Restaurant Design for 2020 and Beyond: Creativity Takes the Cake

Stay competitive with trending restaurant designs to enhance diners' experience.

Wondering what’s new in restaurant design for 2020 and beyond? If you own any type of foodservice, your answer should be: A lot! Indeed, savvy restauranteurs, caterers, bar managers, and even pizzerias, coffee shops, and ice cream parlors know that in today’s competitive milieu, success in the food-and-beverage industry requires much more than “keeping up with the Joneses.”

The fact is that there are bigger fish to fry if you want to emerge ahead of the pack and entice customers to not only choose your eatery but to walk through your door. With takeout and home delivery on the rise, and with the explosion of digital apps that allow customers to pre-order online, pickup without waiting, and eat on-the-go, restaurants need to work harder than ever to attract in-house crowds.

For these reasons, alluring restaurant designs are more vital than ever before and in fact may be central to business success in the coming years. Fortunately, there are many time-proven and new strategies that can keep your restaurant on the map and keep your foodservice ‘biz in the game.

Dining Spaces Redesigned

It’s a new era in the world of eating out, and food and beverage providers are rising to the challenge with innovative redesigns. While some restaurants are downsizing their dining-in spaces and changing the focus to design details that enhance their customers’ experience, others are expanding outwards, upwards, and even downwards. Think al-fresco (outdoor) dining under the stars, all-night rooftop bars, and basements-turned-hipster-hangouts with large rooms for live music and dancing. In fact, industry reports indicate that restaurants adding outdoor seating can increase their revenue by up to 33%, while rooftop bars and restaurants are flourishing around the world. Not only are they changing the face of global skylines and providing breathtaking views of the cities below, but they have become a magnet for adventure-seeking consumers, international DJs, and the best chefs and bartenders.

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How Your Foodservice Can Tap into the Energy Drink Market

Get into the energy drinks market with ideas and info about this lucrative space .

If you operate a foodservice, and especially if you work in the beverage industry, you probably have already donned your chefs’ hats and are brainstorming ways to add energy drinks to your beverage menus. Of course, you could simply sell some of the leading energy drink brands, but that would be dabbling in an already saturated playing field with little or no room for growth. On the other hand, if you learn all there is to know about energy drinks, including their pros and cons, you could create your own signature varieties, stand out from the competitive pack, and give both your customers and your restaurant business an energy-bursting boost.

Energy Drink Market Quick Facts

So what do we know about the energy drinks market? Here are some quick facts:

  • Great news for energy drinks! For the period 2019-2024, the global market is forecast to grow with a CAGR of 7.1% (and this despite increasing regulatory and health challenges)
  • Energy drinks are typically non-alcoholic beverages that contain caffeine, sugar, taurine, B vitamins, glucuronolactone, herbal extracts (i.e. ginseng, guarana), and amino acids. Marketed as fatigue-fighters and refreshers that improve physical and mental performance, they are available as drinks, shots, and mixers
  • One of the fastest growing segments in the beverage sphere, energy drinks are outselling soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit and vegetable juices, bottled water, and ready-to-drink tea/coffee
  • Leading the industry are company giants Red Bull, Monster, and Rockstar
  • The major consumers of energy drinks are millennials (aged 18-35)
  • The booming sales figures are attributed to: increasing consumer focus on fitness and health; demand for quick, easily available sources of energy that accommodate increasingly busy lifestyles; aggressive marketing campaigns (including sports team and celebrity endorsements); positive effects reported by consumers of increased alertness, better performance, elevated mood, and enhanced memory

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What You Didn’t Know About Common Fruit and Vegetables

Get familiar with the uncommon benefits of the produce appearing in eateries.

If you cook, bake, or cater professionally, this must-read is for you! In this factual yet fun-packed blog, you will discover what you didn’t know about some of the most common fruits and vegetables on the market. These are the same ingredients that you cook with daily, that you use to make decadent desserts, and that typically appear in your restaurants popular recipes and dishes.

Fruits and Vegetables Defined

Let’s begin our journey by learning what officially constitutes a ‘fruit’ and what properties define a ‘vegetable.’ At the same time, you will become privy to some surprising facts that will shake up some of what you thought you knew about the world of produce.

In a nutshell, foods that grow from a flower-based plant and that fit the criteria of having a fleshy and seedy inside are classified as fruits. On the other hand, vegetables come from plants that do not have seeds, and this applies to all edible parts of a plant, including its roots, stem, and leaves.

