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Sustainable Seafood is a Hot Trend

Oct 15, 2017

October is known for cool weather, autumn leaves, and yes, pumpkin-spiced everything! But did you know that the month of October is National Seafood Month? As restaurant managers, it may be easy to overlook seafood as a star ingredient while beef or chicken take center stage on the menu. However, seafood serves as a great protein choice for a variety of consumers, perhaps due to its taste or ability to meet certain dietary restrictions. Beyond that, sustainable seafood is also a hot restaurant trend for 2017. A recent survey conducted by Cargill found that 88 percent of Americans are willing to pay more for seafood that is certified sustainably and responsibly sourced.

 

A growing number of chefs and restaurants, even those in the fast-food sector like McDonald’s, recognize the importance of providing sustainable seafood. What exactly is sustainably-raised seafood? Any seafood that is caught or farmed in ways which support the well-being of the species, oceans and coastal communities is considered “sustainable.” For a guide on buying sustainable fish and shellfish, visit firstchoice.com.

 

If you’ve decided to take the plunge and begin offering sustainable seafood at your restaurant, you may want to consider how to highlight these ingredients on your menu. Consider the following dishes as menu inspiration:

–    Fish and chips with a unique housemade sauce like the one at Nobu 57 in New York City

–     Crab cakes with a spicy, Southern-style remoulade sauce

–     Manhattan clam chowder served in a bread bowl

–     Grilled or fried shrimp po’boy sandwiches

 

For more information on sustainable seafood and National Seafood Month, check out NOAA fisheries site here.

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Vegan and Vegetarian Menu Ideas

Aug 05, 2017

These days more and more people are interested in living a vegetarian or a vegan lifestyle. Sometimes people may identify as being a pescatarian; one who eats only fish. Others may opt for a semi-vegetarian diet and choose to only occasionally eat meat. In other cases, a vegetarian diet may be observed (daily or occasionally) due to a one’s faith, tradition or culture.

 

Wouldn’t it make sense then, to make sure your menu includes options for the dietary preferences of these customers? They’ll appreciate the availability of menu choices that fit their lifestyle. When it comes to vegetarian options, clearly items like salads, pasta, and vegetable-based meals are easy examples of meatless menu options. But how about something more varied and unique? What about vegan options? See our list below for some great menu ideas:

vegan menu

Stir fry with seitan: Seitan is is a faux meat made from wheat gluten. It has a very similar look and texture to real meat after it’s cooked. This versatile meal can be made completely vegan as well. Test with vegetables of your choice or try making a vegan “beef” and broccoli.

Fish burgers: Play with different fish types (breaded, non-breaded, cod, ahi, etc.) and buns. Throw on a special house-made sauce and you’ve got a great pescatarian, signature dish.

Vegan alfredo: A rich and decadent alfredo pasta dish can be easily adapted for vegans too. Instead of dairy-based cream, create your sauce using soaked cashews or purchase nut-based cheese, or use tofu, or boiled cauliflower as your base. Add a variety of seasonal vegetables for a colorful dish presentation.

Acai bowls: Oatmeal can get boring, so why not offer acai or pitaya bowls for breakfast? They are 100 percent vegetarian, vegan and very versatile. Popular toppings include bananas, strawberries, blueberries, coconut shavings, kiwi, sliced almonds, and granola. Let your customers customize the perfect bowl.

Vegan fritters: Sure to delight all eaters, zucchini fritters with a side of house aioli are a great vegan/vegetarian shareable item. You can even alternate with lentils or onions—you name it!

 

We hope this list inspired you to think outside the box with your vegetarian and/or vegan menu options. For expert menu development strategies, please contact Synergy!

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Yes, Reduced-Beef Burgers are a Thing

Jun 30, 2017

 

“Where’s the beef?” You may have remembered this line from the famous 1984 Wendy’s commercial, where a perplexed, older woman exclaims her discontent over her small hamburger patty. Fast forward some 30 plus years later and the same sentiment still rings true for consumers today—no one likes a small patty! But what if I told you a major fast food restaurant is looking to reduce the beef in its burgers?

 

Actually, Sonic is exploring testing a reduced-beef burger. Why on earth would that be appealing to consumers? Well, this burger will not be downsized but rather be made from a blend or beef and mushrooms, with the goal of providing a healthier choice for customers. More about this at Restaurant Business Online.

