Bret Thorn, Nancy Kruse reflect on 2015 menu trendsBret Thorn, Nancy Kruse reflect on 2015 menu trends

Bret Thorn

NRN senior food editor Bret Thorn tallies which of his predictions hit the mark, and which were off-target.

Well, Nancy, the year is drawing to a close, and that means trend-watchers large and small, smart and less so, are looking to 2016 and speculating about what might be in store.

I’ll be doing that too, soon enough. But first I’d like to take a look back and see how well I did a year ago, when I predicted the trends for 2015.

I said customizability would be a key factor in restaurant service, and it’s fair to say I got that right.

“Combine that with the rapid spread of highly functional mobile technology, mobile ordering and payment systems, and you have consumers with high expectations for instant gratification,” I added.

I think I got the consumer expectation part right, but I would have expected more mobile payments to be going on right now than there are. Starbucks customers are doing it, but considering we’ve been talking about the technology since at least 2007, I’d have expected to see more of it. We have seen big players, like Amazon and Uber, getting involved in delivery service, so that fits into my expectation of consumer expectations for instant gratification.

I predicted that restaurants would respond to new nomenclature for pork that was introduced in the January Meat Buyers Guide, published by the North American Meat Association.

Bret Thorn looks back on his 2015 predictions:

Pork chops were identified more specifically based on their position in the hog, just like steaks are. Now, if a restaurant wants to buy a T-bone, porterhouse or rib-eye pork chop, they can. Theoretically, that allows for more precise specs and sexier menu copy — and, as a result, maybe higher menu prices. After all, a pork porterhouse is always going to be less expensive than a beef porterhouse, but by using the steak-like name, restaurants can add to the pork’s perceived value, in theory.

In practice, I haven’t seen much of it. Brio Tuscan Grille and Outback Steakhouse already had pork porterhouses on the menu. I noticed one recently at Ocean Prime’s New York City location, and a National Pork Board representative told me he had a list of 160 or so independent restaurants with that nomenclature, but I don’t think I can put that one in the win column.

Rosemary-Dijon pork chops. Photo courtesy of the National Pork Board.

I said there would be more pasta in limited-service restaurants due to the availability of better pre-cooked, microwavable pasta. And indeed there was some movement in that area.

Schlotzsky’s introduced a line of “Canestrelli” pasta dishes in March that are permanent additions to their menu, and in October McAlister’s Deli expanded its pasta line with an autumn limited-time offer of Chicago Style Sausage Pasta — cavatappi with spicy sausage, bell peppers, marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese.

Hale and Hearty, a chain in New York City that mostly serves soup, introduced a brand new “Simmers” line in October featuring pasta and rice dishes. I’ll take that as a solid base hit.

I said there would be more lesser-known species of wild salmon on menus. King and sockeye are the better known, more charismatic, and generally more expensive varieties of wild Alaska salmon, but there are three other species of nutritious, tasty, sustainable fish out there that also could be used by chains that would have difficulty selling the pricier fish at a profit: coho, keta and pink.

Coho has been offered in non-commercial settings for a while, and in 2015 we saw movement with it, as well as with keta.

It actually started in 2014, when Denny’s and Captain D’s put keta salmon on their menus. In 2015, Shari’s Café and Pies, Flat Top Grill and Sharky’s followed suit, and Rubio’s just said it would move away from Chilean farmed salmon to Alaskan coho.

Bret Thorn and Nancy Kruse discuss potential problems with 'clean' eating:

Red Lobster also started offering Alaska salmon as part of its summertime Crabfest, offering sockeye in July and coho in August. So I’m going to say I got that right.

I said we’d see more lamb items — typically found in fine dining — in more casual restaurants. I based that on the rapid growth of lamb on menus between 2010 and 2014 — which rose 13 percent, according to Datassential — the fact that, although lamb prices were rising, ground beef prices were rising faster, and on the fact that lamb burgers had started to proliferate.

We did see a little more lamb. Hard Rock Cafe put its Lancashire Hot Pot Burger from its menu in England on U.S. menus in May and June as part of a promotion of many of its international burgers, including a Bánh Mì Burger from Vietnam and a Tandoori Spiced Chicken Burger from India.

The British sandwich was a broiled lamb patty topped with caramelized onions, carrot frazzles and mint mayonnaise.

Bonefish Grill made Lamb Lollipop Chops a permanent addition to its bar menu and added lamb chops as a springtime special, and various smaller fast-casual Mediterranean chains offered lamb or lamb-and-beef gyros. Although according to the Chinese zodiac 2015 was the year of the sheep, I don’t think we can say it was the year of the lamb.

I said we’d see more premium coffee, and we most certainly did. I didn’t expect the proliferation of nitro coffee — coffee infused Guinness-style with nitrous oxide — but how could I have? It certainly was a year of “third wave” coffee — the post-Starbucks wave of even more premium coffee — so I’ll say I got that prediction right.

Photo: Caribou Coffee

Ditto India pale ale. IPA sales grew even faster in 2015 than they did in 2014, and now account for 27 percent of craft beer sales, according to the Brewers Association.

I said there would be more plant-based protein out there, and there was. White Castle started the year with a vegetarian slider that was introduced as a limited-time offer, but was named a permanent item in March. Other chains found new and creative uses for quinoa, the sexiest of plant-based proteins. For example, Back Yard Burgers blended it into the patty of its Mediterranean Chicken Burger, offered as a fall LTO.

