Dark Kitchens - credits van Spronsen & PartnersOur colleague Leonie van Spronsen blogs about the phenomenon of ‘Dark Kitchens’. Currently these companies mainly focus on fast food and fast casual meals, but why not deliver high-quality meals from highly commended chefs from a virtual restaurant?
The Chick Buns from the Bun House in London
The 'COKIP-19' by Patisserie de Rouw| Two examples, one from the Bun House, a Cantonese-style steamed bun specialist in London and one from Patisserie de Rouw in Vught (the Netherlands). The Bun House will be launching their limited-edition ‘Easter Chick bun’ set to celebrate Easter. Available from the 26th of March to the 4th April, the delicately shaped buns will be available in-store at Bun House’s Chinatown home and for delivery to doorsteps across the country. But we also spotted the Easter chicks, COKIP-19, by the Dutch Patisserie de Rouw. They’re wearing a Covid proof mask! Check out all their images!
Great is that both examples are fairly small treats. As Arthur de Rouw points out in his press release, the new Easter items are somewhat smaller in size, which is in line with a number of trends he spotted in the pastry world and which are partly caused by the corona crisis. According to him, it is the smaller, luxurious indulgences that colours our lives. Reading time: 2 minutes |
The owners and the management of Orbisk
De foodwaste monitor of Orbisk in the kitchenOrbisk has developed a fully automated food waste monitor. The waste collection point of F&B-companies will be equipped with scales and a smart camera, which will record exactly what is thrown away and what amount. Based on the collected data, bundled in clear online reports, you can optimize the supply, purchasing process and your menu and thus save up to tens of thousands of euros per year!
Our colleagues from Van Spronsen & Partners Hospitality Consultancy and –Hospitality Administration have been telling their customers for years: data is knowledge! (in Dutch: meten is weten). By keeping track of your turnover on a daily basis, you get “grip” based on data so that you can estimate how much you will approximately turnover on a certain day in a specific period. As this food waste monitor shows this knowledge is also highly effective for reducing food waste! In the past, we have written about a similar product, named Winnow. These systems are very suitable for the larger professional kitchens.
Reading time: 2 minutes
Ready for the Impact Shakers Awards
Ready for the Impact Shakers Awards
Ready for The Impact Shakers AwardsInspired by the doughnut economics model, applications for the very first Impact Shakers Awards, opened on March 1st. All European startups and scaleups with a positive impact on society and the environment may apply. It is the first time that more than 40 impact ecosystem players from all over Europe, including incubators, accelerators, investors and networking organizations are rallying behind the same cause.
The Impact Shakers Awards are inspired by the doughnut economics model, which maps human prosperity according to a social foundation and an ecological ceiling. An international jury will pick winners in twelve categories: Energy, Water, Food, Health, Education, Income & Work, Peace & Justice, Political Voice, Social Equity, Gender Equality, Housing & Networks. Those start-ups and scale-ups who want to enroll: you can till subscribe till the first of May!
Reading time: 3 minutes
At horecatrends.com or hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
With this week links to articles about amongst others automated voices to take orders at a drive-thru and AmazonFresh opens their first checkout-free grocery store outside the USA in London.
The riverside igloos at the terrace of the Coppa Club will return this spring! As the restaurants are opening again at April 12 in the UK, they might be a safe and Instagrammable place to meet in London. And we spotted the ‘Global travel trends report’ by American Express. With trends we can totally relate to!
Stalk & Spade, an entirely meat-free fast casual concept will open just outside of Minneapolis this spring. Let’s see if we will spot this kind of fast casual concepts in Europe in the future. And the Easter mainstay Cadbury teamed up with the Goose Island Beer Company to release a Creme Egg-flavored stout for Easter.
An interesting development: edible holograms created by the Khalifa University, could be used to show that a food item hasn’t been tampered with, or to prove that it isn’t a counterfeit product. And Starbucks is set to release its latest limited-edition coffee blend, to celebrate its 50th-anniversary. Fifty years already!
Click on the title if you like to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
Juicy Marbles seasoning
Juicy Marbles filet mignon mushroom and oat creme
Juicy Marbles tenderloin
Juicy MarblesJuicy Marbles from Ljubljana, Slovenia makes history with the first marbled steaks made from plants. With a patent pending on the name, Meat-o-matic Reverse Grinder™ 9000. The founders of Juicy Marbles have been able to mimic the muscle texture and marbling of meat by aligning and layering fibers from the bottom up with all-natural ingredients.
