The Transparent Future of the Restaurant Industry
In Japanese culinary culture there is a term you may have heard of but is often miss used.
·umami· Savory(ness)
Considered one of the “five basic tastes", it is part of a series of pillars that create a complete satiating experience when dining on a culinary creation. It is that “thing” that is missing to the untrained culinary pallet. The ·Je Ne Sais Quoi· (A difficult to define quality) of the pallet. Often misrepresented by the statement “maybe a little more salt?” or “something is missing”.
We may not all be culinary geniuses but as a whole, food is part of our everyday lives. Whether you are a “foodie” or just enjoy the day to day of nourishing yourself, you and the rest of the human race are the experts on eating.
We eat!
For millennia we have been “breaking bread”. Social status, wealth, visible health, poverty, sickness have been either defined by the absence of food or the abundance of it to cultures around the world. Used in ancient trade to holy sacraments, humans as a people have embraced in our culture for thousands of years the act of consuming what we need to live.
Umami represents one of the five pillars of Japanese flavor which can arguably be considered a global golden rule of flavor. Those pillars being:
1. Saltiness
2. Sweetness
3. Bitterness
4. Sourness
5. Savory(ness)
These are the general guidelines and have gone unchanged and most likely as long as humans tend to stay somewhat the same biologically, most likely will not ever change.
What does this have to do with the future of the restaurant industry you ask? Stay with me!
Not only have the pillars of how we like our food created not changed, either have the environments in which we partake in the age-old past time.
In our dwelling.
On the go.
Or prepared for us by someone else outside our home.
Do these have modifications over the years, yes of course! Take out, delivery, fast food, food prepped and mailed and counter service. However, the three main pillars still stand.
Let’s focus on one of the three. (My second favorite personally.)
Someone else preparing a meal for us and us eating it not at home. Typically consumed in the place it was prepared by the creator.
Excluding going over to the Robinsons for dinner, this covers the world of “Going out to Eat”. We as humans are also absolute experts at this cultural phenomenon too. We may not all be restaurateurs but what we know and can sense good food, a clean safe place, good company and an overall great experience.
The pillars of that experience are:
· Food
· Service
· Setting
· Sourcing
· Safety
Similar to the 5 basic tastes, if any of these are out of line during out dining experience it can be unsettling from either an alarming rate to a forgettable dining experience.
In 2019 pre-Covid19, the restaurant industry was on the verge of taking on some new exciting frontiers. Gone was the stigma of the food truck. Now a quirky sign of a city’s vitality food trucks where not only spreading around the world in urban centers but becoming a sought-after experience. White label trucks were popping up offering full-service kitchens for multiple brands. Chefs and restaurant operation adventurers where running pop-up kitchens featuring limited time menus and venues. Festivals and farmers markets were seeing mom and pop brands next to national chains. Niche food genres were gaining representation in cities and neighborhoods around the world. If you had a dream, raw talent in the kitchen and some cash all you needed was a permit, a trailer or a tent and a cash box and you could serve your community.
It was exciting.
Main stream brands new and old began diving deep into niche purveyances and regional suppliers offering extremely specific experiences while favorite brands continued to bring in success on maintaining their customer experiences they have for years.
Then it all stopped. Screeched to a halt.
Countless restaurants forced to shut doors. Line cooks, waiters and bar tenders out of work almost overnight. Owners doing their best to pivot their business model to keep the oxygen that is cash flowing to keep food on their tables at home. As the dust settled those that could pivot to delivery or successful take-out models stayed afloat. The patrons that once crowded restaurant dining rooms now filled the isles of grocery stores.
However, from the industry rubble there is life. A new bloom of color and innovation birthed in raw necessity. As vaccines rolled out and waves of variants become tolerable, open signs began to flip back over. Neon lights began to reflect off the mahogany of bars and the steady whirr of hood vents began to fill the background noise where COVID updates dominated once before.
If we open, will they come?
Before the pandemic you could safely isolate the five pillars of dining out into two categories. The conscious observation and the subconscious observation. In the past, as a guest you would consciously be aware of the meal you ordered from gourmet presentations to simply just looking amazing. This mixed with the service you received were blatantly noticeable and right off the bat set the bar for any feedback you might give. In the background subconsciously there are benchmarks that make up the “Umami”. Results driven by the purveyor of your experience well before you arrive such as the quality or freshness of the prepared items, cleanliness of the dining area to the professionalism of the menu presentation. As humans for a millennium not being always at the top of the food chain, we have had a sense for when it is safe to eat and is what we are eating safe. Freshness, cleanliness and comfort are basic provisions that make us feel comfortable. It is in that comfort that is provided that allows us without distraction, to enjoy an espresso alone at a bistro or a Tuscan meal with loved ones.
Conscious or not the dining experience is curated by the attention or lack there of to these pillars of the experience. It is in these pillars that we will see growth and innovation over the next 10 years and beyond.
The Conscious future.
Leading into 2019 our awareness of “where the food came from” that’s placed on our restaurant table and how responsibly it was acquired was at an all-time high. With your average restaurant goer attending the streaming “Netflix Culinary School” and being exposed to a world of fusions, ethical and responsible harvesting and new resurgences of historical methods preparation, restaurant goers were ushered into a new era.
The writing was already on the wall.
Food allergy awareness and over all healthy eating trends were on the rise. Even with the “post-organic movement” fatigue we all had, the drum beat of inclusive eating from the vegan bistros of San Francisco to the gluten-free options on the Domino’s® pizza website.
The onslaught of the pandemic just threw gasoline on the fire. In the past just as our grandparents and generations before us trusted the government and pensions to secure their retirement and big corporations for job security there was an overall belief that what was given to us to eat at restaurants was safe. An understood trust that whatever was happening in the back of the house had us the patron at its best interest.
We were so wrong.
Record breaking obesity, cancer, diseases and addictions plagued our culture and for the last two decades we have been working to unravel a mindset that ignorance at the table was acceptable. Before the pandemic within major restaurant brands leading the industry, this battle was being fought in risk assessment board meetings across the world, knowing that changing sourcing and preparation methods meant big dollars spent. The pandemic speed up this process. Not being able to go out. When we did get to go, having to sit at every other table, wear a mask and stand 10 to 20 feet apart took away the curtain between the front and back of the house even further.
The future is in aggressive transparency.
Never more than before is taste as important as handwashing logs in the back of the house. Never more now than before is how responsible the food that’s on your plate was gathered from farm or factory to the kitchen you are dining in front of.
The winners in the coming years will not see this as a risk pivot or crisis movement but an opportunity to create experiences and brands that are fanatically transparent. Bars that have a lottery system, the winners invited on vendor tours with them. Restaurants that on Tuesday’s have line cooks teaching patrons skills to use at home. Chefs teaching their customers the best way to purchase produce and seafood and trick to prepare them safely while illuminating their qualities.
This reckless transparency is the answer to the media streaming culinary conversation we have all been flooded with during lock downs. It’s the in person meeting to the long-awaited long-distance relationship we all just got out of. The winners will be the ones that have nothing to hide and the losers will be the ones catfishing the consumer.
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