SugarCreek: Brandworthy Food Solutions

Innovative foods are the lifeblood of the food service industry. Consumers are always on the lookout for the Next Big Taste, the Next Big Diet, or the Next Big Restaurant Experience. If you fail to innovate, or to at least keep pace with those who do, your venture is doomed to fail.

We've talked before about how one of the hottest food industry trends of the past several years — the gourmet food truck — has driven innovations in both cuisine and marketing. But there is some concern that meteoric proliferation has created an unstable, unsustainable market.

If there's one takeaway food service professionals can glean from today's market, it's that self-described "foodies" tend to be high-end consumers.

We write a lot on this blog about the trend toward ever-faster, ever-fresher food offerings in today's restaurant climate. So what are modern restaurateurs doing to speed up service but maintain, or even improve, quality? Here are a few food service innovations we thought we should pass along.

So we can add another food fad to the growing list of food industry trends that have been infiltrating the eating habits of Americans over the past century— the farm-to-table movement which emphasizes the consumption of food that has been locally grown and purchased.

There's an interesting shift afoot in the food service market. Consumers are becoming a bit paradoxical.

In the post-Great Recession age, they continue to demand more and more premium products, but they want more for less. This is, according to some analysts, creating a depression in the demand for mid-market food goods and polarizing the market into two types of offerings: low-end and high-end.

Depending on economic conditions, American consumers can buy like there's no tomorrow (remember the "greed is good" mindset of the 1980s?) or exhibit cautious spending habits and purchase only what they absolutely need. Unemployment rates and inflation are known to heavily influence food industry trends, forcing food brands to re-imagine how they package and advertise their products.

Perhaps the most effective tool you have for brand building in today's business climate is social media marketing. Not only can it help to build loyalty among your existing customers, it can help you reach out to new customers.

Although the American population may be graying, younger consumers still have a considerable amount of purchasing power in the food service industry. And right now, one of the hottest food industry trends is the movement toward menu options—or entire restaurants—that cater to the college student demographic.

The restaurant industry's clientele is changing.

For many years, Baby Boomers have been the biggest spenders when it came to dining out. But now, a large, hyper-connected cohort with plenty of spending power is on the scene—Millennials, that group between 20 and 30 years old. They make up one-quarter of the US population, and their purchasing power totals over $200 billion, which is twice that of Generation X, those people who are now between 37 and 47 years old.