Archive for Food & Restaurant trends
Subscription service offers organic baby food direct from local farms
If I had to do it all over again as a mom just starting out. I’d go the natural organic route for my little ones. I saw this over on Springwise and thought you’d enjoy it:
Farm to Baby NYC is targeting parents with a subscription-based service offering organic baby food:
Photo courtesy Springwise
There’s no shortage of efforts bringing more sustainable and transparent food alternatives to consumers. Now, New York-based Farm to Baby NYC is specifically targeting parents with a subscription-based service offering organic baby food.
To begin using the service, parents based in New York can log onto the Farm to Baby NYC website and order a range of seasonal produce – from hubbard squash to parsnips and spinach – sourced from farms in the local area. Customers can sign up for either Half Membership, which offers four 10-ounce pots per week for USD 55, or Full Membership, which includes eight 10-ounce pots per week for USD 99. The glass pots are collected by Farm to Baby NYC for re-use. The service currently uses Gorzynski Ornery Farm and W. Rogowski Farm in New York and Phillips Farms in New Jersey, ensuring a low carbon footprint and supporting these local businesses.
We’ve covered numerous subscription-based services on Springwise in the past, but by adding some (still) made here appeal to the model, Farm to Baby NYC have also boosted their green-credentials. An idea ripe for exporting to other parts of the world?
Related articles
- Subscription service offers organic baby food direct from local farms (springwise.com)
- Sweet Yams- Homemade Baby Food. (filipinofestival.wordpress.com)
- Nutritional and Easy Homemade Baby Foods your Little One will Love (sandypucblog.com)
- Sweet Yams- Homemade Baby Food. (lezoemusings.wordpress.com)
- First Subscription-Based Service To Deliver Local Farm Fresh Food For Babies (psfk.com)
Cash-strapped consumers still expect quality with food
Image via Wikipedia
Even in this tough economic reality we live in, rising food prices aren’t souring our hunger for food that is healthy, satisfying and tasty. I’ve been writing about grocery shopping trends and some innovative consumer solutions from the food and beverage industry. Here’s more consumer insight from an article I published yesterday:Several trends in the food industry are prompting innovation leaders to serve up new ways to appeal to shoppers feeling the pinch at the checkout aisle.
While grocery retailers are still struggling in this down market, we’re seeing a new kind of consumer who demands a great value. But if you think it’s all about the bottom line at the checkout line, you might not be getting the full flavor of what grocery shoppers really want.
Value in today’s economy is not just about price. We’re finding that consumers aren’t willing to sacrifice quality and taste just to squeeze a few more dollars from their grocery budget. That’s good news for private label food manufacturers, as grocery shoppers are eating up brands that deliver value.
Enjoy the rest of the article here. Are you part of the trend to put quality and taste over price?
Innovation stories to unfold at the Sustainable Innovation Summit
It’s called the Food & Beverage 2011: Sustainable Innovation Summit, and it’s happening in Chicago August 9
and 10. This invitation-only event will bring together the top 100 innovation leaders from a multi-national audience of Chief’s, VP’s, Directors, Heads, Senior Directors and Managers of Innovation, R&D, Product Development, Open Innovation, Customer Management, and Manufacturing. My company, Innovationege, is proud to team up once again with the outstanding leaders at the Management Roundtable for this exclusive event.
We’re going to talk about everything from our changing regulatory landscape to the search for new market channels. We’re going to hear from leaders about those amazing innovation journeys, like how H.J. Heinz developed an interesting approach to honing their capability to deliver growth by identifying, developing and acquiring a continuum of incremental and disruptive technologies! Or how the J.M. Smucker Company quadrupled in size via a strategy of growth through acquisitions, and the choices they needed to make as a result.
