What is the restaurant industry?
The restaurant industry is a $20.8 trillion industry and one of the most dynamic and adaptable in the world. With the growth of the e-commerce sector, restaurants are becoming more and more important. Moreover, the restaurant industry is one of the most rewarding for employees, with an average salary of over $45,000 per year. However, it can also be one of the most challenging fields because the industry is constantly changing, and the needs of their customers continue to grow. Therefore, restaurants need to be flexible and adaptable to stay competitive.
10 Top Restaurant Industry Trends of 2022 You Should Know About
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 1- Direct Food Ordering
One of the most prominent trends in the restaurant business in recent times has been the declining dependence of restaurants on third-party apps for food ordering and delivery.
This self-sufficiency has resulted from customers wholeheartedly embracing online ordering and delivery -- a fallout of the pandemic.
Online ordering and delivery benefit both, business owners and consumers. Even when the world came to a standstill and locked itself indoors to avoid the Coronavirus, the restaurant industry was able to continue functioning because it quickly moved from the physical to the digital space.
Moreover, by supporting online ordering restaurants have been able to considerably expand their customer-base.
Of course, online ordering and delivery were around much before COVID stuck. According to a 2019 study sponsored by the National Restaurant Association, a whopping 91% of customers used a restaurant's app or website to place orders. Although third-party delivery platforms have been channeling a large part of food deliveries thus far, restaurants are beginning to reclaim this space.
The reason why restaurants want to reduce their reliance on third-party apps is to have full control of the end-to-end dining experience. And customers, on their part, want to move away from third parties and deal directly with restaurants in order to save on delivery fees and for better customer service. According to the 2022 edition of The Future of Restaurants Report by Point of Sale (POS) service-provider Square, 68% of respondents said that they preferred to place orders from a restaurant's website directly.
By placing online orders directly with restaurants, customers help these businesses grow. Restaurants, on the other hand, have greater control over customer engagement. The centralized customer data businesses can access from orders placed on their apps and websites help them deliver better loyalty and marketing programs.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 2- Contactless Payments
Cashless and contactless payment methods have become more and more popular in the foodservice industry, particularly after the pandemic. They're not only more hygienic and safe, but also quick and easy. Such payments can be made through mobile banking, internet banking and with the help of cryptocurrencies. Mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are two popular payment platforms.
Quick response or QR codes have also become ubiquitous. These are matrix barcodes linked digitally with mobile wallets. They are usually placed on dining table placards, coasters, and restaurant walls/doors, counters, and can be scanned with the help of smartphone cameras to place orders and make payments.
Contactless transactions are expected to grow threefold between 2020 and 2024, reaching a global value of $6 trillion, according to market research and forecasting firm Juniper Research.
The restaurant industry is constantly changing.
New trends are being introduced at an alarming rate, and it can be difficult to keep up with them all.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 3- Online Table Reservation
Online table reservations have replaced phone reservations today.
No longer constrained by busy phone lines, customers can make restaurant reservations on the go via third-party reservation platforms like Tablein, Eat App, and OpenTable. Restaurants stand to benefit too. Table reservation software allows food and beverage businesses to effectively manage customer loyalty, dining preferences, waitlists, and seating plans from one centralized platform. Customer information gleaned from table reservation software, moreover, helps restaurant operators undertake business intelligence analysis and derive actionable insights from Big Data. It also enables contact tracing.
Furthermore, customer service is made more efficient through the automation of table reservation schedules. It cushions businesses against problems arising from labor shortage. By freeing restaurant staff of the job of attending to phone bookings, automated table reservation software also ensures that errors made by overworked employees are minimized, and that tables are not overbooked or double-booked.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 4- Ethnic Food Preferences
The culinary industry in the United States is more multicultural today than ever before, dishing out kebabs, Pho, and Banh Mi at the same speed it did tacos and cheeseburgers. Indeed, some Middle Eastern and Pan Asian foods like pita and hummus and stir-frys have even started to edge out old favorites like pizzas in the supper stakes.
Kebabs, for one, are scrambling up the charts, with Middle Eastern desserts flavored with rosewater and dates, in close tow.
Hummus continues to be one of the most sought-after Middle Eastern dishes in the US. But in addition to the classic chickpea version, avocado and chocolate hummus are quickly winning votes too.
The popularity of Middle Eastern dishes means more takers for Baklava (a crunchy, flaky pastry) and Shakshuka (a one-pot tomato-based dish topped with poached eggs) as well.
