THIS WEEK ON EDIBLE ISSUES
Hey there,
How would you imagine the restaurant of the future?
We were at an event recently, where Martin Lindstrom, a branding expert and author of Neuromarketing, was asked this question.
What follows is a detailed version of some of his points, stitched together with our personal views.
1. Environments that are built to amplify our senses
McDonald’s might be a real-estate company but in actual restaurants, hopefully, the focus is more on the food.
As part of the Global Mission, we visited Sala De Despiece, an immersive restaurant in Madrid. We were asked to put off our phones and led into a silver-foil lined room with a long table illuminated with different lights, complete with smells and sounds from the food. The focus was just on the food. I don’t know if the food was delicious, but it was hands down one of the best meals I’ve ever had.
An incredible multi-sensory experience we had was in Ultraviolet, Shanghai which lives and breathes this concept in a different dimension.
2. An increased interest in food transparency and collaboration.
With more people beginning to care about the timeline of the food, trust and transparency, restaurants will adapt to this and pull the curtains to be more transparent and open.
We’ve seen numerous examples of restaurants making their menus transparent, opening up their kitchens or even putting up cameras in their kitchen for diners to watch what’s happening inside.
3. Food will be about like-minded people who exchange things — like tribes.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, he talks about how humans were able to connect over “shared myths”, which enabled us to conduct ourselves in groups and take over the world (something that chimps can’t).
Moving away from a way to sustain ourselves, food has become our identity. We aren’t people who stay away from animal-based food, we’re vegans — a tribe of our own. Similarly, restaurants will be a place for like-minded people to come together for one thing.
A beautiful example of this was our dinner at Farming Hope in San Francisco, where we broke bread while discussing some complex food system issues. Farming hope now cooks at Manny’s a civic social gathering space that combines a cafe, restaurant, newsstand, political bookshop and event space.
There’s more to this, but enough of what we think.
How would you imagine the restaurant of the future? Tell us.
Stay futuristic,
Anusha & Elizabeth
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