Sherry vinegar consumption spiked in 2014, rising 7 percent, and I expected to see more of it on menus in 2015. Although it didn’t exactly become the new Sriracha, Hale & Hearty added it to its new chilled tomato chipotle soup. After a quick search of my email inbox over the past few months, I see examples of it rounding out pork ribs, glazing lamb ribs, dressing the new bowls at José Andrés’ Beefsteak restaurant, and Serena Bass’ kale salad at Lido in New York City. Not bad.

My prediction of a liver-and-onions renaissance was bad, though. What can I say? I speculated that the retro and snout-to-tail trends would bump into each other and there they’d be, smothered in sautéed onions. But no. I still think liver and onions will be resurrected someday, but it wasn’t in 2015.  

How about you, Nancy? What did 2015 look like from your perspective?

Consumer demand for 'real food' dominates

(Continued from page 1)

Nancy Kruse

Kruse Company president Nancy Kruse responds to Bret Thorn’s take on the year in menu trends.

As I look back over the past 12 months, Bret, it seems to me that it was truly a year of wonders. Pope Francis arrived for a state visit and promptly jumped into a Fiat that would have fit in the backseat of the Presidential SUV. Blustery billionaire and reality TV host Donald Trump made serious inroads with disaffected voters. Burger King invited archrival McDonald’s to collaborate in the name of world peace. And American diners partied like it was 1899 as they embraced food values that would have warmed the hearts of their great grandmothers.

Nancy Kruse says 2015 was 'a year of wonders':

Consumers ramped up their demand for real foods and walked the talk by turning old-fashioned broth, reborn in the 21st century as bone broth, into a glamour category. Urbanites took to quaffing the stuff as a convenient, good-for-you coffee alternative that they picked up at takeout windows from places like Brodo in New York City.

Other operators capitalized on the trend in more conventional ways. Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes ran an Asian Ginger Broth promotion in January, Panera Bread launched its Broth Bowl line in the spring, and in November Ramenfest Chicago celebrated the Japanese broth-based staple turned breakout hit.

Animal fats benefited from the FDA’s about-face on trans fats. While independents were most likely to celebrate their use of lard, duck fat, beef tallow and schmaltz, chain operators rediscovered the appeal of butter. McDonald’s switched to “real butter” for its Egg McMuffins, and Jack in the Box took a leaf from steakhouses with the Classic Buttery Jack Burger, topped with garlic-herb butter. Steakhouses got in on the act, too. Last winter, Black Angus Steakhouse introduced Housemade Steak Butters in varieties like caramelized shallots and blue cheese, béarnaise and Sriracha.

Nancy Kruse talks about the renewed popularity of animal fat in 2015:

This was also the year that demand for clean foods, foods free from antibiotics, hormones, steroids and artificial additives crossed over from the fringes and hit the mainstream. Chains fell all over themselves in an effort to clean up their acts and demonstrate their clean-food bona fides.

Panera Bread launched a pre-emptive strike by publishing a manifesto in major newspapers on June 15 that introduced its “No-No List” of ingredients that the chain is expunging. Chipotle said no to GMOs, while Papa John’s established a Clean Label Scorecard and dedicated a reported $100 million a year to clean up its supply chain.

McDonald’s followed the lead of Chick-fil-A and announced a phase-out of chickens treated with certain antibiotics. Recognizing that consumers conflate clean foods with animal welfare, McDonald’s later announced its switch to cage-free eggs. Chains of all types jumped on board with similar initiatives that will have wide-ranging impacts on both consumer expectations and supply chain capabilities.

Nancy Kruse and Bret Thorn discuss the growing popularity of 'clean food':

More operators turned to storytelling this year in order to address patron demand for authenticity and to assuage their concerns regarding the source of their foods. Independent restaurants have long identified the farmers who grow everything from their proteins to their produce, and restaurant chains followed suit in their own fashion, led by quick-service operators stung by lingering customer perceptions of their food as ersatz and highly processed.

Wendy’s adopted GoPro camera technology as it traced the romaine used in its salads from field to cooling center. Del Taco continued its brand evolution and amped up its menu cred with Slow Braised Carnitas that were “slow cooked until tender in small-batch kettles.”

Burger chain Culver’s continued a long-running campaign to celebrate its ingredients and support regional producers with promotions like the Pepper Jack Ranch Pub Burger that boasted Midwest-raised beef, Wisconsin cheese and butter-toasted supper-club buns, a signifier of excellence that would resonate with its Midwestern customer base.

And, finally, Bret, in what may be the ultimate indicator that it’s no longer menu R&D as usual, offal made an appearance in the mass market.

Most middle-class American diners, affluent enough to afford better cuts of meat, have recoiled from consuming animal innards. But by tapping into the whole-animal, waste-not-want-not ethic, several chains, like Slater’s 50/50 and Eureka!, managed to lure their customers to try bone marrow, whose popularity has been raging at trendy independent restaurants around the country. In a savvy approach, both put the marrow atop burgers, a move guaranteed to disarm even the most diffident diners.

On a related note, pork belly put in an appearance on a pair of bánh mì sandwiches, one at Così and the other at Mendocino Farms.  

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

Nancy Kruse, president of the Kruse Company, is a menu trends analyst based in Atlanta and a regular contributor to Nation’s Restaurant News. E-mail her at [email protected].