Pan Asian cuisines are grabbing attention too. Instead of sticking to a single specialty, restaurants are offering a wide assortment of regional cuisines on the same menu, from Vietnamese Banh Mi to Singaporean Rice Stick Noodles, Spam Musubi, and Bibimbap.
Banh Mi is a short baguette with a thin and crisp crust. Rice stick noodles are thin noodles made from water and rice flour, also called rice vermicelli noodles. Singapore noodles are made by seasoning rice noodles with curry powder and stir-frying them with char siu (Chinese-style roast pork), shrimp, and vegetables. Spam musubi is a dish made of grilled Spam, either sandwiched on top of or in between a block of rice. It is then wrapped with nori. Bibimbap is a rice dish from Korea, served as a bowl of white rice topped with kimchi (traditional fermented vegetables) or namul (sauteed and seasoned vegetables) and soy sauce, gochujang (chili pepper paste), or doenjang (fermented soybean paste).
(Note that Pan Asian cuisine is different from Asian Fusion cuisine, which blends different culinary elements to prepare an entirely new dish.)
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 5- Healthy Food Choices
One of the long-standing consumer trends in restaurant industry has been health-conscious food.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been at the forefront of the campaign for healthier food, which includes food free from genetically-modified organisms (GMO), organic food, and all-natural food. The demand for vegan cuisine is increasing too.
Vegans follow a strict diet that rejects the exploitation of livestock. So not just meats, but dairy products, honey, albumin, whey, casein, carmine, gelatin, pepsin, shellac, and even animal-derived wool, tallow, leather, and silk are done away with. A vegan diet has several health benefits, helping prevent diabetes, cardiac disease, hypertension, obesity, and cancer.
Veganism has distinct environmental benefits as well. A considerable amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is generated through livestock farming. In addition, animal-derived foods need five to ten times more water than plant-based foods. Livestock rearing and cultivation of fodder crops, moreover, take up a large part of the total arable land in the world.
According to market research and management consultancy Global Market Insights, by 2026 the value of the plant-based milk market (including coconut milk, soy milk, and almond milk) is projected to shoot past $21 billion. Furthermore, by 2025 the market for plant-based meats is expected to rise to $7.21 billion, according to market research agency Technavio.
The restaurant industry is evolving.
What are the top 10 trends that will shape the industry in 2022?
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 6- Self-Service and Automation
A growing number of restaurants are starting to offer pre-made menu items that can be bought through self-service kiosks or vending machines. With customers serving themselves, restaurants can either trim their staff and reduce labor costs, or reallocate employees to other tasks.
Customers too are drawn to restaurants that embrace the latest technologies and trends like self-service and automation.
Automation simplifies restaurant management and makes it more efficient. It optimizes every restaurant function, from inventory management, supply chain management, business intelligence, customer relationship management, employee management, and POS management. Software solutions like Hubworks that automate restaurant management, actually help businesses reduce their operating costs, improve profits, and build their brands better.
Keeping up with changing restaurant industry trends is rewarding for all concerned -- businesses, employees, and customers.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 7- Eco-friendly Restaurants
There has been a growing demand for the foodservice industry to demonstrate more concern for the environment. Businesses that are kinder toward the environment are viewed kindly by customers too.
A notorious generator of plastic waste, one of the mitigatory actions foodservice businesses have started to take is to use eco-friendly cutlery and packaging. Cups, containers, straws, lids, spoons, forks, plates, and other restaurant supplies made from plastic are making way for biodegradable items like paper straws, fiber containers, wax paper cups, and so on.
This emphasis on the environment has led to the emergence of green kitchens that are committed to using only those items they can safely recycle and reuse. Some have even launched zero-waste programs.
A company that has become mindful of its environmental impact is fast food giant McDonald's. In 2019, McD's announced its new eco-friendly plan, promising to use only 100% recycled or renewable material for packaging by 2025.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 8- Smaller Menus
Menu variety is considered to be one of the key contributors to a fulfilling dining experience, allowing restaurants to offer something to every customer.
However, restaurants have come to realize that a long menu is difficult to create and maintain. Therefore, a notable restaurants industry trend has been to focus on shorter menus, and menus that are split between dining periods.
Customers approve too. When menus are long, there's no guarantee that the quality of every dish will be up to scratch. Unwilling to compromise on quality, diners don't mind a shorter menu as long as it's excellent.
What does this mean for food service businesses? A short menu reduces food costs and makes inventory management and supply chain management easier. It also reduces food waste as unplanned food purchases can be minimized. Moreover, with a smaller variety of dishes to prepare, chefs can focus all their attention on the few items on offer and create dishes so delicious that customers will keep coming back. In time, restaurants can specialize in one or two dishes alone.