 

In fact, the concept of blending veggies with meat for hamburgers is not a new concept. Restaurants like Bareburger and Burgh’ers already implement this practice. Blended burgers offer a way to produce a lower-fat patty and potentially promote more sustainability when it comes to the amount of cattle being raised in order to support the hamburger industry.

 

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Hot Food Trend 2017: Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables

Jan 27, 2017

 

Everyone has heard of heirloom tomatoes, but now heirloom everything is sprouting up in the mainstream. Chefs are loving these simple, earthy ingredients. Heirloom has such a nice ring to it, especially when you include it in the description of a dish with heirloom vegetables.

 

When a fruit or vegetable is called “heirloom,” it means that it’s from an old crop. These old plant breeds have been around since prior to the types of modern growing and breeding practices that we now have in America today. While the name “heirloom” might just sound fancy to most restaurant guests, true gourmands know that eating heirloom fruits and vegetables is a rare treat. It’s a chance to indulge in the distinctive flavors and genetic traits of these fruits and vegetables that have remained unchanged for ages.

 

So chefs everywhere are snatching up the chance to use heirloom fruits and vegetables. A ho-hum beetroot salad becomes much more exciting when topped with heirloom vegetables like atomic red carrots and Chiogga beets. In fact, many of the names of these heirloom plants sound much like hipster names, which makes them even more appealing when splashed onto a menu.

 

Grass-fed organic USDA prime cuts of beef couldn’t possibly go better with cowhorn potatoes and heirloom garlic. Predictably, heirloom varieties seem to have either cutesy or fancy names, but it all translates to bigger sales in the restaurants that serve them.

 

Not only do they look and sound fancier than regular produce, but heirloom produce happens to taste even better. The robust and hearty flavors that have been preserved over time are truly marvelous and something that should be embraced. Thankfully, consumers feel the same way and what’s happening is lots of high demand now for these once-rare varieties that are now making a major comeback. On menus and in supermarkets everywhere, get ready to see a boom of heirloom offerings.

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Pizza Nation, USA

Dec 28, 2016

Pizza. It’s delicious and it comes in oh-so-many variations in the U.S. and all over the world. Neapolitan, deep dish, thin crust, New York style, California style—we love them all. However, we’d be remiss if we did not share with you a guide to the different U.S. regional variations of the beloved pie. Because after all, it’s your duty as an American citizen to try them all.

 

Let’s get to it.

 

  • Chicago: Characterized by its thick crust and plentiful amount of sauce and toppings. As its name implies, this type of pie is baked in a deep, round pan. You eat this with a fork and a knife, most times.
  • New York: Think thin and foldable (and portable). This kind of pizza has a crispy, thin crust that’s been hand-tossed during preparation. It’s typically sold by the slice.
  • California: Its crust is a fusion of NY and Italian, paired with a wide array of toppings (nuts, seafood, veggies, etc.). The only limit is your imagination.
  • New Haven: Hailing out of New Haven, Connecticut, this pie’s a spin-off of Neopolitan pizza. It’s referred to as “Apizza” and is cooked in a coal-fired brick oven, lending to its charred, thin and chewy crust.

 

 

Craving more pizza? Read on here: Everything You Need to Know about Regional U.S. Pizza Styles

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Is Your Menu Meeting the Demands of Today’s Consumer?

Nov 18, 2016

It’s a well-known fact that people eat with their eyes before they get to taste with their mouths. Well-done photography and descriptive menus can really push a customer to choose one dish over another. But what will drive them to keep coming back for more?

You might say service, the quality of the food, and the experience at the restaurant overall. For those things, you’re not wrong, however one thing many restaurants forget to consider when trying to get customers in the door over and over again is how the menu speaks to their customers.

Today’s consumers want something that gives them the feeling that they are eating something unique. For example, no one is going out to eat things that they can cook themselves. They’re going for the fusion foods that millennials helped to create that straddle two or more types of cuisine to create something revolutionary. The result are dishes that consumers gravitate toward because they seem different but aren’t so bizarrely unfamiliar that they’re game on trying them.

Another thing that consumers look for these days are options for eating healthy. Restaurants that offer healthier dishes, or even a small selection of them, are much more likely to get a bigger market share from this group. Farm-to-table concept restaurants also do well in this category simply because fresh is healthier and they tend to customize their offerings better than say a chain restaurant would.

