Last Tuesday restaurant HanTing (1 Michelinstar) in The Hague tackled a world’s first. As the first restaurant in the world Michelin chef Han Ji launched an innovative Tea Menu. With each dish a matching and different tea was served, which, in combination with the food, has a positive effect on the human body. We tasted this Tea Menu! read more
Although the Netherlands is known as being the cannabis city of the world, we don’t have chefs pioneering with cannabis. As California prepares for the possible legalization of recreational marijuana in November, Los Angeles-based chef Chris Sayegh is on a pioneering mission to take haute cuisine to a higher place with his cannabis infused menus. read more
Introduced for the Dutch hospitality industry, OERS, Ons Eigen Reserverings Systeem (Our Own Reservation System). OERS is a new online booking system which has been launched festively on the 9th of May by chef Alain Caron at Restaurant Aan de Poel. The system is different; each participating restaurant owner is co-owner of the system and automatically become member of the cooperative OERS. This allows restaurant owners to decide themselves on the terms and commissions. Where other reservation systems will only become more expensive in the future, OERS will become cheaper. read more
The newest innovation in the world of frozen glasses is THE ICED. This machine makes it possible to instantly provide your glasses with a layer of ice, all done through carbon dioxide. Useful to serve extra cold drinks on a different way.
We can’t ignore this new drink: the makers of the beer slush received a lot of attention in the Dutch media today. Both on radio, television and Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. The Twentse Bierbrouwerij (Brewery) in the city of Hengelo, makes Iced Beer in the flavours Radler and Rosé beer. This is a beer that you drink with a straw!
At the redaction of Horecatrends we spot a lot of national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write articles about, the smaller trends we use in our column ‘Trends we spotted this week’. This week among others, an article about an Escape Room Dinner Quest, a signature Sushi roll by restaurant Catch in New York and about restaurant Visaandeschelde who served a meal for their elderly neighbour on a daily bases. If you like to read the whole article, click the title. Enjoy reading! read more
Looking for an original cake for your birthday? Katherine Dey can help you with that! This nurse from New York has a very special hobby. She makes scary cakes based on her experiences as a nurse. read more
Drinking an alcohol-free beer at the dentist, again an excellent example of ‘Blurring’. There is a new dentist located at an old party centrum in Amsterdam, with an old bar which turned into a waiting room. Nervous? You can drink away the nerves with an alcohol-free beer, if possible ;-). read more
Hilton Rotterdam will open a new restaurant soon and this restaurant needs a name. Help is needed! As creator of the new name you will be rewarded big. Until the 10th of May, entries can be send in.
Lennert Rietveld senior counsellor at van Spronsen & Partners hospitality consultancy gave an inspiration session last month about co-creation. In this blog an insight into this session; which shows that the focus during events is shifting to influencing the guest journey!
The inspiration session for 80 event organizers showed powerful examples of co-creation. The presentation focused on compelling examples from entrepreneurs working together to improve the visitor experience. Everything is evolving around the guest journey. A good example is the initiative of the Dutch amusement park the Efteling to develop an app in co-creation with a Belgian company. They offer their visitors a lot more experience around their visit of the Efteling through ‘mixed reality’ and smartphones. Brilliant for kids, for example at the route app a witch voice gives directions.
A couple of other examples from the inspiration session around co-creation:
Research has used brain wave technology to measure the reactions guests have to different colours in the hospitality industry. The brain wave results of the colour green indicate a relaxed lunch with friends. The colour red stands for love and going for a drink with a date. Tork examined which colours work well in the hospitality industry. With a link to the study of Tork where they made moodboards in different colours and looked at the effect of that. Tork wants hospitality businesses to be clever with their colour choices.
In the line of extra ordinary pop-up restaurants: TOAST in Toronto, Canada. As from the 7th of May this pop-up restaurant will be open for four weekends in a row. The only thing you can order here is toast with a spread. The bread is from different bakeries from the region and all the spreads are homemade.
