Trends

https://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2004-10-24-kids-drinks_x.htm

The $90 billion beverage world is figuring out that parents will pay premiums for more nutritious drinks for their kids.

Every beverage maker seems to be leaping on board – from Pepsi to Snapple to Stonyfield Farm. But this isn’t about creating soft drinks with less sugar. It’s about drinks that could pass the parent test. It’s also about sales growth. And it’s about schools slamming the door on soft drinks. [Read more…] about Drinks pour on nutrition to appeal to parents

Study: Functional foods seen as the wave of the future
Low-carb diets may be popular right now in the U.K., but by 2009, other
functional-type diets, like those consisting of cholesterol-lowering or
“diabetes friendly” foods, will lead the pack, according to a new poll of
food industry executives. The report suggests companies will have the most
success by offering products to “consumers who are already increasingly
building the knowledge of which ingredients are linked to which concerns.”  
FoodNavigator (10/25

https://www.silive.com/living/advance/index.ssf?/base/living/1098884738176770.xml

“How come we’re experiencing a revolution at every level of the food chain?” asked Tim Zagat, publisher of restaurant surveys worldwide, including the recently released 2005 Zagat Survey of New York City Restaurants.

https://reveries.com/cool_news/2004/october/oct_14b.html
Farmhouse Ales. “No one has damaged the reputation of beer as much as the big beer companies, which through their own advertising have created the unfortunate image of the beer lover as bottom feeder,” writes Eric Asimov in The New York Times (10/13/04). “Nonetheless,” he continues, “the fans are on a crusade to prove that traditional beer, not the insipid supermarket stuff, is as fine a drink as wine to grace the table, if not better.” That crusade, says Eric, starts with “farmhouse ales … historically the products of an agricultural society. In the days before refrigeration, when summer was too hot for brewing, farmers in the French-speaking part of Belgium and across the border in France made beer in the winter and spring that they could put away for summer consumption.”

https://reveries.com/cool_news/2004/october/oct_15b.html
Dark Dining. At the Unsicht-Bar, a restaurant in Berlin, Germany, “every photon of light” is excluded, so that diners can experience eating without seeing, reports John Bohannon in The Christian Science Monitor (10/13/04). When patrons arrive at the Usicht-Bar, www.unsicht-bar.com (“named for the German word for ‘invisible’), they are first taken to a candlelit room and “given a menu with three options — vegetarian , fish and meat — but the actual dishes” are not revealed. Diners are then led to their tables, conga-style, led by a waiter or waitress who typically is blind (“it’s simply too difficult for a sighted person to learn how to navigate a dark, busy restaurant holding heavy trays of food and beverages”).

If you eat breakfast in the car, gobble lunch while working at your computer, and watch TV while cooking or eating dinner, you’ve got a lot of multitasking company.

About 62% of people in a nationally representative online survey say they are sometimes or often too busy to sit down to eat, and about nine out of 10 say they do other things while preparing meals. On top of that: 31% do not consistently wash their hands when switching tasks during meal preparation.

https://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-09-30-multitask-usat_x.htm

“Japan’s sixth largest gas station chain” — Jomo — is raking it in by encouraging its patrons to linger, reports Mariko Mikami in Business 2.0 (Oct 04). “Our objective is to make hanging around more fun,” says Yuihito Fujita, of Jomo. And more profitable: Over a three-month period ending in July, following a makeover of eight of its stations, “average monthly vehicle visits per station were up 22 percent over the previous year … driving a 15 percent sales increase” and triggering an 82 percent jump in per-station operating profits.
[Read more…] about Not just spiffier pumps but also comfortable cafes, kiddie areas, and massage chairs

The latest food fight in Southern California is between wok-wielding foes vying to dominate the market for fast, fresh and affordable Asian fare.

Pei Wei Asian Diner, Pick Up Stix and others are expanding despite the hurdles: an abundance of mom-and-pop competitors, a shortage of prime restaurant sites and the complexities behind churning out shrimp with lobster sauce, vegetarian stir-fry and three-flavored dumplings. [Read more…] about Far East Restaurant Battle Heating Up