This makes potatoes, celery, carrots, and lettuce classic vegetables. However, many other types of produce popularly known as vegetables are really fruit! Case in point: Tomatoes, string beans, eggplants (think fleshy texture with seeds), pumpkins, squash, avocados, zucchini, and even cucumbers… by definition, these foods are technically fruit.

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How to Add Healthy Apricots to Foodservice Menus

Enjoy apricot cooking and baking tips, apricot recipes, apricot history, and more.

Whether you eat them raw, dried, or canned, there are countless ways to enjoy the healthy, tasty apricot. In fact, apricots are used to prepare a wide array of savory side dishes, sauces, oils, jams, and desserts. If you are a gourmet chef, professional baker, or own a restaurant or catering service, this blog will give you the 411 on cooking and baking with apricots. In addition, as we shine a sweet spotlight on this tart fruit, you will enjoy a myriad of new recipes to add to your menu while your customers enjoy being pampered by your new delightful apricot offerings.

Apricot Basics

Scientifically known as Prunus armeniaca, the apricot fruit has a thin, fuzzy, yellow or orange exterior with a tangy flesh and inedible pit inside. Less juicy – and hence less messy – than their peach, plum, and nectarine counterparts, they are perfect as a healthy snack and can be easily added to numerous recipes. Apricot oil can also be extracted from its kernel (seed) and like the fruit itself, it is packed with healthy benefits.

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Unique Fall and Winter Vegetables to Add to Your Restaurant’s Menu

Add these unique and largely unfamiliar fall and winter vegetables to your menu

With the fall vegetable season still in full bloom and the winter vegetable season looming, now is the perfect time for your restaurant, catering service, or other eatery to cash in on the plethora of delicious, nutritious vegetables currently available. To help your menu really stand out from the crowd, we have created a list of some the most unique fall and winter vegetables on the market, guaranteed to tweak your customers’ culinary curiosity, please their palates, and keep them coming back for more.

The selections – including shiso, fennel bulbs, crosnes, fiddleheads, celeriac, and many more – are some the most unusual, head-turning vegetables you have ever heard of. Add these veggies to your restaurant’s menu, combine them with some savvy business-boosting marketing techniques (think Pinterest and Instagram…), and what you have is a recipe for winter recipe success.

And that’s not all. If your chefs feel like they have exhausted their repertoire of recipe ideas for dishes made from run-of-the-mill potatoes, onions, squash, and other staples, it’s time to step out of the culinary box and sink your teeth into the likes of blue potatoes, tree onions, Hakerei turnips, delicata squash, Chinese water spinach, Chinese artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, dragon carrots, black radishes, white asparagus – and the list goes on.

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Trash Fish Dining on the Rise as Chefs Embrace Sustainable Seafood

Learn why chefs are adding delicious, sustainable seafood, known as trash fish, to their menus.

If you work in foodservice, you are more than likely know that ‘trash fish’ and ‘sustainable seafood’ are the talk of the town in the food industry. They are also the most prolific catchphrases among fish providers, ecologists, and oceanographers these days. But do you really know what the phrases mean and what relevance they have to you and your customers?

For many, the answers to these questions still lie at the bottom of the sea Moreover, what is being labeled as trash fish (aka ‘garbage fish’ and ‘rough fish’) is probably NOT what you think it is! In fact, the term is a misnomer. So, let’s take a dive into the waters to separate the facts from the fiction and to get schooled on the latest buzz in the ‘biz.

Bycatch in the Seafood Industry

Did you know that over half of all U.S. seafood consumption comes from only three fish types – tuna, salmon, and shrimp – which are imported from outside of the United States and which are highly overfished? At the same time, hundreds of sustainable fish species swimming off local U.S. shores are being discarded by fishermen as part of their ‘bycatch’ – another trending term in the industry today. Bycatch refers to fish that are perfectly edible but that are being discarded as seafood caught ‘by mistake’ while fishermen target more in-demand varieties.

How Local Fish Are Becoming High-End Restaurant Dishes

In response, seafood providers and foodservice professionals have begun to collaborate by taking less-known, locally caught fish and turning them into high-end gourmet dishes. Leading these efforts is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – a global nonprofit organization established to protect wild seafood, to educate the public about the value of different fish, and to end the trajectory of labeling entire schools of fish undesirable.

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Holiday Fruitcakes for Your Restaurant Menu

Discover the secret to making rich fruitcakes and attract holiday consumers.

Fruitcake season is here, and with it, a golden opportunity for your restaurant to feature far out fruitcakes and attract the masses of holiday consumers to your eatery. While no one knows exactly how the dense, candied, nutty, sweet, and booze-soaked dessert became associated with the Christmas tradition, the fact is that customers wait all year long to indulge in the traditional treat. At the same time, they are ready and eager to sink their teeth into new and updated recipe.

