As you know, we at Synergy often venture out far and wide, across the nation searching the latest food trends. Recently, we checked into the hottest food scene there is in LA — food trucks! Now this is definitely “meals on wheels” on a whole other level. There are now chefs that are hanging up their chef hats to rent these trucks for the day to cook their favorite foods on the trucks and become specialists in one area.

Kogi, one of the most popular food trucks, serves Asian fusion dishes, namely, Korean BBQ tacos. It doesn’t just stop with unique taco trucks either. In L.A. you can find a huge select of different food trucks, serving dishes from American classics to decadent desserts. In fact, food trucks have become so popular, not only in L.A. but across the U.S., the the Food Network has launched a new show to debut tonight called, The Great Food Truck Race where 5 food trucks compete for $50,000.

Check out the photos from our L.A. food mission, including a visit to the popular L.A. food landmark, Pink’s Hot Dogs

In an ever-growing green movement emerging on the restaurant level, you’ll begin to notice more and more food establishments providing locally grown, organic and/or sustainable items on their menu. But tucked away in the hip L.A. Silverlake neighborhood lays a very uniquely “green” eatery. Aptly named “Forage,” this new restaurant owned and operated by Jason Kim, focuses on providing patrons with specially prepared dishes cooked from produce by local farmers.

How local? The process is rather simple yet revolutionary at the same time. Kim wanted to serve delicious dishes that featured locally grown ingredients so he decided to establish a sort of “trade” system with local amateur backyard farmers. He realized many of these private growers end up with an excess of produce so rather than that go to waste, these green-thumbs can simply send Forage their unused vegetables and fruits for credits at his restaurant. As an added bonus for Kim, he gets to create dishes from some very unique foods that would likely be unavailable from traditonal produce purchasing.

Photos from our trip to Forage

However, there is a small hump that growers need to bypass before selling their home-grown goods to Kim—they need to pay $63 for inspection from the city to certify their produce is safe. Though in most people’s opinions, it is a rather small price to pay for such a beneficial movement.

To read more about Forage, check out this article http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/07/in-la-a-breakthrough-in-local-eating/60507/

McDonald’s plans to upgrade hundreds of its restaurants inside Wal-Mart Stores Inc. locations to boost sales and profits for a group of lagging stores.

McDonald’s proposal would add fruit smoothies and frappes—their highly popular icy, coffee drink–to these stores. McDonald’s also plans to update technology at these stores, with the goal of helping profitability by processing orders faster.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Yard House Restaurant chain plans to step up its healthy menu options by preparing 25 of its most popular dishes using fake meat believing it will appeal to both meat eaters and vegetarians alike.

At its Irvine Spectrum, CA restaurant, the chain recently began using a vegetable protein from gardein, a brand of plant-based foods with the taste and texture of premium lean meat.

Yard House, which has been looking to incorporate more vegetarian dishes to its menu plans to expand the meatless menu company-wide this summer. Gardein is also used in the menus of Orange County-based Veggie Grill and Hoag Hospital. L.A.-area Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants are also testing gardein.

The texture of gardein is very similar to beef or chicken and no matter what dish the restaurant tried to emulate using gardein, even their own culinary team had a difficult time differentiating the dishes made with gardein. So it passes the taste test with flying colors…and look and texture.
Some of the new meatless menu dishes include signature Yard House favorites including the restaurant chain’s classic sliders, Orange Peel Chicken, Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Spicy Thai Chicken Pizza.

Diners who want to try the plant-based meals will not have to pay more. Yard House is selling most of the dishes at the same price as their meat counterparts on the menu.

Items specified by a green dot on the menu have the option to substitute gardein for the same price listed on the menu, the chain said. Gardein originated in the Pacific Northwest and is made from a blend of vegetables, grains and plant proteins including pea, wheat and soy. It is different from tempeh in both texture and flavor. It contains no animal or dairy ingredients, is free of cholesterol and has zero trans fats. Garden Protein International is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

The wave of the future – healthy alternatives on the menu. Are you innovating at your restaurant? To be competitive, talk to the experts at Synergy.