Business profits may suffer initially when multiple items are knocked off the menu, but lost ground can soon be regained with high-quality fare.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 9- Labor Shortage
Employers have been complaining about labor shortage for the past two years, even after the economy rebounded following the COVID onslaught. The restaurant industry has not been immune to this problem.
From chefs to servers and other restaurant industry workers, to those employed in the meatpacking and agricultural sectors, the food industry has struggled to find an adequate number of workers, so much so that restaurants have been forced to operate for fewer days and shorter hours.
The latest report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics highlights the enormity of this problem. According to the report, there were 10.7 million job vacancies in the US economy in September 2022, up from 10.3 million the previous month. The accommodation and food service sectors were themselves responsible for 215,000 new job openings.
The number of hires has also decreased to around 6.1 million. According to The New York Times, the downward slide started last spring itself.
These figures suggest that there aren't as many job seekers as job vacancies in the US, and that employers are struggling to find the right candidates. The New Times Times article said there were 1.9 job postings for every unemployed individual.
With job openings vastly outnumbering unemployed workers, it is now increasingly possible for workers to leave their jobs and seek out ones with better pay and perks.
However, the quit rate slipped slightly in September to around 4.1 million. Layoffs also declined to 1.3 million, which was the lowest since April, according to an Associated Press report. The total number of separations (quits, discharges, layoffs, and other types of separation on account of disability, death, retirement, and so on) declined to 5.7 million. In the accommodation and food service industry specifically, separations fell by 103,000.
Read together, the declining separation rate means that a smaller number of available workers are entering the system, causing the labor problem to remain unresolved.
Restaurant Industry Trend No. 10- Ghost Kitchens
When brick-and-mortar restaurants shut down temporarily or permanently during the pandemic, ghost kitchens started to gain popularity. The more customers started to place orders online, the more ghost kitchens started to thrive.
A ghost kitchen operates its business entirely online. It takes orders via its own website and through third-party food aggregators and prepares food only for delivery and takeout. Customers place orders on the phone, and these orders are routed through a centralized call center to the nearest ghost kitchen.
Ghost kitchens come in numerous avatars. They can be standalone units that offer a limited number of menu items. They may work for fully online restaurants that can only be reached through websites and apps. The kitchens used by these digital-only restaurants are typically those of established brick-and-mortar restaurants. The menu items offered are different from those offered by the host restaurant.
Moreover, a large kitchen may play host to numerous food businesses, with separate kitchens dedicated to different restaurants. Storage and cleaning facilities, however, may be shared. A restaurant may also rent a kitchen space for its exclusive use. There are also aggregator cloud eateries and those managed by individual restaurant operators.
One of the biggest advantages offered by ghost kitchens is that several types of restaurant workers like servers, hosts, and bussers can be done away with. This allows restaurants to significantly cut labor costs and sidestep the issue of labor shortage.
For similar articles on the restaurant industry, stay tuned to Restaurantslife. Restaurantslife Features news, articles, and recipes, and is your one-stop shop for the latest in the industry.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most profitable format of restaurant?
With the changing trends in food consumption, people are moving towards eating out more often. This has opened up a plethora of opportunities for restaurants to expand their customer base and increase their revenue. While there are numerous factors that can influence the profitability of any restaurant, we will look into the profitability of the formats of a restaurant. The format of a restaurant refers to how it is set up. Different formats of a restaurant have different costs and financial returns. A combination of these factors can help you decide which format of a restaurant is the most profitable.With the changing trends in food consumption, people are moving towards eating out more often. This has opened up a plethora of opportunities for restaurants to expand their customer base and increase their revenue. While there are numerous factors that can influence the profitability of any restaurant, we will look into the profitability of the formats of a restaurant. The format of a restaurant refers to how it is set up. Different formats of a restaurant have different costs and financial returns. A combination of these factors can help you decide which format of a restaurant is the most profitable.
What do you call the industry of restaurants?
The restaurant industry is a huge business that continues to grow at a steady pace. From casual chain restaurants to fine-dining establishments, the industry is a dynamic one that continues to adapt to changing tastes and preferences. In order to succeed in this competitive market and make sure your business stays on top of things, you'll need to know the latest trends in the industry.The restaurant industry is a huge business that continues to grow at a steady pace. From casual chain restaurants to fine-dining establishments, the industry is a dynamic one that continues to adapt to changing tastes and preferences. In order to succeed in this competitive market and make sure your business stays on top of things, you'll need to know the latest trends in the industry.