From Fruitcake Classics to Flavorful Twists

Typically eaten by the slice and popularly given away as holiday gifts, new flavorful twists on the age-old dessert include recipes for fruitcake cookies, bars, mini-bites, shortbread, and even fruitcake waffles and donuts! Decadent no matter how they are prepared, let’s learn more about the culinary science and art of making magnificent fruitcakes. To do so, take off your apron, take a load off your feet, and prepare to take a journey into the past as we indulge in some fascinating fruitcake history…

History of Fruitcakes Across the Ages

Did you know that the modern-day fruitcake has been making the global rounds for millennium? Food historians have determined that the placing of cake loaves on the tombs of loved ones was customary as far back as ancient Egypt, over 3,000 years ago (perhaps as nourishment for the afterlife). But it was not until ancient Roman times that the fruitcake became popular and really took off. Touted for its portability and long shelf life – and hence frequently brought to the battlefields by Roman soldiers – the first fruitcakes were made of a pomegranate-pine nut-barley mash that was molded into a ring-shaped dessert.

Similarly, during the Middle Ages, fruited breads were widespread among Crusaders travelling the world and featured the addition of preserved fruits, spices, and honey.

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Your Guide to Working with Different Types of Pastry Dough

How French Cuisine Has Permeated More Than Our PalatesDiscover the fine art of pastry making with this easy-to-read pastry dough guide.

If the perfect pastry is what your customers are craving, you have come to the right place! In fact, if you work anywhere in foodservice, and especially if you own a bakery, patisserie, or café, the following guide on how to make the perfect pastry is your recipe for success.

At their essence, all pastries are doughs made from fat (usually butter), flour, and water (with the occasional egg). Remarkably, it is from these few simple ingredients that some of the globe’s most decadent and beloved desserts are born including pies, tarts, croissants, eclairs, strudels and more. Similarly, on the pastry menu, are favorite foods such as baguettes, quiches, meat and mince pies, (just in time for the holidays), souffles – and so on.
So, let’s set out to explore the wonderful world of pastry and learn the art of making crusts and crafting recipes that pamper the palate with their buttery flavor and crumbly, flaky texture. On the way we will sink our teeth into the different types of pastries, learn about the history of pastry dough, learn about less familiar pastry doughs and share some secret tricks of the trade…

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Guide to Demerara and Brown Sugar Varieties

Discover why you should be adding demerara and other brown sugars to recipes.

If you work in the bakery business or run a coffee shop, there is a good chance that one of your star ingredients is demerara sugar. Not only is its distinctive toffee-caramel flavor ideal for baking cakes and pastries but it has become a favorite among coffee and tea lovers who prefer its taste over other hot beverage sweeteners. The larger and grainier texture of demerara sugar crystals have also made it a popular pick among bartenders who use it to adorn the rims of cocktail glasses and as an accompaniment to brown liquors such as dark rum, bourbon, and whiskey.

We discussed maple syrup, and birch and walnut syrups as natural sweeteners in previous blogs, also rising in the popularity charts are natural brown sugar varieties such as molasses, muscovado, and evaporated sugar cane. With white processed sugars continuing to fall out of favor with consumers, now is a great time to get the full scoop on demerara sugar and its counterparts and learn how you can add them to your foodservice menus.

What Is Demerara Sugar?

Demerara sugar is made by pressing sugar cane to extract sugarcane juice. The juice is then boiled until the water has evaporated, thickening first into a syrup and then cooling and hardening. Retaining about 1%-2% of the natural cane molasses, the sugar is light brown in color and boasts a uniquely large and crunchy crystal which lends itself well for many dessert recipes and toppings.

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Why Okra Should Appear on Your Foodservice Menu

Nutritious and delicious okra, okra seeds, and okra water appearing on menus

If Okra, Okra seeds, and Okra dishes are not part of your restaurant’s current offerings or something your catering service provides, it’s time for you and your chefs to learn why okra should appear on your menu and how you and your customers can benefit from its many nutritious and tasty properties.

Let’s begin with the basics: What is Okra? A longtime favorite in Southern cooking and originally brought to the U.S. by Ethiopian slaves, Okra is a vegetable that comes from the same plant family as cotton and hibiscus. Also known as “ladies fingers” due to its unique finger shape, it has earned a reputation as a health food and has even been recommended as a way to help manage blood sugar levels in people with diabetes.

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