And we’re going to challenge current thinking and approaches, set the stage for new trends in sustainable innovation and create a senior level networking community for ongoing support and dialogue. There are 100 spots open, and if you’d like to be a part just let me know. You’ll find all of the information about our keynotes, candid case studies, facilitated Q&A, networking sessions and a post-conference workshops on our Sustainable Innovation Summit site, where you can register and check out the facilities at Chicago’s Allerton Hotel.
I’ll see you in Chicago!
The Rise of Street Food: Whole Foods Turns to the Street to Find Popular New Foods
I recently met Nick Davis, Regional Executive Chef for Whole Foods out of Colorado. He handles Whole Foods cuisine for a large portion of the West. For quite a while Nick has been pushing and approving new products and services based on street food. In my experience, the street is where some of the heartiest and most economical food can be found, and Nick agrees. From marvelous Oaxaca-style tamales in Mexico to crème brûlée in San Francisco, the “peasant food” offered by street vendors has increasing appeal to many people. Now several Whole Foods locations such as the Trolley Square Whole Foods in Salt Lake City are offering “street eats” as a restaurant-style service in the store as well as street food packages you can take out. Nick has been working on the menus for these products. Kudos to Nick and all the innovators at Whole Foods for recognizing the need to bring the street into the store. One more example of innovation based on understanding consumers and trends.
Whole Foods is a great place to go for market research in addition to enjoyable, quality food and other products. One can learn a lot about green packaging trends, innovations in flexible pouches, self-care products, organics, ingredients, and international cuisine. For many innovative areas, Whole Foods is consistently on the edge.
From Pies to Popsicles: 14 Food and Restaurant Trends in 2011
Have you had enough of cupcakes already? Last year we saw gourmet cupcake shops and mail-order sites pop up all over the place, and consumers gobbled this trend up. But it’s over, and in 2011, pies are the new cupcakes. (One popular restaurant in New York City is sponsoring a “Pie Happy Hour” featuring specialty pies like whiskey-buttermilk, apple-cheddar and more!)
Do a search of Food and Restaurant industry trends for 2011, and you’ll see hundreds of hot trends from forecasters around the globe. I’ve put together a list of what I think are the most interesting predictions:
An increase in Mom and Pop shops. A growing number of people are following their dreams and financing their own unique family restaurants.
One-item restaurants. Like gourmet burgers, many restaurants are opening with one menu item and building on that. Look for hot dog restaurants, grilled cheese restaurants — you get the idea.
Mini everything. Mini is the 2011 buzzword it seems. Look for mini plates, mini portions, mini desserts and more, thanks to our shrinking budgets.
Hearth-healthy. The emphasis is on whole foods and healthy preparation techniques, like using wood-fired ovens.
Smoking. Cigarettes are still banned, but you’ll see more smoke flavoring in your food, such as smoked olive oil, cumin and butter.
Kumquats. Most people didn’t know what a pomegranate was until a few years ago. Look for Kumquats to be the new “it” fruit in salads, relishes and desserts.
Honey. Many chefs are developing partnerships with local beekeepers and using honey in their unique dressings and dishes.
Neck. You’ll find more parts of the animal being used to create dishes. Look for lamb, beef, goat and pork neck on the menu.
Bellies. Like necks, goat and lamb bellies are appearing on more menus in 2011.
Coconut. This flavor is increasing its popularity, and more consumers will ask for it in their coffee and desserts as well as in main dishes.
High-end junk food. Look for creative chefs to add their unique spin to our favorite comfort junk like cheese puffs, chips and beef sticks.
Gourmet popsicles. Forget cherry and grape. Look for carrot, beef and sugar-snap pea treats on a stick.
And my favorite quirky trend: Dirt! Some chefs are ditching sauces and instead using dried or powdered ingredients to add texture and flavor. One chef is planning on opening a Noma restaurant in San Francisco this month using dishes like his sister restaurant in Denmark: Toasted malt dirt-covered radishes, anyone?
In the News: IP and Apple–the Other Apple
Apple’s commercial success has often been linked to its intellectual property. Today IP and apples’ success is in the news again–the other apple, the kind you eat. The story involves the theme of tension about the way universities pursue technology transfer.
