What restaurants can expect in 2019 Robots, cannabis, sour flavors, meal kits, polished fast casual By Thomas Schaffner
Shrimp and Grits Chiko-style. Photo by Chiko, Washington, D.C..
Baum + Whiteman’s 2019 trend report highlights 13 trends that promise to reshape the market of the immediate future. While some of these trends are continuations of factors that are already playing a large role in the contemporary hospitality market and others are more speculative, they each represent larger potential disruptions to the current food and beverage environment. One such emerging trend is increased automation in restaurants and hotels that,
while still highly speculative, will have a huge effect on way that food and beverages are produced, ordered, and served. Baum + Whiteman specifically name automated pizza and burger production machines, as well as a robotic barista in San Francisco, but it is important to understand, however, that these are still rather gimmicky one-offs. As of 2018, business have yet to scale up these prototypes to a level where they could be viable replacements for manual food production within large-scale restaurant operations. RESTAURANT C-SUITE 25