Back to the future? More like forward to the past. Coop Italy, Italy’s biggest grocery cooperative introduced their idea, the supermarket of the future at the Expo Milan in 2015. At the beginning of April 2016 they showcased it at Microsoft’s Envision Conference. They are using futuristic technology to help shoppers return to the sociable days of open-air markets, when there were shopkeepers at every stall, ready to answer any question a customer might have about their wares. read more
At the redaction of Horecatrends we spot a lot of national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write articles about, the smaller trends we use in our column ‘Trends we spotted this week’. This week among others, an article about a gin bar in London where the owners claim having the largest collection of gins, and HIHAHUT started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to build more sustainable cabins. read more
Les Mills Live is a collaboration between Reebok and Les Mills, who organize fitness festivals all over the world. They started organizing the festivals a couple of years ago, and today the festivals are extremely popular by thousands of fitness lovers. read more
We’re already in the third week of October, and more and more festive inspiration is popping up online. Pinterest remains a wonderful source of ideas, read more
We’ve been enjoying glorious summer weather for a few weeks now, and the popular seasonal drinks are already known. Mocktails, cocktails, spritz variations, rosé, and read more
Easter is in the air! In the coming weeks we will occasionally publish remarkable recipes or action on horecatrends. For example, the trend of the last year ‘chocolate room‘. Do you have a special recipe or does your restaurant or hotel plan a special activity, let us know by mail via tip@spronsen.com. Who knows your company might be on horecatrends.
During Easter, you do not just make the dishes special, but also the drinks you serve. Very simple yet fun, decorate a cocktail with a bunny or a chicken made of marshmallow. You can choose to make your own marshmallow, or just buy them. While the kids search for eggs, the adults can enjoy their Easter Cocktail….
The designer Shu-Chun Hsiao in Taiwan developed a number of birdhouses inspired by the Google Maps icon. Shu-Chun Hsiao creates the Google Birdhouse a merger between the physical and virtual worlds. Today people find their way through technology, the designer wanted to make the birdhouse become the destination as Google Maps does. Actually every hotel or restaurant in the country needs to have a birdhouse like this on the outside.
How often did you get a great service at a restaurant and as only point of irritation had to wait too long for the bill? With the new app ‘Cover’, that will be introduced soon, you can walk out of the restaurant without physically paying the bill. The payment is taken from a credit card stored on the app. Guests do make their reservation through the app and enter the payment information. The ‘Uber’s payment experience at restaurants’ according to Clover. It’s a new way of paying that is in particular useful for restaurants, it saves time and turns tables faster.
The famous Catalan chef cook Ferran Adrià presented an online encyclopedia called ‘La Bullipedia’ at the University of Barcelona. The project is a new revolution in gastronomy and is primarily adressed to chefs and cooking schools. Ferran Adrià expects that ‘La Bullipedia’ will be operational around January 2016.
Together with the Finnish company PowerKiss, McDonald’s is developing special tables to recharge your phone automatically when you put him on the table. By using the QI technology and a wireless power transmission the tables can transfer power to phones and / or headsets. At this moment, McDonald’s is testing the tables in Europe.
Bistro ‘Le Repas’ in Brazil is offering a free salad for any guest who rides his or her bike to the bistro in reward for being green. Sommelier Karen Ferrari was inspired by the number of cyclists she saw on a trip to Paris en introduced this action. The French-themed restaurant hopes that the reward will stimulate visitors to come by bike and also to inspire other companies to do something similar.
Class up your simple brown lunch bag with the waxed canvas lunch bags from ‘Peg and Awl’. The bags have sewn-in spot for handwritten notes to make it more special. Especially the handwritten notes or sayings are great to put even in a a plain brown lunch bag. And if you add a “free” item occasionally, your customers will know this rapidly by either word-of-mouth or through the social media.
Class up your simple brown lunch bag with the waxed canvas lunch bags from ‘Peg and Awl’. The bags have sewn-in spot for handwritten notes to make it more special. Especially the handwritten notes or sayings are great to put even in a a plain brown lunch bag. And if you add a “free” item occasionally, your customers will know this rapidly by either word-of-mouth or through the social media.
Class up your simple brown lunch bag with the waxed canvas lunch bags from ‘Peg and Awl’. The bags have sewn-in spot for handwritten notes to make it more special. Especially the handwritten notes or sayings are great to put even in a a plain brown lunch bag. And if you add a “free” item occasionally, your customers will know this rapidly by either word-of-mouth or through the social media.
Slow Food Italy conducted, together with a number of restaurants in Italy the campaign ‘Ne le Abbiamo tasche Ripiene!’ last week. This action (from March 6 until March the 17th) was launched to protest against the escalating incidence of food scandals. During this action chefs across the country prepared their traditional filled pasta dishes, revealed the recipe and the exact origin of the ingredients to their customers.
A phone call in the middle of the night: your best friend is in trouble. Would you go out and help him? Carlsberg tests some friendships. What would your friends do? Are they true mates?
The Australian design firm HASSELL designed the ‘Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar’ for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. A total of 125 coffee trees have transformed the ‘Red Stairs’ (a popular public Amphitheatre in Melbourne) into a terraced coffee farm. Shipping containers, packaging crates and timber pallets have also been added to demonstrate the journey that coffee beans take. This will creates a unique experience while visitors sit among the trees sipping their coffee. More pictures at PSFK.
