Menu Matters Monthly Minute | April 2026
Best intentions.
Last week, pasta sauce brand Prego launched something unusual: the Connection Keeper. The brand observed that, while so much of what we do is captured and recorded these days, the simple, authentic conversations around the dinner table are often the ones left behind.
So they partnered with StoryCorps, the nonprofit that “aims to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs,” to develop a simple device that makes it easy to record those conversations. There’s no screen, no AI, no always-on listening, and not even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities. Recordings have to be transferred to a website via USB-C cable, where users can also opt in to add them to StoryCorps’ Library of Congress archive.
So what were the headlines?
“Is Your Pasta Sauce Listening to You?”
“This Pasta Sauce Wants to Record Your Family.”
“Prego Pivots to Small Microphones That Listen to Your Family’s Intimate Conversations.”
Nearly every article took this same tone, implying that Prego was launching a nefarious device designed to secretly record your private conversations. Social media pushback was, as always, swift and negative.
This is why it’s so difficult to reach today’s customer, someone skeptical of everything they see. When Lay’s launches a campaign to highlight that potato chips are, in fact, made from potatoes, buyers push back, asking, “If you’re saying they’re now made with potatoes, what were they made with before?” After years of feeling like every company and institution is out to get them, all while sifting through AI fakery and slop, today’s customer is immediately on the defensive when faced with any message and marketing campaign.
This is a societal change that no single industry or brand will solve overnight. It will take years of sustained effort and genuine action to earn and keep customer trust.
But it will also take working together as an industry — a falling tide sinks all ships. When any single food industry brand cheats the customer or gives them a reason to distrust what they buy and consume, it contributes to that reflexive negativity across every brand and segment.
In a world primed to assume the worst, the burden of proof is on us to showcase our best.
DID YOU KNOW?
75% of people say getting to enjoy a dining experience with the people they love makes it more meaningful.
Prego understood what we’ve learned over and over again from people — dining with someone else makes a meal more meaningful. Indeed, when we asked about what defines a meaningful meal, people chose a meal that “brings people together” as the top option.
While those “get in, get out” dining occasions aren’t going away, and we can certainly do a better job of making solo dining occasions more meaningful, it’s clear that every effort spent on bringing people together around the table will pay off. The experience will be more meaningful and memorable, it will create a more emotional connection with the customer, customers are likely to rate their experience higher, and more importantly, we’ll all be a little happier.
So how do you, as a brand, bring people together around the table? How do you foster that sense of connection?
What We Learned
On LinkedIn, we start the week with our #MondaySparks (three creative ideas to jumpstart the week) and end the week with our #FridayFive (five things we learned in the past week). Here are five of the most popular posts from the past month:
It’s just the same old song: algorithms are boxing out new music.
Consumers are holding brands accountable for formula changes.
You can catch every #FridayFive, #MondaySparks, and more here and here.
The Hot List
Delicious meals, excellent hotels, favorite products, thought-provoking books, great TV shows and movies — these are some of Maeve and Mike’s favorite recent discoveries.
Medieval Times
“One of my pet peeves is when someone posts a positive recap of their visit to a city and everyone in the comments angrily tells them they did their visit wrong. As a Chicagoan, I see so many visitors gushing over their visit to the Bean sculpture, their first taste of deep dish pizza, their kids enjoying the fireworks at Navy Pier, and the commenters are inevitably mad that tourists did tourist things. As one video I saw recently said, there's a difference between a tourist trap and a local attraction. So, I think this summer everyone should take a day and be a tourist in your own city. Go fall in love with it and see it with new eyes. Instead of being jaded, have an open mind. Embrace kitsch! I recently went to Medieval Times and had a blast. ” MIKE
“As we head into garden season, I'm loving browsing (and shopping) on the Garden Heir site. This isn't going to be your basic garden shop. It's a well-curated collection of high-end domestic and global products not only for gardening but for the home. The garden clogs are incredibly comfortable and come in a wide range of colors. The garden tools, most sourced from the Netherlands or Japan, feel great in the hand and truly turn gardening into a ritual. Wihle I haven't bought any (yet), I love to look through their foraged items, an inspiring collection of antiques and found objects from handmade stools to paintings and everything in between.” MAEVE
“It’s now April and I’m 44 recipes into the 100 Recipes in 2026 Challenge, where you try to make 100 recipes that are new to you over the course of the year (Maeve is doing it, as well). It’s a chance to discover new recipes, get out of your cooking rut, eat healthier and less processed items, explore new cuisines, and dive into the cookbooks sitting on the shelf. I rate every recipe and so far the highest-rated recipe — a 9.9 — is for the pork chops in mustard caper sauce from The Best Recipe (now updated as The New Best Recipe). It made me realize how many recipes in this book are absolute bangers — I don’t think I’ve made a bad one. This and Restaurant Favorites at Home (also from Cook’s Illustrated, and with the best recipe for creme brulee ever) would make a great gift duo.” MIKE
Where We’ll Be
Napa, CA - April 28-30 - Roland Foods & AUI Innovation Summit
Lake Wales, FL - May 5-6 - Private Client Event
Chicago, IL - May 16-19 - National Restaurant Association Show
Amherst, MA - June 7-12 - Chef Culinary Conference
Palm Harbor, FL - July 27-29 - Chicken Marketing Summit
What should restaurants look like?
The latest episode of the Menu Matters podcast — The Mess Hall, where we have messy conversations about the thorny topics that matter to the food and beverage industry — is here.
On this episode, Maeve and Mike talk about the importance of play and creativity in our adult lives, which includes how we can make it a more central part of cooking and eating experiences. And we talk with Rebecca Kilbreath, editor in chief of Restaurant Development + Design magazine. She talks about current design trends in restaurants, what the nostalgia trend actually looks like, moving away from same-ification in restaurant design, and how to tell a story in the design of a restaurant. Plus, in our five questions, she talks about the Western novel that was unputdownable.
You can find it on all of your favorite podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Overcast).
Get Your Insights Immersion on the Calendar
Have you always wanted to host an in-market insights immersion for your team and/or clients? Now is your time to get it on the calendar for this summer or fall.
There’s nothing quite like an in-market trend immersion to spark new ideas, bring data and insights to life, experience every sensorial aspect of a dining experience, and bring a team together to capture the imagination. But there’s also nothing quite like a Menu Matters immersive experience, which are designed to bring that “wow” factor, going beyond a simple tour to include pre-event engagement, guidance to get the most out of the event for each attendee and meet concrete goals, tools like bespoke apps to take the experience to the next level, and post-event follow-ups to keep the ideas flowing.
The goal is for attendees to not just leave having had a great social experience, but to push them to think anthropologically about the food and trend landscape, ultimately capturing ideas to share with internal teams and jumpstart future initiatives.
