Trends we spotted | Week 9
The Connaught Grill 
The Connaught Grill 
At horecatrends.com we spot many national and international trends on a daily basis. We pick the most interesting ones to write about, the other trends we use in our weekly column ‘Trends we spotted this week’.
With this week links to articles about Deliveroo that opened its first real restaurant in London, Pizza Paradiso. Do you wonder why?
The award ceremony of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022 in July moves from Moscow to London. And Ikea opened its first city centre shopping mall in west London, Livar.
Also in London: the reopening of The Connaught Grill. Another opportunity to taste the cuisine of Jean-Georges Vongerichten. And European aparthotel operator Staycity has opened a new-build property at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport this month, its third opening in Germany, bringing its total apartment count up to 5,000 in 30 properties at 14 European destinations.
Being able to get a pizza from a vending machine 24/7: Resto’Clock currently installs about 30 vending machines per month in France and Belgium. We also came across BistroBox in Austria where you can pull a pizza from the machine within 2 minutes.
The #KentuckyFriedGivingChallenge in America is a good example of involving young guests in ‘a good cause’ via TIKTOK®. And in the field of sustainability, we came across the Norwegian material science company B’ZEOS. They are working with international companies to replace single-use plastics with seaweed-based alternatives.
Click on the title if you like to read the full article. Enjoy reading!
Delivery giant Deliveroo has opened its first real restaurant in London | Pizza Paradiso
London-born global restaurant delivery giant Deliveroo has opened its own restaurant — a neighborhood pizzeria in Swiss Cottage called Pizza Paradiso. Interesting development – according to the article at London Eater (link in the title) – Deliveroo indicated as reason to open their own restaurant: to better understand the problems with its services experienced by the restaurant owners. In the article a link to Deliveroo’s strategy and investment proposals from 2018 in which they included making its own food, using robots, and employing riderless vehicles.
World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022 moves from Moscow to London
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna, has announced the cancellation of its 2022 restaurant awards ceremony in Moscow, Russia, in July 2022, and instead plans to hold the ceremony in London. Read in an article at the website of Fine Dining Lovers, link in the title.
Ikea opened its first city centre shopping mall in west London
Last week, the Swedish furniture giant’s £170m experiment on the west London shopping mall will be tested with the opening of Livat, its first city centre shopping mall globally and the first to be refurbished rather than built from scratch. With 37,000sq metres Livat is just over a third of the size of its typical site and its first in the UK. Livat also houses Ikea’s only high street store in the UK – which is a quarter of the size of a typical store. The former shopping mall also houses other stores, like the Lidl. It also includes a small market hall for local food pop-ups alongside Ikea’s own Swedish Deli and two further cafes offering meatballs, open sandwiches and coffees. More information in the article in the Guardian, link in the title. In this article future plans for the same kind of stores in San Francisco.
The Connaught Grill reopened | With the cuisine overseen by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Yesterday, March 3, The Connaught Grill reopened to the legendary Mayfair hotel. After an inevitable two year hiatus, the restaurant – discreetly nestled on the ground floor of The Connaught – returns with a respectful nod to its distinguished heritage, but with a contemporary interpretation in both the design, conceived by interiors architect John Heah with wood artistry from George Nakashima Woodworkers, and cuisine, overseen by internationally renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. With executive chef: Anshu Anghotra and executive pastry chef: Nicolas Rouzaud. Check out the restaurant, link to the website in the title.
Resto’Clock | French company makes 24/7 pizza vending machines
Fancy pizza when everything is closed? Regardless of the time or circumstances? A new kind of distributor is entering the Belgium market. ME Group International, based in England, is a company specializing in the production and operation of photo vending machines, selfie poles, laundromats, juicers, children’s attractions and, more recently, pizzas thanks to the arrival of the French company Resto’Clock. We have read an interesting (Dutch) article in the Belgian Horeca Magazine about this company. The link in the title goes to the website of Resto’Clock. It seems that the prototype of their pizza vending machine dates from 2001 and that at the moment it is very successful, partly due to the successive lockdowns. Some thirty machines are currently installed in France every month and the group’s ambition is to reach 1,000 kiosks by 2023, mainly in Belgium.
In Austria, we spotted the ‘BistroBox’, locations with vending machines where you can also go 24/7 for a pizza from their stone oven within 2 minutes. You will also find various other vending machines in the same ‘box’.
Staycity’s third aparthotel in Germany opens in Frankfurt
European aparthotel operator Staycity has opened a new-build property at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport this month, its third opening in Germany bringing its total apartment count up to 5,000 in 30 properties at 14 European destinations.
The aparthotel in Frankfurt will have 269 studios and one-bed apartments with sitting and dining space and kitchens. Facilities include a guest lounge, gym, grab and go pantry, car park, laundry room, Staycafé selling hot and cold drinks and snacks and 24-hour reception making the aparthotel the perfect combination of self-catering and hotel.
This Dublin-based aparthotel group opened in 2019 its premium brand, Wilde Aparthotel by Staycity, at the former Checkpoint Charlie area on the Friedrichstrasse in Central Berlin. In June 2021 Staycity added a 299-room property in Heidelberg to its estate. More information in the article on eHotelier, link in the title.
#KentuckyFriedGivingChallenge | KFC® is giving away half a million dollars on TIKTOK® in a first-of-its-kind grant program
KFC and TikTok Creator Isaiah Garza team up for the #KentuckyFriedGivingChallenge—creators with a cause could submit videos before March 4 for a chance to receive one of 11 grants. Although you can’t submit anymore videos, we post this article as inspiration – it’s a great way to engage fans to do good! The grant fund will give away $500,000 in cash grants to nonprofits fighting hunger in communities across the U.S. via TikTok. KFC was inspired by TikTok’s Creator Fund and philanthropic creators like Isaiah, best known for spreading positivity and changing lives through random acts of kindness on TikTok, to create the unique grant program. All organizations fighting hunger could submit their video with the possibility to be awarded $40,000. Between April 8–14, fans will have the chance to cast their vote for one of the 11 finalist videos where the grand prize-winning nonprofit will be awarded an additional $60,000.
Compostable materials as kelp to create food packaging
The compostable materials are created from sustainably-sourced farmed seaweed. Interesting article at Springwise, link in the title. Using green manufacturing processes and renewably sourced biomaterials, Norway’s material science company B’ZEOS is working with global corporations to replace single use plastics with seaweed-based alternatives. B’ZEOS stands for bio-based, zero waste, edible, marine origin, and soluble, and that is what the company produces – human food grade quality edible materials made from farmed kelp. The company’s first product was an edible drinking straw.