Did you see the images of this Filet Mignon? It looks like a real Filet Mignon, we hope it will be available in the supermarkets in the Netherlands soon. We would love to taste it! If it’s really the first plant-based Filet Mignon? We recently also wrote about a plant-based version made of wagyu meat, called ‘Waygu’. This product by the Canadian company Top Tier Foods (TTF) is making a limited debut in the US with hopes of rolling out at 4,000 sushi locations nationwide.
Uber Eats - credits Van Spronsen & PartnersOur colleague Marguerita Vogelsang of Van Spronsen & Partners hospitality consultants blogs about Dark Kitchens, she thinks the question is not whether the trend will become big in the Netherlands, but it is more about when this will happen. It is however a different type of entrepreneur who seems to be suitable for this type of concept.
Vina Straws made of rice
Vina Straws made of riceAs of July of this year a new law will prohibit the use of single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws and cottonbud sticks in Europe. So all restaurant, hotel and bar owners have to check that they don’t use plastic packaging anymore. Over the years we’ve spotted a lot of substitutes, like Stroodles, Wheat straws and many more! Now we spotted another one: Cereal straws. They can be used in cold or warm beverages and after finishing your drink, you can eat the straw. The Cereal Straws are made of rice and tapioca starch, 100% biodegradable.
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Hemelwater jenever van Hooghoudt
Hemelwater jenever van HooghoudtA first for Hooghoudt: the distillery with its roots in Groningen (The Netherlands) succeeded in producing gin from rainwater. Hooghoudt aims to reduce the use of scarce drinking water, the Hemelwater gin is based on Hooghoudt’s Premium Jonge Graanjenever recipe. By adding a variety of natural flavors such as juniper, iris root, fennels seeds, cardamom, star anise, elderflower and pear, the ultimate soft and pure gin is created. This 700 runs limited edition Dutch gin is very unique as gin has never been made from rainwater before.
In 2016 we spotted the beer made from rainwater at brewery the Prael. The bitter blond beer, comparable to an IPA, was brewed in collaboration with the beer brewery Hemelswater (to be translated as water from heaven). A huge success, Code Blond even got attention outside the Netherlands.
At horecatrends.com or hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
With this week, links to articles about amongst others about a Japanese-Style Basque Cheesecake from Basuku, it sounds delicious! And Orbital Assembly plans to start building private Voyager space station with artificial gravity in 2025, the first hotel in space.
A link to an article about the Dutch initiative Share That Kitchen, they want to become a kind of Airbnb for professional kitchens. And ‘Quatreau’ CBD drinks launched in the US, it sounds like a Hard Seltzer drink with CBD and we wonder whether these kind of drinks will come to the Netherlands as well.
PepsiCo is shaking up the cocktail mixer category with the launch of Neon Zebra, a new line of non-alcoholic cocktail mixers in 7.5oz mini-cans. Create 2 cocktails with one can in an instant! And an exceptional payment in the spirits industry, a transaction in Bitcoin between a supplier and distributor.
Onmateria created a Green Box. The Green Box, an amenity kit designed to tackle plastic waste in the hotel industry. And in 2025 the first Nobu Hotel in Germany will open in Hamburg, The Elbtower Hamburg.
Open for 1 month in April 2021: Candytropolis Sugar Rush, a safe, open-air, walk-through family adventure in California. And we loved this ice cream: ‘Not Fried Chicken’ Ice cream! We think it might inspire Dutch ice cream creators to make kroket, bitterbal or frikandel ice cream. Very #Instagrammable!
#bluerice-a new trend on InstagramWe have written about blue tea before, in 2019, about the tea of Crusio tea. By using the blossom of the Butterfly Pea, the tea will naturally turn blue. The same tea can be used to cook rice, and you will have an Instragram hit #Bluerice! We tried it at home and although it didn’t alter the taste much, it was a bit unnatural colour for rice. We can already see some applications like blue rice porridge, blue rice pudding and of course blue pasta. Some lemon in the tea and you’ll have purple tea or rice and pasta! By the way if you search for #bluerice you will also spot blue sushi, or rainbow sushi! We didn’t check if this is made all naturally.
Click the following links to see some posts about blue rice, including one recipe.
Virginia Gold Peanut Coffee
James Harrell, owner and founder of Virginia Gold Peanut Coffee
Virginia Gold Peanut CoffeeVirginia Gold Peanut coffee is the world’s first caffeinated coffee alternative made of peanuts. For what we have read it’s the latest coffee craze in the US and we understand it isn’t coffee, but it looks like it and is delicious. Check out the reviews in the press, for example the FoodNetwork Magazine writes: “It tastes like a less acidic version of coffee, with just a hint of nutty flavor”. We here in Europe have to wait though, we only spotted it in the social media and articles in the US. We also understood that they aren’t shipping to Europe yet. We love to try it though, don’t you?
