I know it feels like winter is nudging us to bundle up, but some food trends are seasonless. As we noted with the recent first look at food and beverage trends, some ideas are follow-ups to last year’s scouting reports. Take popsicles, for instance, although just saying the word sends a chill down my bundled up body, we saw grocers and restaurants play with the concept with all types of creative flavors. Let’s continue with the Baum & Whiteman trend list and see their thoughts for this coming year.

–Popsicles going global and artisan–and what it means. We have to give the company credit for talking about this in their 2008 trend report even though we didn’t see the concept move from niche market space until this past year with an assortment of fruit-filled Mexican icepops (paletas) in fun flavors. So what’s next? They predict that flavors will continue to intensify just as cocktails did this year and that more of these specialty pop shops will appear as they introduce customers to more flavors with texture.

–Making Customers Unwelcome. That’s a strange category for a company whose business depends on helping restaurants thrive. Yet we’ve already seen signs of this trend with restaurants accepting reservations with a time limit as in “we have another party that needs that table within an hour and a half.” Or the corollary, the no reservation policy. New York was always the home of the No Credit Card sign, but that trend has proliferated as has the expanded wine by the glass list at skyrocketed prices.

–How Does Your Garden Grow, Mrs. Obama? Good question as First Lady Michelle Obama has made us all more farm market conscious and chefs have joined the grow your own concept, but many fast food restaurants translated healthy with using fresh foods but driving up the calorie count with ingredients such as gobs of cheese. Expect to see more chef gardens, more chefs helping in the schools, and an even greater emphasis on local. It seems no matter where you travel, you see signs asking customers to support local growers and businesses. A smart move.

–Breakfast All the Time.  When the economy was at its lowest levels, the food treat was breakfast food and breakfast business boomed. More restaurants expanded breakfast menus and all-day breakfast became more prevalent. Now, Baum and Whiteman believe we’ll see certain foods jump to a more mainstream position such as soft, slow-cooked eggs. This is an opportunity for high-end restaurants to skip the sauce and top the expensive dish with an egg which oozes its own sauce.

–Grits. They say grits will “leap from a morning food to an all-purpose starch.” Not only are we already seeing more grits on menus, we see restaurants such as Bubby’s in New York tout where their special grits come from (South Carolina). The consultants believe that the Southern food influence will spread and they even speculate that shrimp and grits will become the food of the year!

Other trends they note are some we have already seen: A rise in gluten-free foods, more healthy menus that denote less sodium or no high fructose corn syrup. They call this category “free-from” foods. So many more concepts. Here’s a little teaser:

Wife-swapping. Check back to find out how Baum and Whiteman relate that category to restaurants!

Tags: dining out, farm markets, gourmet lifestyle, locavore, trends