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.
1. Delivery - Amazoning and Uberizing the Restaurant Industry
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 (why not?) hotel guests. Delivery affects everyone from McDonald's to your favorite white tablecloth emporium. 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 Google, uberEats, Amazon Prime Now, and more. None actually makes food, but they are playing the role of the middlemen connecting restaurants and customers by 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. Starbucks and Domino pizza are the most notable examples.
Most fast-casual outfits that have been initially designed for consumer involvement in the assembly process, now will have to wrestle with this delivery challenge.
They are all racing to your door. uberEats gets a limited menu to your curb in ten minutes by pre-loading food into drivers' cars. Amazon's Prime Now app gets entire menus delivered in an hour (39 minutes in Seattle).
Danger for restaurants: Suppose customers are craving barbecued ribs and websites gave them a dozen restaurants and gourmet shops near their zip code and suppose they included professional reviews of these producers, and suppose they ranked rib restaurants according to some mysterious algorithm that works against certain restaurants? Poof! Restaurants lose marketing control of their businesses.
Finally, check the rear-view mirror because another disruptor is sucking up venture capital: Meal Kits - dinners-in- a-box containing precise portions of every ingredient, delivered by subscription. People might start cooking again using trendy ingredients, without the bother of shopping. These may be cheaper than takeout. Prediction: Star chefs' names attached to meal kits; restaurants developing their own dinners-in-a-box; and meal kits tailored for specific diets.
Consumers will have access to the world's largest (virtual) drive-thru window without ever leaving home!
