First Bite

Many Americans participate in Dry January. Estimates of how many U.S. drinkers forego alcohol for the month range from 15% to 35%.

And although many of you would probably prefer that Americans take a break from drinking during busier months, Dry January doesn't have to mean weak drink sales.

There are now many socially acceptable options for non-drinkers that also are profitable for restaurateurs. Non-alcoholic beer is part of the regular inventory of many restaurants and bars and, according to an October report in The Wall Street Journal citing Euromonitor data, accounted for 0.9% of beer sales by volume as of September 2023. In Western Europe it accounts for 5.8% of total beer consumption.

There’s also an abundance of alcohol-free wine and zero-proof substitutes for hard liquor. And bartenders are getting better at making spirit-free cocktails.

For more on how to make the most of dry January in your restaurant, here's senior food & beverage editor Bret Thorn.

On Jan. 9, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a final rule on classifying workers as employees or independent contractors. Although the new six-factor guide is meant to help clarify and, in many cases, tighten standards around misclassification of workers, third-party delivery companies are confident that it is business as usual for delivery workers.

As the legal landscape around third-party delivery workers begins to shift substantially through local legislation — including a new New York City minimum wage law for contractors that work for delivery apps — on a federal level, standards might not change much for these same delivery app workers.

The final rule, which goes into effect on March 11, 2024, reinterprets the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and negates the effects of the Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was passed during the Trump administration.

For Domino’s Pizza, everything is on the table in 2024 and 2025: From relaunching loyalty programs to boost traffic, and trying out promotions that garner more buzz and traffic than sales, to fully embracing the new Uber partnership and looking to expand to more delivery platforms in the future. On Monday at the ICR conference in Orlando, Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner and CFO Sandeep Reddy broke down the company’s new “Hungry for More” strategy, which was just announced last month and included the launch of a proprietary operating system.

The appropriately named 2024 strategy has Domino’s saying “yes, more” to everything, including loyalty participation, pizza delivery options, tech innovation, and marketing innovations like the emergency pizza promotion, which is an upgraded “Buy one get one free promotion” that lets customers buy a pizza and get a promotion for another free pizza to use at a later date.

Desserts can be a tricky sell. Guests love them and they’re highly profitable, but it’s not always easy to convince customers to invest in the extra time, money, or calories.

One option is to make them drinkable.

Beverage consumption in general is surging as consumers turn to menu items that are fast, portable, customizable, and satisfying, especially in the growing afternoon daypart. Restaurant companies large and small have noticed, and are responding with an array of drinkable desserts.

Whether they’re milkshakes, dessert cocktails, coffee slushes or other options, these sweet, fun, and often textured drinks are striking a chord with guests.

While restaurants have been selling their products in supermarkets and convenience stores for decades — from frozen White Castle sliders to TGI Fridays mozzarella sticks — recently, foodservice CPG has entered a new social media-conscious era.

Recently, Starbucks collaborated with Stanley (the makers of the uber-popular insulated tumbler) to sell a $49.95 “Winter Pink” 40-ounce Starbucks cobranded cup, available exclusively at Target on Jan. 3 to celebrate the new Starbucks winter menu. Collaborating with multiple trendy brands to market a limited-edition item to the core Gen. Z demographic was a recipe for virality: Long lines of customers waited outside of Target before dawn to grab their tumblers (limited to a few dozen per Target location), and the coveted cups are already reselling for $350 on eBay.

Two major California Pizza Hut franchisees — PacPizza and Southern California Pizza Company — are laying off more than 1,200 delivery workers ahead of the new statewide minimum wage hike for fast food workers, from $16 an hour to $20 an hour, starting April 1.

The two companies — which together own hundreds of Pizza Hut restaurants in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties — are eliminating the delivery driver position as the layoffs become official in February, according to federal WARN Act notices filed last month with the Employment Development Department.

Undeniably one of the biggest trends of 2023 was restaurant brands leveraging influencers on social media to sell their products. These influencers resonate with the coveted Gen Z demographic and help position brands top of mind, even if just for a fleeting moment. And apparently they’re very effective at convincing others to try a menu item. Consider Chipotle’s fajita quesadilla campaign with TikTok influencers Alexis Frost and Keith Lee, for example. The 2023 promotion helped generate two of the company’s top digital sales days of all time.

Influencer marketing is certainly nothing new, but it is reaching a fever pitch and, in fact, the industry has increased by nearly $20 billion in the past seven years. Restaurants in particular are well positioned to capitalize on this trend. According to CreatorIQ, more than 437,000 creators posted about food and beverage brands more than 1.2 million times, driving nearly 75.5 billion impressions, 3 billion engagements and a whopping $4.8 billion in earned media value (EMV). And those numbers are just from the first half of 2023.

Consumers said they were going to dine out during the holidays, and recently released data indicates they did just that.

