How would you like to visit the same restaurant every week, but each time you get to try never-before-eaten dishes from talented chefs? Think of it as a sort of rotating restaurant. That’s the essence of Test Kitchen in Los Angeles.

The story behind this unanticipated hit concept came from restaurateur Bill Chait, who was initially just temporarily looking to rent out his closed restaurant location to local chefs while he worked on the space. But word soon spread like wildfire as the foodie public of L.A. anxiously awaited to try out food from renowned chefs like Top Chef Michael Voltaggio, Waltern Manzke, formerly of Church & State and John Sedlar of Rivera. Here at Test Kitchen, these chefs get to cook and test recipes from new menu items for their own soon-to-open restaurants.

But not only are foodies flocking to Test Kitchen to discover who the next guest chef will be (seats are sold out 3 weeks in advance), but an ever-growing list of chefs are also lining up for the chance to cook in the Kitchen to showcase their talents and garner buzz for their unveiled concepts. Every few days, a new concept is arranged with a new chef who is paired with his own bartender, serving up fixed-price menu or family-style service to keep things simple.

Also Synergy Consultants has been using a “Test Kitchen facility in Chicago called LSK short for Logan Square Kitchen.  It has been awarded LEED status. Could this become a trend for financially strapped restaurants?

The term “street food” may once have conjured up images of vendors selling hot dogs from a cart, or even hawkers from a foreign city pushing out the favorite local snack. But these days, street food means food trucks!

Food trucks have come a long way from your basic truck selling sandwiches and sodas. The mobile food scene has gained immense popularity as entreprenuers started to think outside the box, serving up gourmet offerings from every type of cuisine you can imagine – there are food trucks serving Latin, Asian, American, Mediterranean, European, and even fusion flavors. Ever heard of Kogi? The forefather of the modern-day food truk, Kogi dishes out fusion Korean BBQ tacos. Typically headed by experienced chefs, mobile food trucks offer gourmet dishes that quick to order and affordable.

From the August 2010 American Express MarketBriefing report, they found an increasing number of consumers ditching the traditional restaurant and flocking to food trucks. Here are the stats:

• In 2009, one out of eight consumers (13%) reported going to a mobile food truck in the preceding six months.
• In 2010, more than one in four consumers (26%) reported visiting a food truck in the last six months.
• Mobile food trucks owned by restaurants are a worthwhile complement and business builder to the brick and mortar location.

With such competition on the rise, we at Synergy believe that in order to maintain their edge, many more restaurants will venture into this arena. Actually, big names like California Pizza Kitchen, In N Out, Pizza Hut and Too Hot Tamales already have their own food trucks! It will be very interesting to see who else will soon create a mobile presence of their own.

The term “street food” may once have conjured up images of vendors selling hot dogs from a cart, or even hawkers from a foreign city pushing out the favorite local snack. But these days, street food means food trucks!

Food trucks have come a long way from your basic truck selling sandwiches and sodas. The mobile food scene has gained immense popularity as entreprenuers started to think outside the box, serving up gourmet offerings from every type of cuisine you can imagine – there are food trucks serving Latin, Asian, American, Mediterranean, European, and even fusion flavors. Ever heard of Kogi? The forefather of the modern-day food truk, Kogi dishes out fusion Korean BBQ tacos. Typically headed by experienced chefs, mobile food trucks offer gourmet dishes that quick to order and affordable.

>From the August 2010 American Express MarketBriefing report, they found an increasing number of consumers ditching the traditional restaurant and flocking to food trucks. Here are the stats:

• In 2009, one out of eight consumers (13%) reported going to a mobile food truck in the preceding six months.
• In 2010, more than one in four consumers (26%) reported visiting a food truck in the last six months.
• Mobile food trucks owned by restaurants are a worthwhile complement and business builder to the brick and mortar location.

A few months ago I wrote a blog entry stating that I believe that pizza will be the next big thing. About a week after posting the article I was inundated with phone calls from perspective clients all over the world who now want to open a chain of pizza restaurants.

My new clients are from Italy and while they are very knowledgeable about the different styles of pizza including Roma, Napoli and Sicilian they had a very different concept in mind that required us to expose them to a whole new level of thinking and visiting restaurants that very few people knew about.

Our team and clients started eating pizza at 11:00 AM up in LA with the first stop being PitFire Pizza whose motto is, “the Crust You Can Trust” and then on to Vito’s and then Mozza (which happens to be my favorite). After we left LA we headed to La Dolce, Upper Crust Pizza, Pizza Bakery and Urban Coal Fired in San Diego and called it a day around 11:00 PM.