Reading time: 2 minutes
At horecatrends.com or hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
Great images of the food and interior of restaurant Condividere, the informal haute cuisine by Ferran Adrià and London is embracing the power of the pedestrian once again this summer! Westminster City Council have elected to repeat last year’s plan to turn swathes of the capital into outdoor dining and drinking spots.
McDonald’s revealed a global packaging redesign and we spotted a new sustainable, delivery app aiming to revolutionize restaurant takeout packaging, JYBE.
Top Tier Foods (TTF) in Canada is going to roll out a vegan version of wagyu beef, called ‘Waygu’, at 4000 sushi locations. And Nestle plans to produce rice-based KitKat, the KitKat V.
AiFi, an expert in frictionless autonomous shopping, will partner with Wundermart to roll out 20 autonomous convenience stores in the first quarter of 2021.
Mountain Tap Brewery
Mountain Tap Brewery
Mountain Tap Brewery
Mountain Tap Brewery
Mountain Tap BreweryDuring the first lockdown we had the first restaurant in the Netherland to serve food corona proof in small greenhouses for 2 persons. Which was a great choice as we have a lot of big greenhouses all over the Netherlands. It has been used in several sizes and at different locations in the Netherlands. As are the dining pods which are used as hotel rooms or as small private dining booths during winter time and which are also corona proof. Now we spotted Mountain Tap Brewery, located in the mountain ski resort town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where winter low temperatures often reach below freezing and snow piles up by the feet. Faced with the likelihood of extremely limited capacity for indoor seating due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mountain Tap Brewery brainstormed a creative use of its spacious patio to accommodate winter guests. In the autumn of 2020, the brewpub transformed several out-of-use gondola cars into private seating booths and installed them on the patio. It might be an idea for all the restaurants located in ski resorts in Europe as well. We have been spotting gondel sauna’s and in 2009 we wrote an article about world’s smallest restaurant the Genussgondel in Fiss, Austria where you could enjoy dinner in a gondola lift. With a maximum four people, you enjoyed a three course dinner with a spectacular view over the Tyrolean mountains. When I started skiing in the seventy’s, the first lifts we used were open ‘bins’ in Italy, those could be used outside by après ski bars to keep social distance! 😉 ^Marjolein
Tabitha & Rik Jansma van restaurant BasiliekOne Michelin-starred restaurant Basiliek in Harderwijk (The Netherlands) will change its opening hours at the moment they’re allowed to reopen and welcome guests again. The interior of the restaurant will change as well. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the couple who own the place, Tabitha and Rik Jansma, with new insights with some changes as a result. ‘Something that we wanted for a longer period of time’.
We are curious how many restaurants, bar or hotels will apply changes within their concept. We suppose that the popular meal sharing concepts disappear after reopening. Just like COVID-19 is crucial for the open jars of nuts on tables. Restaurant Basiliek will also change the number of guests, which is something every restaurant has to deal with and where the concept is decisive regarding to the revenue of the restaurant. Sadly enough, this is something we have been testing with the ‘6 feet distance’. The decision to apply new closing hours is choosing for more private time, and it is great if your concept can carry this decision. There is no information provided about continuing with delivery and take-out meals in their press release, but we are very curious how concepts will apply this within their operations. Are you changing your concept, let us know!
Especially for King’s Day 2024, GiG is launching their hard seltzer ‘GiG Orange Anthem’ with a refreshing orange flavour for the ultimate King’s Day experience. read more
We have been sharing inspiration on our website since 2007, inspiration that we find in the hospitality industry or by online spotting of what our read more
We have been sharing inspiration on our website since 2007, inspiration that we find in the hospitality industry or by online spotting of what our read more
For years Sherry was struggling with an old-fashioned image, but Manzanilla lets you rediscover sherry. Manzanilla is one of the many different types of sherry and because of the dry, fresh and delicate taste a perfect ‘entry-sherry’. All of a sudden all eyes are focused on this ‘lady’ among the sherry wines, thanks to the striking new brand Aurora. Aurora is produced by the Spanish winemaker Paco Yuste and stands out for the handy size and the beautiful label. The portrait on this manzanilla bottle is from Aurora Ambrosse Lacave.
Recently we spotted the opening of Royal Palm Shuffle Club in Chicago, a club located in a large old warehouse offering games of shuffleboard. It’s one of the many concepts opening lately where you go if you want to have a great night out by playing a game and have a few drinks. Whether it’s darts, ping pong or shuffleboard.
