5 industry trends that caught our eye at the Foodservice Alliance Innovation & Trend Show

Every foodservice professional was of course present at the Innovation & Trend Show of Foodservice Alliance in the Verbeke Foundation on Thursday 31 March 2022. Several entrepreneurs and guest speakers came to share their products and insights to give us a glimpse of the future of the foodservice market.

These products, trends and innovations caught our eye:

Society is becoming more diverse, and that also translates into a healthy curiosity among consumers for new products. From white sausages filled with Thai curry to Italian-inspired halal hot dogs, it remains striking how new products increasingly combine recipes from different international cuisines. Our retail brand Tom & Della's is also inspired by this philosophy.

Restaurants without table service, but with high-quality food? Meet 'fast casual dining', a mixture of 'fast food' and 'casual dining'. No cheeseburgers or chips on the menu, but high-quality meals with less frozen or processed ingredients. The concept originated in the United States and is becoming increasingly popular in our country too, partly due to inflation eroding purchasing power, which means that expensive traditional restaurants are less frequented than before.

Home delivery', 'take away' and 'eat in' continue to entice consumers to grab a quick bite, thanks in part to the corona crisis. If you can offer quality in a fast and easy manner, the customer is willing to pay for it. At Compass Group Belgium, we also recently launched our very own ghost kitchen called Darkk, which delivers fresh meals to offices. Supermarkets are also increasingly responding by offering alternative delivery options to customers.

Spotted at the Innovation & Trend Show: chocolate bars with pieces of cricket in them, meat substitutes based on oyster mushrooms, sparkling soft drinks without sugar and based on purely natural ingredients... You name it, it exists! Nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility when it comes to reducing the ecological footprint of food or improving its Nutri-Score.

We were shocked when we almost bumped into a robot waiter. Fortunately, we were later able to recover at a blender station, where we could enjoy the sight of an ingenious machine whipping up the perfect smoothie for us. The future belongs to machines! And while they are doing their work, we can sit back and enjoy a bite to eat and a drink...