The next day we headed to San Francisco where we had an appointment with Tony Gemignani who is a 9 Time World Pizza Champion and president of the World Pizza Champions Inc., the most winning pizza team in the world. Tony is the first competitor in pizza history to win both acrobatic and baking titles in Italy’s Championships. Tony was the Neapolitan Champion at the 2007 World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy for the Best STG Neapolitan Pizza Margherita. Tony is also the only Two Time Food Network Gold Medalist and is a certified master from the Scuola Italiana Pizzaioli. He is the author of the cookbook PIZZA and is inducted into the Guinness Book of World records. Tony has won more World tiles and international awards than any competitor in history. If we were ever going to learn anything new about pizza Tony G was our man.

Being from New York and having traveled all over Italy I thought I knew a few things about pizza but after our 3 hour lunch with Tony it made me keenly aware that there was a lot more to know about pizza than buying 000 flour, fermentation and using a wood oven for baking. Tony serves five different types of pizza using five different style doughs and cooks the pizza in different ovens ranging from gas, electric, coal and wood fired and even a retroflex depending upon the style of pizza he is coking. We ordered ten or more different pies with toppings to really understand the nuances of the art of pizza making. We could hardly move after eating so much pizza but we somehow mustered up the energy to finish our pizza eating journey.

From Tony’s we moved on to A16, then to Delphina and 00 which is a new restaurant. Delphina and 00 were great experiences and served delicious pizza but nothing will ever equal 3 hours of nonstop pizza eating with Tony Gemigani who takes pizza to a whole new level. Pizza and flatbreads are both popular and very profitable. If you want to explore ways of incorporating pizza or flat breads on to your menu give us a call.

Everyday throngs of families flock to Disney World, the “Happiest Place on Earth,” to experience the magical shows and attractions. Aside from this, however, fine dining at the Epcot center is gaining the attention of many.

Nestled in the Italy Pavillion at Epcot, Via Napoli is the park’s newest food attraction. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill pizza joint. Via Napoli is a 300-seat restaurant serving up gourmet pizza pies from oak wood-burning ovens each one named after the three volcanoes in Italy, Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli (check out the photos below to see the clever artistic design of each oven). These ovens burn at a lava-like heat of 700 degrees!

Famed restaurant, Nick Valenti, spent time in Naples studying the art of creating authentic Nepolitan pizzas to ensure that Via Napoli would bring back those flavors for its guests. This included examining all the details of the dough, sauce, crust and oven temperatures used in creating the perfect pie. The innovation in new pizza concepts continue to grow as more restaurants such as Via Napoli, Mozza Pizza and PitFire pizza dig back to the culinary roots of the beloved dish in efforts to create a truly authentic pie that breaks away from the conventional models of the big chains.

Despite the media barrage to believe that young adults almost live at fast food places, the research reality is quite the opposite. Traditionally the restaurant industry’s heaviest users, young adults are cutting back significantly on dining out, especially amid high unemployment, according to new research from The NPD Group.

Here are the numbers: research over a period between May 2008 and May 2010, annual per-capita meal and snack occasions dropped from 242 to 216 for those ages 18 to 24. Those between the ages of 25 to 34 decreased their dining out occasions from 257 to 238 during the same period, according to NPD’s CREST research.

Suffering with an unemployment rate of 19.5 percent for adults under 30 in the second quarter, compared with 9.5 percent for the total workforce, the Gen Y folks are more highly impacted.

Besides watching their budget, young adults are also looking for healthier and lighter menu items, convenient locations, and good customer service.

Moving out of the restaurant scene, Gen Y consumers, also known as Millennials, are increasingly seeking convenient, low-cost dining options, such as portable food and frozen entrées.

Restaurants, including California Pizza Kitchen and P.F. Chang’s, may be taking that to heart as they reach out to consumers more in grocery stores with branded frozen meals. Even Subway and Sizzler have taken to opening mobile truck kitchens to compete for the receding business still available.

Did you know that almost 1 in 10 people have some form of a food allergy which forces them to eat food that does not contain high fructose, wheat, nuts or proteins that are not injected with hormones and antibiotics? On a recent trip to a new Whole Foods Market in Irvine, CA, I was pleasantly surprised as to the quality of the food and merchandising that caters toward this health-conscious crowd and those with special eating requirements.

It is clear that healthy eating is not a trend but a movement. What is even more apparent is the need for foodservice establishments to address the needs of this ever-growing group of eaters, or else miss out on a large opportunity for expansion. Consumers realize that as they get older they have to change the way they think about food if they want to live longer. Additionally, the obesity epidemic in American has created a large concern amongst our population.

