Trends for 2022: Re-engaging with Food in a Design Led World

Melbourne based dining barriers to meet covid safe requirements (Image via Facebook)

Trends for 2022

Re-engaging with Food in a Design Led World

2021 is going to be, in the parlance of your local footy team, a rebuilding year. So much damage has been done to retail in general and hospitality in particular this year that 2021 is going to be a year to heal, slowly getting back on public transport and getting settled into the Next Normal.

2022, then, is shaping up as a really interesting year. The food operators that survived the pandemic, and especially those that opened during it, are battle-hardened and realistic: An excellent foundation on which to rebuild Food and Hospitality. With the gradual renaissance of the CBD and face-to-face interactions, there is ample scope to start contemplating how to harness and encourage demand.

The one cautionary side to this new equilibrium is travel. First off, Australians will start to go overseas again. The dearth of overseas travel opportunities and the re-direction of holiday spending to Australian hospitality were, and will be, one of the key sources of spending on Australian F&B in 2020 and 2021.

On the other hand, there are significant doubts as to whether international tourists will balance out Aussies going abroad. The ferocity of the second wave in Europe – and the continuation of the first wave in the US – combined with the understandable reluctance in the last half of 2020 to impose draconian measures to tackle the virus means that visitors from these ‘hotspots’ are going to be few.

Covid Safe Dining Outdoors at Entrecôte Parisian Steak House, Melbourne

Given this backdrop, there are a number of key trends that we are looking at as we move into 2022.

• The fate of F&B in shopping centres – especially the Food Court – and internally-focused cafés and restaurants is going to rest in the hands of designers. The post-COVID world is a Design-led world. The legacy of the 20th century was to hand us tightly packed, vertical urban centres along with the trend of taking dispersed High Street retail and putting it all into one building. 21st century designers are going to have to figure out how to adapt these spaces to the needs and concerns of modern citizens.
  
  

• We estimate that the growth of the delivery model will ease substantially. It’s not that this part of F&B will retreat, it’s that its heyday will be over and Delivery 2.0 will be here. During the course of the pandemic, food delivery sales exploded with growth of 250% over non-COVID times (data courtesy of Illion). This was due to necessity and convenience but we should not interpret the data as confirmation that delivery is the future of F&B.

  Make no mistake, delivery has earned its place in the F&B eco-system – the continued strength and growth of Domino’s, for example, is testament to that. However, as many people have found during the pandemic, there is a limit to the types of food that survive the journey on the back of a bike relatively intact. Just as importantly, and with the relaxation of dining restrictions, there is a limit to how much delivery we would ideally like to have. Lockdowns and the pandemic in general have pushed up delivery’s share of the F&B market to unsustainable heights and so we would expect a more normal balance of delivery to in-venue eating/drinking to resume in 2022.

• There are two key trends that we see as important planks in the maturity and desirability of delivery. The first will be bringing it in-house. As many venues have found recently when they needed to connect with their customers, third-party delivery systems ‘stole’ their customers’ data - and venues paid them for the privilege. This will change as venues want to have unfiltered conversations with, and access to, their patrons. Additionally, they will find that they will be able to save on costs as well, though not as much as they would like.
  
  

• Secondly, the Dinner Box phenomenon developed during the pandemic has already reshaped food delivery in our cities through the likes services such as Providoor. As a result, takeaway/home delivery has a template now as to how to provide meals at home that is completely different from the cardboard box or plastic container. This will become a permanent part of the F&B landscape.
  
  Supernormal in Melbourne not only offers Dinner Boxes, but they also provide online tutorials to instruct customers how best to reheat and serve their food. They are part of a new wave that is bringing not just calories to your door, but quality produce and, as near as possible, the experience. This is an important trend not just for customers, but for the venues as well.
  
  

• The internal capacity of venues is going to be more permanently reduced. The much lauded seafood mecca, Saint Peter in Sydney, was already small at 34 seats, pre-COVID. Now it is down to 15. Chef Josh Niland has said that the intimacy has changed his restaurant for the better: More interaction with customers, less noise and a ‘lovely energy’.

• Other small venues such as Tsuta in Tokyo, El Papagayo in Argentina and Evelyn’s Table in London have all already removed seats. This shows that removal of seats is not, in and of itself, a venue-killer proposition. We do not discount the challenge of making it work, but the fact remains that lower capacity can be achieved sustainably. Much of the revenue foregone due to lower capacity could be replaced through the judicious use of Dinner Boxes: The number of seats might fall by 15, but the number of Dinner Boxes sold could be more than double that, especially on weekends and for special occasions.
  
  

• The creativeness of the industry has shown that everything is possible and that the leaders in the industry will continue to shine. During these challenging times, the tightknit hospitality industry has proven to be very supportive of one another, which has sprouted creative thinking and collaborations between brands and products, which may influence new to market concepts moving forwards.
  
  

• The trend and demand for alfresco will continue. As we have argued in a previous piece, outdoor dining is not just for sunny days and the beach. As Europe’s cafés have shown, the desire to eat and drink outside is almost primal. Here again, Design is going to play a central role in turning tables on a street into a year-round experience.
  
  

• Clothing and Footwear have shown themselves to be the most discretionary items of the key shopping categories – those items were the ones that people stopped buying first when lockdowns started. Overall F&B has held up well, but much of this has come from takeaway oriented businesses. As a result, takeaways have shown themselves to be non-discretionary spending.

• CBD Office workers, on the days that they will actually go into the office, will be more likely to bring their lunch or buy it on the way to the office, thus eliminating the need to get into the lift as often. Therefore, Grab and Go is going to be an important vehicle for serving food to CBD customers.

Private dining and Karaoke at Supernormal Restaurant (Image via Supernormal)

These are some of our thoughts on what 2022 might hold. Being in the middle of a crisis and a rapidly changing world is not necessarily the best perspective on which to base forecasts of trends two years’ hence. Our ideas are based on our perspective of what is going on currently and our experience in how Hospitality has handled previous crises.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on where we might be headed. You can use the form below or just get in touch with us through one of our other contact points.

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Cover Images via The Travel