Finally, as more and more people switch to vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free diets, many restaurants are responding to this by creating special dishes for these diners. No one wants to go out for a lame plate of vegetables so it’s crucial to find something that looks and tastes worth the price. It should also be described in an appealing way to entice these consumers to order it.

The rest of course is up to your chef and the team behind the scenes. Creating an idea is one thing but bringing it to life is another. If your head chef can execute brilliantly on these new dishes, there is no doubt that these consumers will return again and again because you spoke to their dietary concerns by reflecting it on your menu.

Take a good look at your menu. If your offerings are all fried or have no option to go meatless or gluten-free, you might be repelling customers from your establishment. There’s no need to go overly poetic on menu descriptions either, particularly if you have a casual eatery, but making things sound more exciting than say “bread, cheese and meat served with fries” will make a major difference in customer perception. And as we know, perception is reality.

If you would like to schedule an informal call to discuss your menu and was to become more innovative give us a call.

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Ingredient Spotlight: ‘Nduja

Aug 03, 2016

Sometimes, nothing hits the spot more than a simple piece of toast adorned with a butter, jelly or chocolate spread. Of course, if you’re in Europe and some other parts of the world, Marmite (yeast extract) or pate might be your spread of choice. But have you ever heard of ‘nduja (pronounced “en-DOO-ya”)?

 

‘Nduja is an Italian spreadable pork sausage – in short, it’s a delicious, spreadable salami. Specifically, ‘njuda hails from Calabria, a region in southwest Italy. Its flavor profile can be described as bold, spicy and sharp, great for adding a nice depth of flavor. Traditionally, ‘njuda is served with slices of bread and in cooking Calabrian cuisine.

 

How are creative chefs utilizing different techniques with ‘njuda? How about mixing with beef to create a sumptuous, tasty burger like the ones at Bread meats Brea burger bar in Glasgow? Create an amazing breakfast by scrambling it in your eggs, served on toast. Staying on the traditional Italian route, you can create a killer Bolognese by adding some ‘njuda to your sauce (and while you’re at it, to your pizza sauce, too).

 

Craving more inspiration? Check out this WSJ.com article that enhances dishes with just a dab of ‘nduja.

‘Nduja pizza photo credit: tofuprod license cc by-sa 2.0

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Grains, Beans, Fruits & Vegetables: What’s Trending Now

Jun 29, 2016

With the “plant-based” movement picking up steam, restaurant operators looking to set their menus apart or create meatless (or nearly) signatures are wondering: What’s the next Brussels sprout? What are some techniques for tofu? And can anything topple the reign of quinoa?

Going with the Grain

If it seems like quinoa went from 0 to 60 in about four menu cycles flat, you’re right, but there are many other grains to explore for their hearty flavor, interesting texture and healthy nutritional profile.

  • Teff – A tiny grain that has been a staple of traditional Ethiopian cooking for thousands of years, with a mild, nutty flavor and a delicate texture
  • Exotic Rices – Including pecan rice, forbidden black rice, red rice and brown basmati rice
  • Spelt – This dense, chewy wheat is a primitive relative of common wheat, and can be much easier to digest. Kamut and wheat berries are similar
  • Freekeh – Not a separate grain variety, but a method of processing young wheat to produce a nutty, almost smoky-tasting result
  • Amaranth – Once a staple of the Aztecs, the seeds can be cooked like a grain to yield a sweet, delicately nutty flavor and slightly sticky texture

 

Check Your Pulse(s)

It’s the Year of the Pulse, proclaims the United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), celebrating that versatility category of foods that includes beans, lentils, peas, peanuts and other legumes. While the FAO concerns itself with the usefulness of pulses for things emergency food supplies and crop rotation, there are sorts of tasty things to do with them.

  • Heirloom beans such as Jacob’s Ladder and Anasazi
  • Chickpeas, including fresh
  • Edamame (the Japanese name for immature soybeans in the pod),
  • Indian dishes like lentil dal
  • Global rice-and-bean specialties (West Indian rice and pigeon peas, “Moors and Christians,” which are Spanish-style black beans and rice)

 

Serve Your Fruits and Veggies

It’s never been a better time to love fruits and vegetables, as produce moves to the center-of-the-plate in small plates, appetizers, entrees, shareable sides and refreshing desserts. Vegetables, particularly served in season and even micro-season, are versatile challenges to the kitchen’s creativity, and they’re even migrating to the dessert, while fruits are being used in savory ways to bring juiciness and bright acidity to the right side of the menu.