It is without a doubt the world’s latest technological craze — the iPad’s opening day sales alone hit over 300,000! But besides being a handheld cross between a PDA/smartphone and laptop, what other creative purpose can it serve? Interestingly enough, the iPad is creeping its way into restaurants as a menu and ordering device!

Case in point: a swanky New York City restaurant, South Gate, utlizes a custom-made iPad application called SmartCellar, that essentially makes the iPad act as the restaurant’s sommelier. According to 9to5Mac, “Diners get to choose from 650 choice vintages with detailed info on all the wines and regions…” And similiary, in Sydney at Global Mundo Tapas, each diner is presented with an iPad instead of a traditional menu, where they can simply browse, tap and order. With these special menu applications on the iPad, guests can easily peruse photos of the dishes, find suggestions and even allows guests specify their own custom order (ie how well done do they want their steaks?).

It is clear that the benefits for guests include an ease of ordering from a familiar device (think smartphone) and interface. Likewise, for restaurant owners, this new-age ordering device is eco-friendly since it uses no paper, can store more information than a traditional menu, and makes physical order taking virtually unnecessary and seamless from the front of the house to the back of the house.

Will the iPad be the next big trend for restaurants, or do you think the old-school menu will eventually trump the new-school tech device?

Healthy eating at McDonald’s is not an oxymoron, says the registered dietitian who oversees nutrition at the company’s 14,000 fast-food restaurants in the United States.

Cindy Goody, U.S. director of nutrition for McDonald’s, concedes nutrition used to be “a dirty word” at McDonald’s, but now the chain is seeking to be a leader in nutrition in the fast-food restaurant industry.

Goody told Viterbo University dietetic students earlier this month that McDonald’s offers a wide range of balanced choices, which include more healthy options than ever before. McDonald’s has focused more on fruit — 100 percent fruit juice, apple dippers, fruit yogurt parfait and a fruit and walnut salad — along with salads and snack wraps. McDonald’s has reduced the number of calories in kids’ meals by almost one-half. The chain is testing a fruit and apple oatmeal that has 280 calories, and is low in fat and sodium.

Although restaurants have not been required to analyze their food, McDonald’s has provided nutrition information in some form for 35 years. The chain offers nutrition information in brochures, on the package and on the back of tray mats.

Like other restaurant chains with more than 20 locations, McDonald’s must post calorie and nutrition information on menu boards in the next few years as required by rules in the recently passed federal health care law.

In addition to infusing more healthy food, McDonalds is seeking a healthy environment. McDonald’s extensive food safety program selects quality suppliers, implements good manufacturing practices and food tracking. Each restaurant goes through 72 food safety checks each day, she said.

Then there comes McDonald’s ethics and the company’s belief in strong labor laws. Recently, one potential supplier was rejected by McDonald’s because it hired children to pick fruit.

And with McD’s entry into the coffee market in a big way here is a fact most don’t know — McDonald’s serves “fair trade” coffee from Central America and South America.

It’s no surprise that consumer tastes are more on the lighter, healthier side these days. This healthy trend is not just limited to food, however.

I’m sure you’ve seen all the light, low-calorie beer commercials. But now you can get low-calorie “skinny” adult beverages at your favorite restaurants, too. Check out Fleming’s Steakhouse’s new 99 Calorie Summer Cocktail, the “Bikinitini” – a refreshing, citrus martini that’ll keep you guilt-free. According to Fleming’s, “We embraced the challenge of creating a summer cocktail, and we had three criteria. 1) It had to be refreshing, so citrus was a must. 2) It had to be fun and colorful. 3) The real challenge: it had to be under 100 calories.” Even popular restaurants like the Yard House and Cheesecake Factory proudly feature a, “bikini martini” drink.

It is clear that menu choices are beginning to expand to include “skinny” adult beverages to cater to those watching their waistline. In today’s progressively competitive restaurant landscape, it is crucial to identify consumer trends, which really boil down to their own personal concerns – in this example, it is obviously a health issue. Become the restaurant that will accommodate to a wide range of consumer tastes and you will undoubtedly see high guest frequency! Stay tuned as we’ll be keeping you up-to-date on the latest restaurant trends.

