Travel & Gourmet

What's next? Or what is the fate of the restaurant business in 2021

No doubt: the world will never be the same, which means that the restaurant business will need to adapt to the new reality. What will it be like? Which habitual sides of the restaurant business will quit us forever, and what will become a new part of everyday life? What trends will rule the show and why? Let's figure it out.
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First of all, we should note that the restaurant business is a business created by people for people; consequently, it puts a person at the head of everything. 2020 has become a vector determining the focus on a customer, which will become even more important. At the same time, it has outlined some clear trends in the restaurant business as environmental friendliness, honesty, openness, care for the environment and health of guests, education and literacy, as well as the leitmotif of new menus as a return to the origins and getting rid of unnecessary and “fake.”

What does it all mean?

The fact that now the restaurant business will take more care of the customer, service will become a key factor in the customer experience. “Hungry” for human warmth and emotions, communication, and socialization, in 2021, customers are looking not only for good food but also for pleasant service that will surround them with peace, comfort, and attention. Small talk with a waiter, sommelier, or manager should reach a new level and not just give the guest information about what to order: the dialogue between the service team and the client must now become personal so that each guest feels special.

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Photo: Osteria Francescana

This need for human warmth and communication will directly impact the types of restaurants that will survive from the "troubled" times: those that, in addition to excellent food, will have something more to offer, like values ​​and history.
Today's client has become even more selective and chooses wisely where to go: if he goes out for dinner in some place, then that really means that he sees that this place reflects his views, ideas, values. Restaurateurs should pay attention to what kind of image and message their establishment is broadcasting to the masses and build a strong philosophy that can attract new target audiences.

Moreover, restaurants, bars, and other places will definitely become "more transparent" and more honest. Now you won't be able to deceive and pretend: guests don't want fake emotions but sincere stories. Chefs will communicate more with guests and build a dialogue with them, thus favoring a closer and more trusting relationship between the restaurant and its visitor. There will be less "break" between the kitchen and the guest: this is all thanks to the rising demand of people to connect what they see on the plate with the one who prepared it for them.

Another significant trend is the concern for the environment. This trend may not be new at all. Still, in the first month of 2021, we already see an obvious growth of restaurants with the concept of sustainability and an increasing number of "smart" and eco-friendly solutions for restaurants that care about the planet.
 

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Greenhouses of restaurant Noma. Photo: Noma

Sustainability or awareness is good, but even better when the restaurant thinks about the visitor's health. "Not only tasty and aesthetically pleasing but also not to the detriment of yourself," - this is how the world's leading chefs identify the direction of the cuisine's development in the future. When the restaurant simply tried to feed and surprise the client are gone, now the main goal is to give a person tasty, and most importantly, healthy food because it is no secret that the cause of more than 60 percent of human diseases is malnutrition.

Education and literacy is perhaps another point that has always been missed by both restaurants and their visitors, and today it has finally become trendy. Today, guests often know more than the waiters or chefs themselves because they tend to learn new things and are not indifferent to what they see on the plate and send to the stomach. The next decade will be marked by the global growth of all kinds of courses and schools on nutrition and cooking, the opening of sommelier schools, and gastronomic culture courses. The human being will become more literate, more conscious, and aware. 

All this gained literacy will lead to the fact that it will become even more difficult to surprise the guest, and any restaurant is looking for precisely this. So what to do? Back to basics.
Finding something new, unknown, non-banal, and captivating in what surrounds us, what was always by us, but we did not notice it.
Travel restrictions have already forced us to turn our gaze to our native lands and products, and now they are pushing us to new "limits": to discover new facets of where we are, to love something well-known again in some way. To sum up, the locality is a new strong trend in restaurants and bars around the world.

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Open “transparent” kitchen in Geranium restaurant. Photo: Claes Bech-Poulsen

However, in terms of a new reality, which trends will irrevocably leave our existentialism?
Absolutely pompous and excessive fine dining, covered in gold, black caviar, and other “royal” stuff, a desire to chase overseas trends, posh and exaggerated glamor. Out of reach expensive restaurants and arrogant service. Huge menus build on the principle of “pleasing everyone” and places without soul and idea.

All in all, the new era of development of the restaurant business implies tremendous changes that will forever change the appearance of both the guest and the restaurant itself. Although, there is a bright side in all this: whatever is done is done for the better, isn’t it?

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