With the arrival of the new financial year comes a time to consider how the next year will pan out for your business. Whether you’re a developer or single operator, how will you continue to increase business growth and maintain asset value in this highly competitive and growing industry that is hospitality? With retails majors such as David Jones announcing their $100million investment into the food sector, it’s no doubt that businesses are all grabbing for a slice of the ‘food and beverage’ pie. Future Food has put together 10 key principles to ensure your retail centre’s food and beverage offer stays ahead for the next financial year and beyond.
The Digital Foodscape
Whilst the hospitality industry might be protected from the impact of technology, it is still important that we are across how consumers are using technology as it plays a major role in how customers are making their decision on where and what they spend their food dollars on.
The Digital Foodscape is the language of Millennials (the foodie generation) and Gen Z (the MasterChef generation). They read menus on their phones, choose items based on the photos they’ve seen and share their experiences with friends via their own social media platforms.
Mixed-Use Developments for Eat, Work, Rest and Play
Our job as food consultants has completed transformed from what it was 30 years ago. We are no longer masterplanning traditional food precincts marked with a ‘food court’ sign but working on creating places out of spaces including high street shopping strips, purpose-built laneways, urban markets, cafe courts and business hubs servicing hundreds of workers. One area we are seeing major developments in, an area of our work that definitely did not exist 30 years ago, is mixed-used developments - the modern solution to living, working and playing in the one place.
The Psychology of Menu Design
How good menu design can persuade your customers to buy more
As a consumer, whether we like it or not, psychology has been used to determine the way we create and angle marketing and as we focus more on the customer, understanding the psychology of these people is a key part of business success. As an operator, there are many ways we can use this to our advantage to maximise sales opportunities and profit margins and increase customer satisfaction as well as return visitation.
Customer Service vs. Hospitality and Why You Need Both
Over the last few years, the food and beverage industry has changed the way it perceives customer service. As consumers become more digitally driven and want more, faster from their real time experiences, operators are seeing that people are seeking quality, value and speed all served up with a side of hospitality, the differentiating factor that separates the good operators from the average ones. But what is the difference between customer service and hospitality and why is it so important to have both?