 

figs

 

  • Whole roasted or rotisseried cauliflower, served for the table
  • New uses for citrus: grapefruit in salads, zest in vinaigrettes, roasted oranges
  • Bitter greens beyond kale: collards, mustard, broccoli raab
  • Elevated basics: heirloom carrots, charred onions, green garlic
  • Fingerling and varietal potatoes
  • Squashes such as red kuri, kabocha, spaghetti squash
  • House-dried fruits, fruit leathers
  • Pomegranates, acai and other “superfruits”
  • Vegetable “charcuterie” (carrot confit, crudite, fennel salad)
  • The return of the artichoke
  • Fresh figs
  • Varietal lettuces: Little Gem, butter lettuce, dandelions
  • Cooking techniques like charring, braising, roasting, smoking and searing

 

Plants are the New Meats

Products like veggie burgers, tofu and soy bacon used to be weak imitations of the real thing, but now they’re coming into their own as delicious plant-based proteins in their own right.

  • Tofu in more interesting guises: marinated, seared, stir-fried and smoked
  • Seitan (wheat gluten) and tempeh (cultured soy)
  • Portobello and other mushrooms
  • Cauliflower and eggplant “steaks”
  • Creative meatless burgers made with mixtures of grains, beans, nuts and lots of flavor
  • Cooked, seasoned jackfruit, which can be used like pulled pork
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Keeping Older Menus Fresh

May 23, 2016

Menus are like sharks—they need to keep moving or die. And among all of the moving parts that make up a restaurant, one of the most important is the need to constantly evolve and keep menus fresh and on-trend to drive frequency.

 

This is especially true of older, well-established brands. Concepts like IHOP, TGI Friday’s and Burger King are beloved features of the dining-out landscape, with iconic signature dishes they could never take off the menu (Pancakes! Potato skins! The Whopper!). All menus need to be updated and kept current, but for legacy brands in particular it is imperative that brand continuity be balanced with new signature items that attract new customers and bring back regulars to try something else.

 

Look at IHOP’s new Bakery Favorites, an LTO (limited time offering) that features such over-the-top fancies as Red Velvet crepes and pancakes, sprinkle-topped Cupcake Pancakes, and decadent Cinnamon Swirl Brioche French Toast. These new specialties are smart-smart-smart: Pancakes and French toast are familiar products to IHOP’s core customer base—we’re not talking about something unknown or unintimidating here, after all—but they’re also on trend and just a little daring, with that sophisticated touch of using brioche for the toast.

 

TGI Friday’s latest initiative is lunch, with a new menu sporting such specialties as a Truffle Stacked Burger, Mediterranean Mahi Mahi Naan’Wich, and a slew of nonalcoholic signature drinks (Cherry Limeade Slush, anyone?), which are high-profit rather than high-proof. An “On The Double” express-lunch pairing allows customers to choose from mozzarella sticks, house salad, Caesar salad or soup, along with selected lunch-sized entrées, priced at $6.99 to $8.99. Quite different for a chain that launched as a Happy Hour oriented casual pub.

 

And what about Burger King, which has recently been promoting hot dogs, chicken nuggets and now new Chicken Fries Rings? “Take a Break from Boredom” says the company, and these items are certainly pushing the envelope without causing Burger King to turn its back on the burger that brought it to the party. The Grilled Dogs became permanent within a year. And now it would seem that BK is also in the chicken business. The Chicken Fries platform has been successful in every iteration (Buffalo, jalapeno, Fiery) since it was first introduced, in 2005, and the core product has also become part of the permanent menu. The new Rings may sound crazy (whatever happened to the consumer’s growing appetite for real, unprocessed foods?), but there’s no denying that they’re perfect for kids and fun for adults as well, especially the ones behind the wheel.

 

Dunkin’ Donuts is another legacy brand that is not afraid of reinventing itself through the menu. The company’s recent test of Chicken and Waffles is only the latest salvo in the donut chain’s battle to stay relevant against other QSRs that are crowding in on breakfast, like McDonald’s and Taco Bell. For years Dunkin’ has also been pushing hard into the lunch and snack sectors, with sandwiches like Texas Toast Grilled Cheese and Snack ‘N Go wraps, also rejuvenating Coolattas and smoothies.

