What can we expect for food next year?

What’s in store for 2016?

There’s no denying 2015 has been a huge year for food. There are thousands of new restaurants, concepts, chefs and dishes making their mark in the UK, but what can we expect for the year to come?

Dishoom

Global influences An increasingly educated and well-travelled market will continue to seek new flavours, chefs and recipes. A recent survey of London’s best new dishes this year* featured shawarma, borani, ceviche and bao, and with increasing prevalence of new and exotic concepts, it is unlikely that the consumer sense of adventure and demand for new flavours will decline.Consumers are becoming brand agnosticFollowing decades of advertising designed specifically to encourage brand loyalty among consumers, we are now entering an era of agnosticism when it comes to brands, food and drink included.This arguably is the ‘Amazon effect’ – Amazon and other retailers own the experience when consumers are shopping, which diminishes direct brand interaction. This translates to the world of food through the boom in delivery services such as Deliveroo and Supper. Is convenience of delivery beginning to outweigh loyalty?It will be interesting to monitor how many customers go to the restaurant’s site to see if they deliver, compared to how many go to Supper’s site first, to see what the choices are.

Dinerama, Shoreditch

Street food marketsAlready very well established in 2015, the street food revolution shows no sign of abating.London Union (set up by Leon’s Henry Dimbleby and Street Feast’s Jonathan Downey) are looking to create 12 street food markets in 2016 in addition to the four that ran this year – successful reimaginings of otherwise derelict or unused areas in perhaps previously unloved locations. Their mission is to ‘transform London’s food landscape’ and the market is there, a clear demonstration of the how the way in which we eat out is changing.Initiatives like London Union give consumers the opportunity to try dishes and cuisines they might never order in a restaurant in a cheap and casual way, and also gives entrepreneurs a foot in the door when they may otherwise never have the capital to go straight to a permanent venue.It’s a hugely positive trend and something we’ll see a lot more of.

Have you noticed any other trends affecting your business? For more information on EP Taste and how EP works with food start-ups please contact Amy Lainchbury.

*Time Out, Top 10 dishes in London, 7th December 2015