant-based proteins (Bill Gates got their earlier). Savory yogurts are worth watching not just as snacks but as components of "healthful" restaurant dishes.
Sour replaces sweet. Consumers seek deep contrasts to richness ... explaining why fermented condiments (like kimchee and house-pickled vegetables) are popular on menus. Now you can buy sour gummy bears. Sour beer is a trendlet ... but for afficiandos. Tart + Bitter offsets sugar and salt. That's why you see new packages of kale, crunchy broccoli and other vegetable chips. Check out Kind's popped grain bars with dark chocolate. Bitter itself gains momentum ... especially in beverages. New forms of coffee ... cold brew, carbonated ... and teas, including matcha.
Good-for-you, good-for-the-earth packaged snacks are getting commanding space on supermarket endcaps ... often near the fresh vegetable aisle ... suggesting that consumers will pay premium prices for products that cover both bases.
2016 BUZZWORDS Falafel appearing as vegetables in serious restaurants. Kombucha going mainstream. Burnt vegetables. "Shack" in restaurant names. Everything bagel seasoning mix. Root-to-stalk cooking. Why poke isn't hokey. Globalized ramen. Adding seaweed to popcorn. More automation and kiosks in fast-food, fast-casual restaurants ... speeding service, saving labor. 3-D food printers. General Tso flavorings. Alcoholic beverages in quick-service restaurants. Chains replacing artificial additives with natural artificial additives. Paella. Fast feeders complicating their lives by adding build-your-own options. Values, not value ... consumers scrutinizing restaurants' policies on health-wellness, sustainability, additives, GMO, animal welfare, employee wages. Nashville Hot Chicken. Fallout in frozen yogurt chains ... juice bars may be next. Food halls galore -- maybe too many. War on food waste. What happened to bone broth? Philippine cuisine.
