Trends we spotted this week – week 43
At Horecatrends we spot a lot of national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write articles about, the smaller trends we use in our column ‘Trends we spotted this week’. This week among others, how the world of online reservations is evolving in the Netherlands, a 3D printer that creates full colour candy and the Hangover Bar from Amsterdam went viral worldwide.
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The ColorPod add-on creates full-color printed edibles
You can make edible full color models with the ColorPod food print set. Models are made by jetting droplets of diluted vodka and edible ink on a mixture of sugar and dextrin. The technology that powers this creation is like a combination of powder-based 3D printing and traditional color inkjet cartridges, meaning that makers are able to create an endless amount of creatively shaped sweets. Made by Aad van der Geest at Spitstec.
Electric Spoon changes the way food tastes
The Taste Buddy is being developed to manipulate your taste buds and make everything more delicious. The device—which is being engineered to fit within everyday utensils in a discrete fashion—stimulates the taste buds to make tofu taste like steak, or even chocolate. Certain tangs such as sour or salty flavors are recognized when the receptors on the tongue respond to the reaction between saliva and the acidity of hydrogen and sodium. Exploiting these chemical reactions, the Taste Buddy uses electrical stimulations tuned to a certain frequency to trick the tongue into thinking its eating something else. Our advice: don’t use it to trick real allergic people! But it’s a great gimmick to fool your guests.
Online reservations are increasingly in the hands of the big companies in this market
IENS, one of the largest restaurant reviewing and reserve websites in the Netherlands and part of TripAdvisor, today announced the acquisition of reservation site Couverts. Thanks to the acquisition all the restaurants that now only use Couverts, will soon be able to be booked directly through IENS and TripAdvisor. Restaurants that now use both platforms only have to work with just one reservation system in the near future. IENS was acquired in December 2014 by TripAdvisor and has 22,000 published restaurants from which 3,750 use the reserve directly option. IENS has annual 30 million visitors and processes as many as 200,000 independent reviews each year. Together they now own a central platform in the Netherlands, a win-win situation for both consumers and restaurateurs. This organization is part of TheFork of TripAdvisor’s global label for all online reservation sites for restaurants. TheFork is the leading reservation platform for restaurants in Europe, with more than 35,000 restaurants and more than 12 million visitors per month. The platform operates in 12 countries under various brand names: TheFork, LaFourchette, IENS, ElTenedor and Dimmi.
New York Pizza Introduces 1-Click Ordering in the Netherlands
Customers of New York Pizza can now order online with just one push of a button to repeat their favourite order. “90% of customers order online nowadays. 48% of which is a repeat of a previous order. To make it even easier for our customers, we have devised 1-Click Ordering.” says New York Pizza director Philippe Vorst. “By doing this we want to show our customers that we want to constantly simplify customer ordering process. Is 1-Click ordering a success, then we probably produce physical buttons with this tool.” 1-Click Ordering is available on the website for everyone who has an account.
Foundation Noordzeeboerderij (North Sea Farm) began growing seaweed on the ‘Proefboerderij Scheveningen’. The location is situated 15 kilometres off the coast of The Hague and is 25 hectares big. The seaweed has to grow 4.5 months. Agriculture at sea fits in well with the development of new wind farms off the Dutch coast. That space can be used multifunctional according to initiator Koen van Swam: “The demand for healthy vegetable food and raw material sources is growing rapidly. Seaweed is environmentally friendly, nutritious and has many applications. As from bread, salad, pesto and spring rolls to crockery, clothing and bioplastics. Seaweed cultivation is an important component of the circular economy. ”
Matt Hangover bar in Amsterdam went viral worldwide
More than 81 million people saw the video of the world’s first Matt Hangover Bar. This bar opened temporarily between September 23 and September 25 in Amsterdam. At the Matt Hangover Bar visitors could recover as quickly as possible from their hangovers. Organizer Matt Sleeps now has a lot of requests to open a similar bar from all over the world. The unfortunate thing is that Matt Sleeps is not a bar, but a Dutch start-up which sells mattresses.
