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An Eleven36 Trend Report

Trenderizer

Volume 2

Discover

Explore the trends impacting the restaurant industry.

non-dairy milk
Reinventing Value

More Bundles for Your Buck

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The New Nightcap
The Automated Kitchen

From Novel to New Normal

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Peach Fuzz and Butter Yellow
Destination Drinking

A Toast to Post About

Read more
Food Rescue
The Art of The Collab

Flavors to Dish About

Read more

Reinventing Value

More Bundles for Your Buck

Fast food restaurants across the board are responding to the consumer-spending slowdown with bargain bundles.

Quick Bite

The $5 Meal Deal from McDonald’s. The $7 Luxe Cravings Box from Taco Bell. Take-Home Entrees from Olive Garden for $6, and to-go Family Packs from Texas Roadhouse ranging from $35–50. Close your eyes, spin around 3 times, and walk 50 paces in any direction—you’ll probably stop at bundle.

While Americans instinctively associate the bundle with discounts—from cable & internet to home & auto insurance—inflation pressures on businesses and consumers alike put their viability in question. The average price of a home-cooked meal is $4.31, while the average cost of eating out is $20.37.

With those costs, meal bundles are a great choice for consumers, but they can eat away at the margins needed for an independent restaurant to keep a full staff and kitchen running at brick-and-mortar locations.

Food for Thought

While inflationary pressures make it more difficult to eat out, bundles can attract budget-conscious consumers attracting new customers.

Dig through your menu—do any margin-friendly bundle opportunities stand out?

The Automated Kitchen

From Novel to New Normal

As automated cooking combines with more recent AI tech, the stage is set to permanently refresh the standard of commercial kitchen layouts.

Quick Bite

In the early days of the post-pandemic, foodservice innovators quietly released revolutionary automated technology. From front-of-house game-changers like the SerVue™ automatic salad bar by Vollrath, to Middleby’s programmable Lab2Fab™ FryBot™ fryer, these machines reach standards of food and worker safety simply not capable in traditional foodservices.

As the National Restaurant Association forecasts 2024 as the most profitable year in the history of our industry, some restaurants are better suited to invest in these new technologies. Head chefs and home chefs alike have already taken advantage of AI to monitor inventory or edit and post social marketing material, but restaurants like the pop-up CaliExpress in Pasadena, CA, take it one step further: AI technology to take and process customer orders while automated machines like Flippy cook and serve a menu of burgers, tenders, and fries.

After some years of being cast aside as too expensive, unreliable, or unscalable, automation and AI are having their day in the sun (er, heat lamp).

Food for Thought

Although many automated machines are designed to fit with your current kitchen equipment, there’s no question that they’re still a hefty investment.

Consider your current training costs, insurance costs, and scheduling processes: how does the cost of an automated fryer or cooker compare?

Destination Drinking

A Toast to Post About

Ask most bar owners or supermarket sommeliers—alcohol sales are down. But, for those able to blend alcohol with identity and experience spending, healthy profits can still be found under the bottlecap.

Quick Bite

Earlier this year, imported Mexican beer brands outsold American brands for the first time, signaling that Americans aren’t waiting for the beach to drink their favorite sunshine refreshment—they’re bringing that energy home.

As inflation cools and Millennials and Gen-Z are spending more than ever on luxury getaways, family-favorite Disney World is banking on alcohol still being an important part of toasting to a memorable vacation. In August, they announced the construction of two ride-themed lounges that will serve alcohol, one modeled on Pirates of the Caribbean, and another on Spaceship Earth.

The focus of connecting alcohol with an experience isn’t just limited to the drinks themselves—sweaters and t-shirts showing off popular cocktails and classy libations line the shelves of retailers from Target to Forever21. Here, alcohol can celebrate your individuality, particularly as it becomes less of a mainstream activity.

Food for Thought

Alcohol sales are vital to a restaurant’s bottom line—the National Restaurant Association reports that it accounts for 21% of a restaurant’s total annual sales. As restaurants hope for a comeback of alcohol’s popularity, they can either pivot to nonalcoholic options or try to make the drinking experience somehow different.

New drink menus aren’t likely to cut it—what can your restaurant do to make your space feel like a getaway and part of an identity before marketing drinks into the mix?

The Art of The Collab

Flavors to Dish About

From soda in donuts, crackers in nachos, or brownies in sourdough, brand and flavor collaborations are dominating the market and menu alike.

Quick Bite

A good brand or flavor match-up can revitalize an entire business—last year, Forbes reported that these collaborations can cover over a quarter of a company’s yearly revenue. This season, national chains and local eateries are bolder than ever in finding new flavor combinations from familiar names, knowing that, even if the flavors don’t work, intrigued customers will still line up.

The key to good flavor collaboration isn’t just in finding complimentary flavors but also in their limited release and novel appeal. Coke x Oreo cookies and soda has hit shelves, while Krispy Kreme added Dr. Pepper to their frosting for a special NFL Kickoff Collection. Moe’s Southwest Grill is following in the footsteps of Taco Bell and using Cheez-Its in place of tortilla chips in everything from nachos to burritos, while private chefs like Hercules Noble are taking nonbranded collab approaches with Brownies x Sourdough.

The Collab brings flavor-fan-camps together. Whether the combination sounds amazing or not (Cinnabon x Warheads definitely took the world by surprise), established fans and curious consumers will spend for it, if only to participate in some of the hype and water cooler conversations surrounding it.

Food for Thought

With each new collaboration between major brands comes major marketing—nationwide news outlets and multimillion-follower influencers ensuring the public hears about the product. Although most restauranteurs can’t fund this type of buzz themselves, they can certainly still get in on the collab hype.

Look through the news headlines and your social media feed—what collaborations are causing a stir, and how can your menu participate in the buzz?

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