The story begins with the University of Minnesota and their agricultural research that led to the delicious and wildly successful Honeycrisp apple. That apples was the subject of a 1990 US plant patent, US PP07197, “Apple Tree: Honeycrisp” by inventors Jim Luby and David Bedford. That patent recently expired, but brought substantial revenue to the University (at least $8 million). So what’s next? How about the SweeTango, also called “the Honeycrisp killer,” an apple that builds upon and exceeds the Honeycrisp? This advanced apple was also developed at the University of Minnesota during a decade of research and is now being marketed through an exclusive license. That’s the problem: exclusivity. A lot of apple orchards could benefit from this tree, but the University of Minnesota has chosen to license it to only one group. The competitors have chosen to sue, claiming that it’s inappropriate for a public university to benefit just one company. The story made it to BusinessWeek in the Sept. 17, 2010 story, “Licensing Deal for Hot New Apple Comes Under Fire” by Steve Karnowski.
The university chose Minnesota’s largest orchard, Pepin Heights, to commercialize its new apple. But 15 other orchards say it’s not a sweet deal for them, and they’re suing. The school counters that research universities everywhere award exclusive rights to all kinds of intellectual property, and that the royalties are crucial for replacing shrinking public funding for research. It also says the deal is needed to protect the quality of an apple it spent more than a decade developing.
“When Pepin and the university signed this agreement, they had no consideration for what it would do to the Minnesota apple industry,” Frank Femling said. “The only thing they considered was their financial interests.”
The Femlings grow 13 kinds of apples at Afton Apple Orchard, about 15 miles southeast of downtown St. Paul. Most of their varieties came from the university, including the hugely successful Honeycrisp. They’re not growing the SweeTango, and they fear what will happen if it becomes as popular as the Honeycrisp. Cindy Femling said they’re already losing sales.
Mark Rotenberg, the university’s general counsel, said the school partners with private industry all the time to bring technology to the marketplace — not just apples but a myriad of other innovations as well, including lifesaving drugs and medical devices.
“This has become, for research universities across the United States, the dominant way in which basic research is made available to benefit the community at large,” Rotenberg said.
As an example, Rotenberg pointed to the technology transfer program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The 75-year-old Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is considered a leader in turning university research into products that benefit society, and using the licensing income to support further scientific investigation.
Emily Bauer, a licensing manager at the foundation who specializes in plant technology, said it generally prefers nonexclusive licensing because it wants the technology to be widely used. She said the foundation doesn’t usually award exclusive licenses for agricultural products. But in some cases, she said, exclusive licensing is the only way to get the technology into the marketplace.
Rotenberg said the university believed Pepin Heights could do the best job of quickly getting SweeTango apples into the market.
Dennis Courtier, owner of Pepin Heights in Lake City, said restrictions on who grows it are necessary to protect the quality as it competes with other snack foods, including candy bars and potato chips….
[The university] also wanted to avoid a repeat of a significant problem with the Honeycrisp. Anybody could plant it anywhere, and the quality suffered in warmer growing areas, hurting its reputation. So it picked Courtier and Pepin Heights, who formed the “Next Big Thing” cooperative to manage and safeguard the SweeTango. It has 45 growers in five states — Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York — plus Quebec and Nova Scotia in Canada.
The university is hoping the deal yields a repeat of the more than $8 million it earned from the Honeycrisp. Besides a $1 per tree royalty, Next Big Thing pays the university 4.5 percent of the apple’s net wholesale sales.
Orchards outside of Minnesota that don’t join the co-op can’t grow it. Minnesota growers who aren’t in the co-op must sign an agreement with Pepin Heights and accept restrictions that plaintiffs such as the Femlings consider one-sided.
