All those pretty vegetables, pity they don't often find their way onto your plate at the local lunch counter except as a garnish. Oh, there's plenty of fresh stuff on display at this trade show, but it's just for show, after all. Portion-controlled pork chops sit cheek by jowl alongside the latest juicers, grinders, steam kettles, table covers, vacuum cleaners, ice machines, uniforms, and custom footwear. Most important of all, it seems, (even more than standardized ingredients and reliable delivery) is POS equipment, also known as Point of Sale. The industry is dominated by a couple of giants (one of them, Heartland, which swallowed Digital Dining late last year, was the "presenting sponsor." Also on the floor: Auphan Software, Oregon POS, Mynt POS, Focus POS, Maitre D POS. All too confusing? City of Seattle's econ development office had a booth, too.
Here are some of the non-food categories from which exhibitors could choose: accounting systems, aluminum foil, beverage dispensers, mixing bowls, buffet equipment, chairs, cleaning products, condiment holders, convection steamers, cutlery, detergent supplies, exhaust fans, glassware, gloves, napkins, security systems, signs, slicers, towels, water purifiers, pest control. Takes a lot to run a restaurant beyond canned pizza sauce and dishwashing equipment, dontcha know. Oh, and we're not even talking about outfits like OpenTable.com that offer a soup-to-nuts takeover of the hospitality side of the business.
Another way to understand the challenges facing the restaurant industry is to look at the rundown of lectures.
Twenty "top food trends," as presented by the folks who know best (tip: not the editors of glossy magazines). Top of the list, yet again, is "Local." In second place, alas, is "Chef-Driven," a catch-all that covers every sin in the book. Numbers 3 and 4, more local. You have to crawl down to 14 to get "artisan butchery," which could produce anything from a pork chop to a loin of rabbit. And all the way to the bottom, Number 20, to see street food and food trucks. (Note to the WRA: you're not listening hard enough. Street food does not mean a hot-dog cart.)
Fried chicken leads the list of perennial favorites, thank goodness, but I have a real question about zucchini, which shows up in ninth place, just ahead of "classic potatoes." There's supposedly a trend toward "ancient grains," a polite way of saying quinoa or kamut in mixed company. Julie O'Brien of Firefly Kitchens was invited to speak because pickling and fermenting are being touted as the trendy new preparation methods (and here we thought it was smoking, fire-roasting, or sous-vide).
Anthony Anton, the CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association: his topic was "Forging a New Restaurant Model in 2016." "New ways of doing business take into account not just restaurant operations but the political reality as well," he said. And that political reality is multifaceted. The push for a $15 minimum wage, the concurrent pressure on owners to abandon the notion that servers can be paid by customer tips, and, not entirely unrelated to those issues, the increasing shortage of labor. Used to be, you could round up dozens of reasonably qualified bussers and even line cooks with a single Craigslist ad. No more.
Where have all the usual suspects gone? Many (especially the legions of undocumented workers upon whom the industry depends) have taken advantage of improving economic conditions in their home countries. Others, voicing concerns about immigration crackdowns, have simply returned to Mexico and other Latin American nations. Plus the crackdown on phony and profiteering culinary "academies" that take a year, cost tens of thousands of simoleons, and dump their "graduates" into the fish pond of a market for minimum wage jobs. The sad fact is all the TV glamorizing of a career in the kitchen has not translated into a stable, long-term supply of labor.
We'll have more from Anton in a couple of weeks. Meantime, keep on forking!
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