Introducing Menu Matters’ Scouting Guide
We're often asked which restaurants, dishes, ingredients, and trends we've found most interesting lately. The Menu Matters Scouting Guide is our answer: a travel notebook we publish after every scouting trip. Each issue includes a full itinerary you can copy, the trends we saw everywhere, recommendations from locals, and a page of idea starters to take back to your team. Nothing in the idea starters is specific to one city, so whether you make a product, design a menu, stock a shelf, or create a marketing campaign, there's something in each issue for you.
Issue No. 01: Tampa
We picked Tampa first because it holds the old and the new at the same time, a tension many of our clients describe right now. Cuban bakeries that have been open since 1915 sit blocks from Michelin-starred kitchens. You can have a Cubano for lunch at the restaurant that invented it, then have cocktails by sunset on a rooftop above a converted streetcar warehouse.
Over three days we made eleven stops, from a tableside mozzarella cart at Rocca to a cigar factory still running century-old machinery to a restaurant supply store that sells velvet apricots and startlingly cheap Tomahawk steaks to the public. The issue includes the full itinerary, the five trends we saw everywhere, the four themes we kept noticing, five picks from our Uber driver, and a page of idea starters.
Issue No. 02: Calgary & Banff
We went to Calgary for the NEXT Foodservice + Hospitality Expo and spent every spare hour eating and drinking our way through the city before driving west for a day in Banff. The two make an interesting pair. In Calgary, neighborhood operators lean on each other: at the Simmons Building, the bakery sells the roaster's coffee and the roaster sells the bakery's pastries. In Banff, almost every customer is a first-timer, which left us asking how you build trust with someone you may only see once.
We expected steak, since this is Alberta, but the bars are what we kept talking about. Across twelve stops we found a speakeasy with a weekly password and a tarot-card menu, the only distillery inside a Canadian national park, and cocktails made with sea buckthorn, saskatoon berries, spruce tips, and glacier water. The issue includes the full itinerary, the five things we saw everywhere, nine cocktails for your beverage team, seven picks from Calgary chef and menu engineer Matt Holy, and a page of idea starters.
Tell us which city you want us to scout next. We read every suggestion. If you'd rather your team see it in person, we organize and lead scouting immersions across the country every year. You can send us a message at any time. To know when each new issue comes out, scroll to the bottom of this page and sign up for our newsletter.