From April the 22nd (International Earth Day) SUSHISAMBA’s week-long global Earth Week celebration will inform, educate and inspire guests while providing support to help halt rainforest deforestation in the Amazon. The celebration of Earth Week at SUSHISAMBA will take place worldwide in London, Miami, Amsterdam and Las Vegas, all serving rainforest ingredients for Cool Earth.
Isobar India, the digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has introduced the Blind Faith Upgrade kit, a thoughtful and cause-oriented initiative under accessible tourism. A sustainable step towards accessible tourism, this initiative explores the challenges faced by visually-impaired travelers and allows the hotel to quickly and cheaply convert any of its rooms into a visually-impaired-friendly room. The launch of the initiative was first introduced at Hotel Ramada Ajmer in India.
At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
This week, amongst others multi-keg switching tech changes beer kegs automatically and Hometels, a bridge between hotels and Airbnb’s.
Click on the title if you would to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
1*Michelin RIJKS® in Amsterdam continues its grand series of collaboration dinners by inviting the globally praised Mitsuharu ‘Micha’ Tsumura and team from Nikkei-restaurant Maido in Lima; celebrated at “Latin America’s Best Restaurant 2017” and The World’s No. 8 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurant List. The stage is set for April Monday 9th and Tuesday 10th in Amsterdam, the Venice of the North.
On April 12th, Greyhound Café, the first London outpost of the cult Thai restaurant, will launch their outdoor terrace just in time to celebrate Thai New Year. Traditionally marked with a water festival, Greyhound will be bringing the custom to London with a splash, celebrating with a week of non-stop revelry complete with specially created sharing dishes, festival cocktail buckets, and even a water pistol or two. The Greyhound Café is a modern Bangkok cafe in London’s Fitzrovia, serving Thai street food with modern twists.
Red Bull continues to invest in sports, this time no extreme sports or football but eSports! Earlier this year they opened the first Red Bull Gaming Sphere in Tokyo and last month, the 23th of March, they opened the first studio in Europe. The eSports studio is located in the popular neighborhood Shoreditch in London and is open for everybody.
We here in the Netherlands are longing for some sunshine! But we haven’t spotted Spring yet although some ice cream parlors are opening their doors. And we do spot more and more ice cream on our timeline, like recently the 24Karat gold ice cream made by Snowopolis in Anaheim, California. They serve a scope of vanilla soft ice cream packed in edible gold leaf. You could even use a spray with edible gold or silver, which makes it even easier to make this ‘very Instagrammable’ ice cream!
At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
This week, amongst others you can now list your hotel at Airbnb trough SiteMinder, Gaggan won the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for the fourth time and won’t win it for the fifth time! And you can now wander through Disneyland with Google Maps Street View!
Click on the title if you would to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
72-hour pizza dough is a Kickstarter project for the ultimate component for pizza crust perfection to make your perfect pizza di mama or pizza di papa at home! The dough is ready for use at the moment it’s delivered to your door. The idea is from Baking Steel, a company that has as one of their key goals to help you create “the crust you crave” at home. They already Kickstarted their Baking Steel appliance that will help home cooks to attain the perfect, restaurant-caliber, crispy, crust texture. To create this you also need to have the perfect dough, 72-hour pizza dough. Unfortunately they only ship within the USA but in this article a great tip for authentic Italian pizza restaurants outside the USA…
Pan-Asian restaurant wagamama launched the wagamamago app. They describe the app as ‘Uber for diners’ allowing customers to walk in, order, eat and for the first time ever, simply go, wagamamago-walk-out-payment. The new app will save diners an average of 12 minutes at every meal, according to research. The wagamamago™ app is completely safe and secure, developed in partnership with Mastercard which processes 65,000 secure transactions a minute.
The colour institute Pantone and Laithwaite’s Wine, the UK’s largest online wine merchant, have partnered up to introduce a new Pantone color ‘English Sparkling’. The color English Sparkling, an off-white cream, is created to celebrate the meteoric rise of the English Quality Sparkling Wine in recent years. No longer viewed as an outsider, English Sparkling has gained accolades and acclaim from all corners of the globe. Taking the battle of the fizzes outside of the drinks world for the first time, the new English Sparkling shade challenges ‘Champagne’ as the go-to colour term within design and interior circles.
At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
This week, amongst others Matcha beer for a green St. Patrick’s Day, mitigating global hunger crisis using next generation technologies and there is a map displaying women-owned restaurants across the US.