As an informed restaurant owner, you can help customers make healthier choices and still enjoy the convenience of a restaurant. Over the next series of blog posts, we will discuss what restaurant owners can offer both on and off the menu to create healthy choices for guests. This creates a sense of care and concern for your guests as well as keeps profitability higher with patronage of people seeing efforts on their behalf.

Make careful menu selections for your patrons – pay attention to the descriptions on your menu. Dishes labeled deep-fried, pan-fried, basted, batter-dipped, breaded, creamy, crispy, scalloped, Alfredo, au gratin or in cream sauce are usually high in calories, unhealthy fats or sodium. Highlight items with more vegetables and leaner meats.

Encourage patrons to drink bottled water with their meal. Soda is a huge source of hidden calories. One 32-oz Big Gulp with regular cola packs about 425 calories, so one Big Gulp can quickly gulp up a big portion of daily calorie intake. Suggest Iced Tea or bottled water. There can be a profit margin and a healthy choice for the guest. Try adding a little lemon to your water.

Suggest clients “Undress” their food. When choosing items, help customers be aware of calorie and fat packed salad dressings, spreads, cheese, sour cream, etc. For example, if they ask for a grilled chicken sandwich, suggest skipping the mayonnaise. Offer a packet of ketchup or mustard they can add themselves, controlling how much they put on a sandwich.

Don’t be afraid to let them special order. Many menu items would be healthy if it weren’t for the way they were prepared. Ask if vegetables and main dishes can be served without the sauces. Serve olive oil and vinegar for salads or offer the dressing “on the side” and spoon only a small amount on at a time. If your food is fried or cooked in oil or butter, ask if guests prefer to have it broiled or steamed.

Walk into a restaurant these days and you might be able to check the calorie count of your enchilada, the salt content of your fries, the “heart healthy” status of your steak and — in at least one pioneering restaurant— the carbon footprint of your vegetable lasagna.

This is the Information Overload era of the menu as a spreadsheet.

Either by mandate or by choice, more and more restaurants are bombarding diners with calorie counts and loads of other information. The disclosures on menus, menu boards and pamphlets are considered a victory for health advocates who believe informed consumers will somehow make better food choices.

Is it possible to give diners too much information about their food?

A similar nationwide requirement was approved recently as part of health care reform. The Food and Drug Administration has a year to write the rules.

Philadelphia, home of the Philly cheesesteak, goes even further than New York, requiring chain restaurants to list calories on menu boards and additionally, sit-down chains with written menus must also include information on carbohydrates, sodium, saturated fats and trans fats. The narrower federal law will pre-empt local laws, but Philadelphia intends to petition for an exemption.

Maybe the most unique drill-down-deep information is provided by Otarian, a vegetarian restaurant with two locations in Manhattan.

Each item on the menu board is listed alongside its carbon footprint, in kilograms, and the footprint of a similar meat dish. For instance, Otarian figures that 1.38 kilograms of carbon are released to make an order of tacos, compared to 2.43 kilograms for beef tacos. The menu board thus informs taco eaters they have saved the release of 1.05 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. (For the record: that’s roughly the same amount of carbon released by driving a car a few miles).

But does any of this make the food healthier? Sadly, probably not.

A recent study of 4,600 consumers, conducted by MarketForce, has indicated some new insight into today’s restaurant dining trends. First off, the good news is that consumer confidence with regards to eating out is way up! And even more notable is the fact that consumers are very concerend with eating healthy. Let’s take a look at the numbers and facts:

1)      1 in 4 consumers surveyed said they would eat out more during the summer months – this is up from a mere 5 percent when surveyed in December 2009!

2)      When it came to organic ingredients used by restaurants, 60 percent said this was somewhat important and 79 percent of those polled found locally grown ingredients to be somewhat to extremely important for their meals.

3)      Are nutrition facts like calorie counts important to diners? Absolutely! Actually 45 percent of surveyed stated it was somewhat important whereas 42 percent said this was extremely important.

4)      How important are social media like online reviews when choosing a restaurant? Nearly half of those respondents had consulted an online review in the past 30 days and 13 percent went on to post their own review.

How will this recent study impact your restaurant management decisions?