A National Restaurant Association survey from early December showed that 63% of adults planned to eat out during the subsequent weeks, while 48% planned to order takeout or delivery. As such, after experiencing a dip in traffic through much of September and part of October, business appears to have picked up in early November and continued through the end of the year. Master Card Spending Pulse data shows that restaurant sales were up 7.8% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24 versus the same period last year – the highest gain among all sectors, and by far. By comparison, retail sales increased 3.1% year-over-year.

Further, Technomic Ignite’s Tindex indicates industry sales were up nearly 10% in November 2023 versus November 2019. Of course, a good chunk of this increase comes from elevated pricing, but it indicates consumers are still very much willing to pay those higher menu costs. Notably, wage growth has outpaced inflation growth.  

One week after the release of the third-party assessment of Starbucks’ collective bargaining commitments in December 2023, the Strategic Organizing Center — a coalition of labor unions provoking a proxy battle with the Starbucks executive board — responded. According to the SOC, the results of the independent audit very clearly show a “track record of human capital mismanagement” and that leadership change is needed to facilitate more constructive outcomes for labor-related discussions and agreements.

With its nomination of three directors to the Starbucks executive board, the Strategic Organizing Center hopes to address the company’s treatment of its employees, including Starbucks’ clashes with its growing union, arguing that the company’s alleged union-busting tactics have led it legally vulnerable and have tarnished the goodwill of the Starbucks brand.

4 predictions from senior food & beverage editor Bret Thorn:

Indian cuisine, finally

Trend watchers have been waiting for Indian cuisine to really take off in American dining for decades, and it seems to finally be happening. Medium- to high-end independent Indian restaurants are opening across the country, some led by big-name restaurateurs including Maneet Chauhan in Nashville, Rohini Dey in Chicago, and Srijith Gopinathan in San Francisco, and others by operators still developing names for themselves. Then there’s the growing roster of fast-casual Indian restaurants including Rasa, Curry Up Now, The Kati Roll Company, Tarka Indian Kitchen, Inday, Choolaah Indian BBQ, Tulsi Indian Eatery, and many more. Also of note is the addition this past August of a Zingers Tikka Wrap on the permanent menu of Miller’s Ale House, a casual-dining chain not known for its adventuresome cuisine.

The Zingers is what Miller’s calls its signature chicken tender, but in this case, it’s wrapped up to resemble a kathi roll.

Coffee as the base for spirit-free cocktails

Consumption of coffee is on the rise, as are energy drinks and non-alcoholic cocktails. Young consumers, dating back to when Generation X was young, have long enjoyed energy drinks — often Red Bull — spiked with alcohol. And what has arguably been the trendiest cocktail over the past few years? The Espresso Martini.

Put all of that together, and the stage is set for a proliferation of coffee standing in as the base for spirit-free Old Fashioneds and espressos and tonic. Versions of those drinks are already available at some coffeehouses, notably Everyman Espresso in New York City and Paper Plane Coffee Co. in Montclair, N.J.

That’s already a lot of factors pointing to a beverage trend in the making, but there’s another one, too: Cold brew coffee, the increasingly popular version of America’s favorite pick-me-up, is getting better. Some coffee aficionados have long said cold brew doesn’t extract the unique flavors of high-end beans, but new technology from companies such as BKON, based in Morriston, N.J., have developed technology to extract those flavors. That allows coffeehouses to develop cold brew concentrates unique to their brand, and also makes premium coffee available to bars that might not want to make their own.

White lamb

There’s a fairly new breed of sheep arriving in the U.S. from Australia. The Australian White Sheep has hair instead of wool, giving it a somewhat milder flavor because it doesn’t taste of lanolin from the wool, a plus for people who find lamb to be gamy. But it still tastes very much like lamb. It also has a lot of intramuscular fat, but unlike wagyu beef, which also has a lot of marbling, the meat is nonetheless firm. However, the fat has a lower melting point than traditional lamb, resulting in less of a greasy feel, and arguably a better nutrition profile since it contains less saturated fat. Also unlike wagyu, Australian White Sheep is all grass-fed.

It's likely to sell at around a 10-15% premium to conventional lamb.

Ammonium chloride

Residents of the Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden — have long enjoyed salmiak, a salty licorice that gets part of its distinctive flavor from ammonium chloride.

Also called salmiak salt, Ammonium Chloride is a slightly toxic substance that researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of Colorado recently discovered might trigger a unique taste all its own, apart from the five senses of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

What does it taste like? Well, Andrew Richdale, writing in Saveur magazine in 2017 and recently cited by bigthink.com, said it “felt simultaneously fascinating and … abusive? Or at least odd like a knocked funny bone.”

Others say it tastes bitter, salty, and a little sour, with hints of window cleaner.

Given Gen Z’s penchant for trying new things, and their pleasure in consuming energy drinks that some of their elders (I, for one) have described as tasting like sweetened battery acid, and you have the potential for a whole new polarizing flavor profile.