While we leave it to the parties involved to resolve the particular issues in this case, we do recognize that it is painful when competitors acquire a technology that has a competitive advantage. However, intellectual property owners generally have rights in determining how their property is used and by whom. Universities in the United States under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act have an obligation to look for ways to benefit from IP that they develop. That doesn’t mean that they can only consider non-exclusive licenses. In this case, preserving the quality of the SweeTango brand may logically require a controlled approach to distribution of the crop, and the choice of one particular channel with added limitations in planting might make sense. Yes, the terms offered may be one-sided, which is the advantage of having a superior product and IP on your side. Those on the other side can agree to the terms or walk away and pursue alternatives, including developing or acquiring their own sources of competitive advantage. But we’ll have to let this case play out to see where the courts rule–there may be many details beyond the brief story we see in the press that could lead to unpredictable outcomes.
Nothing is safe in the business world. Disruption is always a threat. You may have a great product and a valuable crop, and the next day someone may develop something superior and not choose to let you in on the action or give you the terms you want. There’s a temptation to cry foul and look to the courts to even the playing field, but that’s rarely a fruitful approach.
Here’s a promotional video about SweeTango that discusses how long it takes to develop an innovation in apples. I especially enjoyed this because it features an inventor, the lead apple developer at the University of Minnesota, David Bedford.
I especially appreciate the story of SweeTango innovation since I’m an avid apple grower and apple processor myself. OK, I only have two trees, both Jonathans, but they put out about 1,000 pounds of amazing fruit that keeps me very busy for a couple of weekends and evenings in the first week of October–we’ll can well over 200 quarts of our secret-recipe applesauce, make dried apples, apple leather, various apple concoctions, and give away a couple hundreds pounds or so. The tart, juicy taste of our particular fruit when picked on a cool fall day beats that of nearly any product you can find in the grocery store, in my biased opinion, but I welcome every advance in this field and look forward to trying SweeTango.
The hard truth pays off for Domino’s
What company in its right mind would ever admit to the world that its product was awful? In what many might call a risky move, Domino’s Pizza delivered the tough truth and customers were thrilled. We’ve all seen how Domino’s “got real” in commercials launched last December that openly admitted why their pizza recipe needed big improvements.
The company paid millions of dollars for its Pizza Turnaround Campaign, airing their customers’ biggest complaints about “cardboard crust,” and “ketchup-like sauce.” The commercials then showed real Domino’s employees working to create something better.
The commercials attracted curiosity at first, and then rave reviews. Go check out their pizzaturnaround.com site to see what I mean. Domino’s is brave enough to display all the news coverage and Twitter comments–whether good or bad.
The risk paid off, and Domino’s reported last month that its fourth-quarter profits rose to $23.6 million–more than double last year’s figure. And franchisees report store sales are up 1.4 percent.
With all the corporate scandals and big bailouts that have made headlines these past few years, I find that kind of honesty refreshing. Apparently, so do pizza lovers.
Food Trends: Processors Feel the Bite of the Economy
I’ve been looking at trends in the food manufacturing realm lately, and while the processors are feeling the crunch of our economic climate as are most businesses, some analysts are predicting big problems in store for the entire industry.
In fact author Hank Cardello, a food industry expert and author of Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s REALLY Making America Fat, says that food processors need to pay much closer attention to emerging health trends and not just the economy. He predicts that if manufacturers don’t stop producing overweight foods, they could face a fate similar to auto manufacturers who continued to produce overweight cars with a focus on short-term profits and a lack of innovation.
This former executive at Coca-Cola even compares gas guzzlers in the auto industry to “weapons of mass consumption,” and talks about how products like the 14-hundred calorie Hardees Thickburger is equally to blame. I can’t say as I disagree with him. Remember how the auto manufacturers missed the market signal that “smaller is better?” Remember when gas prices rose to $4 per gallon how consumers quickly began to look for more efficient cars?
With the food industry giving us more than 30 percent more calories than in the 1950s, perhaps it’s time for these processors to look at trends more seriously and re-invent their offerings.