Click on the title if you would to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
Open Meals is a company from Japan that focuses on digitizing food. They were recently present at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, to show that it is possible to teleport sushi from A to B. It’s remarkable to see how far the technology is today and the sushi that was eventually made by the robot arm is perfect for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook!
The Starbucks Reserve® Roastery in Seattle is offering a new beverage that borrows from the ancient craft of aging liquor in barrels, Gin Barrel-Aged Cold Brew, one year after the introduction of its first barrel-aged coffee with Whiskey Barrel-Aged Sulawesi. The beverage begins with unroasted small-lot Rwandan coffee beans hand-scooped into oak barrels that first held bourbon, then used to age gin by local craft distillery Big Gin in Seattle. The sparkling new non-alcoholic beverage is a twist on the classic gin and tonic. First, Roastery baristas shake together slow-steeped Gin Barrel-Aged Rwanda coffee concentrate, ice, and a few dashes of lime bitters. The beverage is finished with tonic and a garnish with lime.
More and more people try to eat healthy, less meat, more veggies for health reasons and for the environment. IKEA SPACE10 Lab introduced Tomorrow’s Meatball – a visual rethinking of IKEA’s iconic meatball using alternative ingredients such as insects, algae, and lab-grown meat – three years ago. Since then they’ve been developing a wider selection of dishes that showcase the kind of food we could be eating in the not-too-distant future, the fast food of the future. There was one important principle in mind, the dishes shouldn’t just be healthy or sustainable. They had to be delicious, too. The dishes aren’t on IKEA’s menu…..
The Highway Gallery is an innovative project developed by the Louvre Abu Dhabi in celebration of the United Arab Emirates Innovation month. It has been created to reinforce art’s role in elevating everyday life into something beautiful and memorable. The Highway Gallery which showcases 10 magnificent artworks is located alongside the E11 or Sheikh Zayed Road from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. The masterpieces on display in giant 8×6 meter frames are introduced at 3 radio stations. The 10 artworks are just an example, to see them in person you need to visit the museum.
SWEETS hotel, a new hotel concept that transforms the old bridge houses in Amsterdam into special hotel suites, was officially opened last week. The first 11 of the 28 former bridge houses can now be booked at www.sweetshotel.amsterdam. The hotel gives this industrial heritage a new destination by transforming it into mini suites for two people. After a night at one of these bridge houses it’s truly waking up in the middle of the city! Inspiring location with unique views of Amsterdam.
At hospitalitytrends.eu we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the smaller trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
This week, amongst others the marathon du Medoc with twenty wine stops is now open for entries, a new grocery store by The Salvation Army and Argan oil, the latest hard-to-find ingredient chefs are reaching for.
Click on the title if you would to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
Steinbeisser and the Lloyd Hotel invited the French chef Alexandre Gauthier from restaurant La Grenouillère (** Michelin) to Amsterdam for a new edition of Experimental Gastronomy. On 5 and 6 June, a full vegan tasting menu will be served on unconventional crockery and cutlery, which will be developed especially for this occasion in collaboration with ten artists. Experimental Gastronomy offers a unique experience, where they challenge all participants, guests included, to search for the boundaries of eating habits.
Would you like to eat in a robot-run restaurant? Or would you prefer a restaurant in which the waiter is being helped by a robot that helps them carry your food? Bear Robotics is designed not to replace human waiters but to act as an assistant. Korean restaurant Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas, California is the first to try out Bear Robotics. Owner of Bear Robotics and the Korean restaurant John Ha wants to make the management of restaurants easier!
Several breweries in America and England have experimented with glitters! Three Weavers Brewing Company out in California and the Bold Missy Brewery in North Carolina all launched glitter beers. Indeed, beer with edible glitters. Totally safe and perfect to share on social media. This Saturday, it’s St. Patricks Day and we even spotted a green, glitter beer! We wonder whether the Dutch would like to drink an orange glitter beer for their King’s Day?
Valo Motion, creator of ValoClimb – the original Augmented Climbing Wall, introduced a new addition to its product family this month: ValoJump – an interactive trampoline game platform. ValoJump brings an innovative twist to trampolining: the player literally jumps into the game. ValoJump combines advanced active play technology with a trampoline. Players participate in a real sport and get a real workout while having fun. Check out the video above, it must feel like you’re either Mario, King Kong or any other character touching whatever comes your way.
Ecocamp Patagonia in the Torres del Paine region is an eco-friendly camping option in Chile which already opened in 2001. It’s the first fully sustainable accommodation south of the Amazon which has the world’s first state-of-the-art geodesic dome hotel rooms. The camp is located in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia and was voted as 32nd best hotel in the world in 2017.
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