What does this mean to the restaurant owner? Are you providing nutritional information to your guests? Do you have a selection of menu offerings that speaks to this market? Have you set any internal standards for developing nutritionally sound menu selections? The FDA now requires that restaurant companies (with more than 20 units) to provide nutritional information on their menu in accordance to the new health care legislation. Under this law, restaurants are required to post their food’s calorie content and other nutritional content including, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, sugar, fiber and protein must be available upon request. With some food items with many ingredients, this task can become rather complex and results may be inaccurate. In an effort to support this new movement and law, Synergy has developed a special team that provides nutritional analysis for foodservice establishments.

More food for thought: beyond the bare-bones compliance of the new law, it is crucial to consider your existing food offerings – does your menu contain healthy alternatives? Do you have vegetarian choices? Do you have any vegan menu selections? In what ways can you cater to this healthy movement? Constant menu development remains an important topic in the restaurant industry which is why we at Synergy focus on this subject with all of our clients.

We are always looking at restaurants concepts that require a low capital investment, delivers a strong ROI and easy to execute against.  Moreover it needs to be scalable, have a clear point of differentiation and provide a craveable product with a memorable guest experience.

Last week I drove 90 miles in LA traffic ( 3 hours) to Agoura Hills to visit Urbane Café.  This 1,300 square foot cafe packs a lot into this small footprint. Urbane Cafe is a fast-casual soup and salad place that promotes the “Fresh Way To Eat” (and whose tagline is “Gourmet Sandwiches, Salads & More”). They are a fast growing chain with 5 locations throughout California.

I was very impressed by their offerings, particularly the bread! In fact, their bread is baked fresh all day long and in front of the guest to view! Their homemade foods, especially the signature focaccia bread, commands the attention of every guest that walks through the door as that is the very first thing you see. This focus definitely creates a uniqueness that is hard to find in many chain fast-casual restaurants.

During my trip here, I enjoyed several great sandwiches. And get this – all items are priced under $7.00. With such a price value, it is clear that this new restaurant will be a head on competitor to the establishments such as Panera or even Chipotle.

You may remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about Pizza being the “next big thing” in the restaurant industry. Being a native New Yorker and well traveled restaurant consultant, I must admit that there are quite a few things I know about what makes pizza amazing. My partners and I literally travel the nation on our “eating missions” to explore various cuisines from countless restaurants. On my quest to find the best pizza and to hone my pizza palate, I even went as far as spending 6 weeks in Italy starting in Naples (the birthplace of pizza), touring all of Sicily and many of the islands throughout Sardinia.  Needless to say, I have eaten a lot of pizza over the last four decades.

So what makes PitFire pizza so great? Well, it’s a combination of the Ph in the water, they use the right flour and that they cook their pizza in a wood-fired kiln.

If you haven’t noticed, many new pizza concepts are now using solid fuel like charcoal and wood fired pizza. When you hear these terms used to describe pizza, it is referring to the method the pizza is cooked, for example in an oven with burning charcoal or burning wood.

Let’s take a look a new concept I recently visited, Pitfire Artisan Pizza. With a tagline that reads, “the crust you can trust,” I knew I was in for something good. Pitfire Pizza in Los Angeles, bakes their rustic, hand crafted pizzas in wood fire kilns that reaches temperatures of over 900 degrees. And I’ve got to agree, the crust here is amazing! Crispy, fluffy, yet chewey and slightly charred, Pitfire has definitely created a signature memorable pizza crust. Check out the photos:

At Synergy, we believe in the value of perfecting your craft and being known for something special –standing out among the rest. Among many new artisan pizzerias popping up lately, we believe Pitfire has taken on this challenge  quite successfully, ranking very closely to one of my favorite pizza concepts, Mozza Pizzeria. With more and more pizza restaurants concentrating on quality, old-fashioned and authentic techniques and ingredients, the competition is getting fierce!

If you haven’t had the chance to visit Café Rio, now is the time! Headquarted in Salt Lake City, Utah, Café Rio is fast expanding Mexican fast casual food concept with over 30 locations in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, California, Colorado, Arizona and by the end of this year, Virginia and Boise.

What makes a restaurant memorable? One of the pillars in restaurant excellence is being truly known for something that makes your establishment stand out from the crowd. In this case, besides the stellar service at Café Rio, what specifically stood out the most on my visit were the freshly cooked tortillas, grilled meats, a uniquely fun atmosphere and decor at a great price.  In fact, in Café Rio was awarded “Sandelman and Associates’ 2009 Quick Track Award of Excellence and was rated the number-one quick-service Mexican restaurant in the nation for customer satisfaction, an Oscar equivalent in the restaurant industry,” according to their recent press release. This is why I say Café Rio “gets it!”. If I had to pick between Chipotle and Cafe Rio I would definitely choose Cafe Rio.