Tequila

CNBC reported last February that tequila could soon outsell vodka in the U.S. It was the second-fastest growing category in 2021, only behind ready-to-drink cocktails, and was No. 2 in total sales volume behind vodka, which has been the top-selling category since the 1970s.

Some beverage professionals expect the agave spirit to outsell vodka as soon as this year.

The involvement of many celebrities, from Mark Wahlberg to Nick Jonas to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, hasn’t hurt either.

TikTok will be your marketing powerhouse

According to a survey by MGH, a marketing and communications agency, 38% of TikTok users — around 51.8 million potential diners — have visited a restaurant and/or ordered food from it after seeing it on TikTok. That figure jumps to 53% if you just consider millennials.

MGH also found that TikTok videos have prompted users to travel longer distances for new dining experiences — Nicole Tanner, founder of the Lehi, Utah-based chain Swig, said the social media app inspired customers to drive for two hours to a store opening in the Dallas area — and convinced them to spend more money than they usually would.

“Nostalgia” will be in full effect

“Nostalgia” is in quotation marks because some of the things that consumers seem to be pining away for — food-trend watchers are pointing to baked Alaska and Salisbury steak, for example — are dishes they might never have actually experienced. But they seem cool, and tactile, and non-viral. Don’t be surprised to see restaurants that refuse to get rid of their paper menus and have servers taking orders with a pencil behind the ear. And keep that ground beef in stock, because…

The plant-based bubble will burst

Although new menu items made with plant-based meat alternatives are being added to chain menus on an almost weekly basis, and the food exhibits at this year’s National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago were dominated by alternatives for beef, pork, chicken, and seafood, there are simply too many players in the marketplace for most of them to survive.

Layoffs at pea-protein-focused company Beyond Meat have made headlines (as has their slumping stock price) and hype from many of the producers of animal substitutes is contrasted by off-the-record anecdotes from chain representatives that while trial of meat analogs is high — and not just in the coastal communities where you’d expect it, but nationwide — retrial is low, and plant-based menu items rarely creep above 2% of total sales.

Moreover, chefs generally don’t like them.

NFTs? Not so fast

Blockchain is an important and useful technology. It allows for independent verification of where specific pieces of data, such as a unit of cryptocurrency or a non-fungible token, have been, guaranteeing their authenticity.

Over the past couple of years numerous members-only restaurants and clubs have sold NFTs, often for five or six figures, to enthusiastic tech bros (of all genders) who are seeking exclusive perks.

It sounds cool, but it’s unclear how owning a unique JPEG of a primate confers any more exclusive status than any other club membership, which, like NFTs, can be bought and sold on the open market.

The hype for these theoretically shiny virtual non-objects will likely soon fade, and they will drift off into a soon-to-be-forgotten corner of the metaverse.

West African cuisines

Public relations firm Af&co and sister consumer research firm Carbonate say in their latest annual trends prediction report that “West African food in general and Nigerian food in particular are attracting a wider audience and gaining prominence and prestige where it was once overlooked and under-represented.”

Indeed, the Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Flavor conference held in Napa, Calif., in November was titled “Africa and the World,” and focused on the influence of African cuisine on the Western World. Much of that came from the slave trade, and most enslaved people in the U.S. came from West Africa. The influence can be seen in much of Southern cooking, such as gumbo, jambalaya and dirty rice (both of which are arguably variations of the West Africa’s Jollof rice), Hoppin’ John, black-eyed peas, barbecue and much more.

This interest is being spurred on by Black chefs in the U.S. who are seeking out their own roots and more freely expressing their heritage.

Premium food at exclusive venues

Lower-income people started cutting back on spending last year, but not the wealthy: Luxury ingredients such as wagyu beef and caviar are enjoying increased sales.

“If you want dinner tonight at a big-city upscale restaurant, forget it ... they’re overbooked,” hospitality consulting firm Baum & Whiteman said in its end-of-year report for 2022. “Some have hundreds of hungry souls on waiting lists. The more expensive the restaurant, the longer the list.”

Meanwhile, they report a surge in private clubs with extremely high membership fees — up to $500,000 annually (see NFTs above).

“Entire mansions are converted into multi-level clubs ... multi-level meaning four stories or more, with accessibility to certain spaces based on what you’ve sunk into your initiation fee,” the report said.

Flexibility becomes crucial in hiring…

Many restaurant workers left the industry during lockdown and are not coming back, having switched to opportunities in the gig economy. To bring them back, looser scheduling protocols might be in order. More restaurants are using reasonably priced technology that enables team members to swap shifts directly. Others are experimenting with three- and-four-day workweeks, offering unlimited (unpaid) vacation time and more. Keep that in mind as you plan for the coming year.

…and so do better benefits

Restaurateurs often say that their employees are the lifeblood of their business, and increasingly they’re treating them that way with benefits that would have been unheard of 20 years ago, including child and elder care coverage, mental health services, college tuition support, employee resource group offerings, and more. 

Smaller dining rooms, bigger kitchens

Takeout and delivery aren’t going away, and going out to actually sit in a restaurant and eat there is becoming more of a special-occasion thing. So as restaurants remodel or relocate, they’re shrinking their dining rooms and expanding kitchens to cut down on real-estate costs while still handling increased off-premises sales, or possibly adding a virtual delivery-only brand to their business.

Outdoor dining is here to stay

Cities across the country allowed restaurants to set up tables in parking spaces and otherwise unused spaces to survive the pandemic, and it turns out that customers like that. Many localities have made those new spaces permanent, along with cocktails to go.