Restaurants 2024; Meatless; Wonder; The Chef’s List

Value & Convenience— The year in “dining out” started off strong. We’d finally hit post, post-pandemic, we’d re-emerged and were hungry to go out for a bite to eat. The Food Institute has shared their 2024 outlook for restaurants, based on existing data from this year. The January numbers across categories were looking good; since then, things have cooled. The culprit? In a word, inflation. Two things of note: the return to the office has helped the specialty coffee category—and; restaurants that embraced a suburban real estate strategy have enjoyed benefits, because a lot of people didn’t return to the same office. “…Meat”—  Umiami is a French-based company that makes plant-based meat. Their product is unlike other faux meats — these cuts of “meat” have texture and taste that (apparently) come close to the real thing; achieved through a unique process called “umisation.” They have plans to bring the technology to America. In other news, with more plant-based players eating into market share, Beyond Meat is treading water. Meal Kits & Beyond— Wonder is a startup founded by Marc Lore, former e-commerce chief at Walmart, who also founded the short-lived e-commerce startup Jet.com. Valued at around 3.5 billion back in June, Wonder recently acquired meal kit company, Blue Apron; “[they’ve] also developed kitchen equipment that simplifies and speeds up cooking restaurant-quality food.” Nestle just invested $100 million dollars. Finally— Where in the world would José Andrés eat? Here.