 

And then there’s Cheesecake Factory, going on 40 years in business with a menu that’s still constantly evolving—Skinnylicious, Super Foods, trendy new items like Avocado Toast, Blood Orange Mojitos, and a pizza topped with bacon, dates and blue cheese.

 

There are important lessons to be learned from all of these brands, whether yours is also a legacy or is brand new to the marketplace. Menus are living, breathing, evolving entities—because so are guests and their tastes.

 

Burger King Grilled Dogs photo credit: theimpulsivebuy license CC by SA 2.0

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Menu Management: A Big Piece of the Labor Puzzle

Apr 29, 2016

Menu Management: A Big Piece of the Labor Puzzle

Labor is the single biggest challenge facing the restaurant industry today, and the issue goes beyond hiring, scheduling and training. This focused article will explore how menu management—a disciplined, five-step approach to assessing what’s on the menu and how it’s prepared—can help optimize existing labor.

Menu Management is a Key to Labor Optimization

By Dean Small

Labor is the single biggest challenge facing the restaurant industry today. Demographically, the entry-level labor pool is shrinking, as Americans have fewer children. Regulations affecting minimum wage and healthcare are adding to the squeeze, and soon we may have changes in immigration policy that could also affect an important source of hardworking hourly workers.

There are plenty of other issues that impact an operator’s ability to make money, including higher expenses in just about every area, from food and occupancy costs to the price of insurance, to say nothing about increased competition, from both foodservice and retail. That makes most operators even more nervous about raising menu prices enough to cover the shortfall.

It’s an era of having to do more with less.

Menu management is one answer. This disciplined approach to what’s on the menu and how it’s prepared can help significantly with labor optimization.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Evaluate your existing menu for orphan (single-use) production items and products – Orphan ingredients, especially any items that you make, represent a missed opportunity to cross-utilize. They take time to prep, time to inventory, time to organize. If you’re only using pineapple pico de gallo on one menu item, even if that item captures a healthy percentage of sales, you’re doing it wrong.
  2. Assess the menu mix to determine true labor needs – Our rule of thumb is that for every menu item, there are at least three subrecipes; for chicken enchiladas, for instance, there’s a recipe for the filling, a recipe for cooking the chicken, and a plating recipe. There may also be subrecipes for a sauce (like that pineapple pico), a finishing drizzle, and accompanying rice and beans. You need to break down each menu item to see how much labor is involved in each step before you can truly know the labor needed to produce it.
  3. Conduct a time-motion assessment to evaluate what production items are driving labor requirements – Where’s all your labor time going? Knowing what items require what labor allows you to compress that requirement. Our client California Pizza Kitchen knew money was being left on the table in the back-of-the-house but it couldn’t determine where this was happening. We helped them set guidelines for every single recipe and subrecipe, in the back-of-the-house and on the line, and identified places where a total of four to five hours were being wasted in duplicated efforts every day; that equated to $6 million a year chainwide.
  4. Create multiple-yield recipes to meet projected volume requirements – Let’s say you’re making Ranch dressing every day. Stop. If Ranch dressing has a three-day shelf life, make a big batch on Monday and another one on Thursday; you’ve saved 30 minutes on the other five days assembling, mixing, labeling and storing Ranch dressing. What else could you do with that 2 ½ hours? If you know you’ll be slow on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday—you’re using your POS or other historicals for this, right?—there should be recipes for a 2-gallon batch and for a 4-gallon batch. You’d be surprised how few major chains do this; management figures the unit chef will know, but guess what? Do this for every production recipe that doesn’t have to be made every day.
  5. Identify time requirements on each recipe – Once you know the amount of time required for every single menu item component, then and only then can you add everything up and get a baseline for all labor hours needed. Then you can compare actual labor time against theoretical; the gap is your wasted labor. And that’s what you can begin to optimize.

This menu assessment phase is just one facet of labor optimization in the back-of-the-house. Others include making an investment in more efficient equipment, identifying tasks that can be produced more quickly by using smallwares and other tools, implementing better closing procedures, and much much more. But knowing your menu and the time it takes to produce it is where you start.

Dean Small is Founder and CEO of Synergy Restaurant Consultants (www.synergyconsultants.com), a team of restaurant industry veterans who specialize in both launching new restaurant startups and jump-starting struggling or financially distressed brands.

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