Enjoying the sun, swimming in the sea and in between drinking an Ice Tea.. That’s possible in Cape Town. At one of the trendiest beaches of Cape Town, Lipton Ice Tea has introduced the first driving vending machine in the world.
The Australian design firm HASSELL designed the ‘Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar’ for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. A total of 125 coffee trees have transformed the ‘Red Stairs’ (a popular public Amphitheatre in Melbourne) into a terraced coffee farm. Shipping containers, packaging crates and timber pallets have also been added to demonstrate the journey that coffee beans take. This will creates a unique experience while visitors sit among the trees sipping their coffee. More pictures at PSFK.
Hong Kong-based Handy is leasing Android smartphones out to visitors, pre-loaded with free calls, 3G internet access and apps to help them navigate their destination. Handy provides users with the most up-to-date information and the latest happenings in Hong Kong. The smartphones can be picked up from the Hong Kong International Airport and it is possible to connect the phones with laptops to the internet and helps tourist avoid spending time looking for free wi-fi. Earlier we saw that tourist can hire a tablet with free wi-fi in Singapore and guests of the London’s Stratford Holiday Inn can use a Samsung Galaxy S III during their stay.
A nice new concept of molecular chef cook José Andrés. The cook has several restaurants in Washington and opened a cocktail bar named ‘Barmini’ in the space adjoining restaurant ‘Minibar’. More than one hundred artisan cocktails are crafted and served with the combination of art and science as well as tradition and technique. Earlier we saw that José Andrés applied his innovative style to the American cuisine at restaurant America Eats Tavern.
The new blog ‘Now you’re cooking’ developed by Electrolux, helps prepare the tastiest dishes. The blog collects cooking videos, exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ material and thus inspires food lovers. Often it is impossible to keep pace with the TV cook during cooking. You can turn the movies of ‘Now you’re cooking’ on the cooking mode, so you can easily cook at the same time as the chef cook. The video shows short pieces of text that will help you go through the cooking process and when you pause the video the cooking process is even step by step explained.
The famous red cups used in the United States are redesigned into a classy and fancy shape. The old red cups weren’t classy enough pouring wine into it so the Red Cup Living designed four new cups that debuted at the International Housewares Association show. The cups are also reusable.
A great announcement of a comedy festival that takes place from 27 March till 21 April in Melbourne. Well, maybe her husband isn’t that funny, but this commercial definitely is!
Soon people will be able to get free access to 15 articles a day of the New York Times through the Starbucks Digital Network. Starbucks customers will be able to view three articles a day from five different sections. This action approach benefits for both companies, because it attracts people to visit Starbucks over a local coffee shop and it widens the reach of the New York Times.
Milan Gennissen and Frank van Nieuwhuizen, two young Dutch entrepreneurs, have developed an innovative version of the famous Italian lemon liqueur Limoncello: Limonchili. Limonchili is made from organic lemons from Sicily and combined with biological red peppers. The lemons are all hand peeled. The Limonchili contains 24% alcohol and has a soft taste that is enriched with the touch of red pepper which gives a slight tingling on the tongue. For the restaurants, Limonchili can be added as an extra course and be served between the dessert and coffee.
The pens of Casa Mariol are filled with a special ink based on the winery’s best Cabernet Sauvignon instead of ink. These pens are great as a business gift by wine sellers. And if there are Dutch wine sellers who are going to sell these pens inspired by our article.. We would love to have one!
During an application procedure for the position ‘Manager Social Media and Digital Advertising’ the Pizza Hut kept interviews of 140 seconds. The Pizza Hut believes that people who can sell themselves in 140 seconds should be good at selling the company in 140 characters on Twitter. A special way to let people apply for a function and to put your company in the spotlight.
We’ve seen robot bartenders before, but with the robot ‘Bartendro’ (designed by Kickstarter) you can make cocktails quickly and repeatedly. The ‘Bartendro’ can easily make cocktails within ten seconds. The robot machine can be controlled by a smartphone or tablet via WI-fi and with the special administrator screen you can manage dispensers, ingredients and drink recipes. It is also possible to view reports of the drinks made. Watch the video to see how the machine works.
The company Koppert Cress has developed a new edible flower, named Vananco Leaves. The purple flower with white accents has a neutral taste and is widely applicable. Because of the color the flower matches well with desserts, salads or both fish and meat. The Vananco Leaves are originated in the Asian rainforest and grows in moist places. Koppert Cress offers Vananco Leaves that are specially grown for consumption and can safely be used in dishes.
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