Menu Matters Monthly Minute | October 2026
2027 trends are arriving…
The 2027 trend lists are already rolling in. Whole Foods released its predictions this month (terroir, Japanese comfort food, bitter flavors, and food as skincare among them), and between now and January there will be dozens more. You’ll probably be inundated with them in your team’s Slack channel, each with a note asking, “Should we be doing this?”
They can be great tools for sparking ideas and seeing what others are noticing. But we’d encourage everyone to read them the way we all should read anything these days, with some healthy trend literacy (and sometimes even skepticism). Consider:
Did this really change in a year? Tastes rarely shift on an annual schedule. Most of what’s on a 2027 list has been building for years.
Does it matter to your customers? A trend can be completely real and still have nothing to do with your category, operation, or the people you serve.
Will everyone jump on it? With the trend cycle speeding up, many of these trends will flood menus and shelves in record time. Will you stand out, or just add to the noise?
Who made the list, and why? A retailer’s list will often point to what it sells. A data company’s list will usually point to its own data.
Who is it for? If a trend sounds way “out there,” or like something we got tired of three years ago, it may have been written for a different audience.
Is it backed up? Is there menu, sales, or survey data behind it? Or is it just a handful of restaurants or a viral video?
So how do you make sense of them all? We’re working on our own “2027 Trends & Drivers” report right now, which takes a step back to understand the deeper needs that some of these trends could solve for.
And if you want help figuring out which ones apply to your business, we’re always happy to chat.
Maeve, Mike, Erin, and Shelley
DID YOU KNOW?
47% of people pay close attention to fiber. For protein, it’s 53%.
Protein has clearly had an incredible run. It’s been added to everything from chips to coffee, pancakes to pasta. So this summer we asked a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults how closely they watch protein. 53% said they track protein at almost every meal or look for it on most packages they buy.
How does that compare to fiber, which is now being called the “next protein”? For fiber, the number was 47%.
With Gen Z, that gap closes almost completely. 57% watch fiber closely, compared with 59% for protein. And slightly more of them track fiber at almost every meal (19%) than track protein (18%).
Yet, only 27% of people say they’ve heard that “fiber is the new protein,” and just 9% think it’s more important for Americans to eat more fiber than more protein (35% pick protein, and 56% say the two matter equally).
Younger adults are hearing the message more often: 39% of Gen Z and 44% of young Millennials say they’ve heard fiber called the new protein, compared with 12% of Boomers+.
So for anyone still debating whether fiber deserves a callout on the package or the menu, many people are already looking for it. The question is — will this be a sustainable trend (particularly considering that most U.S. diners don’t get enough fiber), or another that gets oversaturated in record time?
The Scouting Guide: Calgary & Banff
Last month we launched The Scouting Guide, our travel notebook from inspiration-seeking trips around the world.
The newest edition took us to Canada, where we visited Calgary for the NEXT Foodservice + Hospitality Expo, and like we always do around a trade show, we spent every spare hour eating and drinking our way through the city. Then we drove into the Rockies for a day in Banff. We expected steak (this is Alberta, after all), but the drinks are what we couldn’t stop talking about: milk-washed and clarified cocktails, drinks with sea buckthorn and saskatoon berries, a menu printed on tarot cards.
Inside you’ll find the full three-day itinerary, the five things we saw everywhere, the four themes we kept noticing, nine cocktails to take back to your beverage team, seven picks from a Calgary local, and a page of idea starters.
Haven’t read Issue 1 yet? Our Tampa guide covers three days and eleven stops, from Cuban bakeries that have been open since 1915 to a tableside mozzarella cart.
Next up: Munich. Where should we go after that? Let us know. And if you’d rather your team see it in person, we organize and lead scouting immersions across North America every year.
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:
Why this seafood market is expanding its supermarket parties.
How a minor league baseball team earns off-season revenue from a food truck.
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.
Steak House
“There’s just something about a classic steakhouse. The cozy booths that become your sanctuary for a few hours. The expert servers who are impeccably dressed, not to mention the bartenders who could make a perfect martini in their sleep. And the primal act of digging into a marbled, minerally slab of meat. Somehow the book ‘Steak House: The People, Places, and Recipes’ captures all of that. It’s an anthropological look at an American institution that makes you feel like you are there, even if you are on the couch in your pajamas. It would make a great gift for the carnivore in your life this holiday season." MIKE
“Just by chance, I came across the app GetYourGuide years ago before my trip to Australia. Since then, I've used this to find activities and book unique experiences globally and domestically. They have everything from City Sightseeing bus tickets to private tours of museums. I've never had any issues and all of the experiences have met or exceeded my expectations. I even used them to book a private food tour of the old city for our trip to Munich this month (more to come on that experience in the next Scouting Guide). Download it...you won't be disappointed. “ MAEVE
“Are you looking for a spooky read for October? Check out the British Library’s ‘Tales of the Weird,’ a series of short story collections focusing on a single topic. This month I finished ‘Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic,’ which has under-read stories from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Next up I have ‘All The Fears of the Fair,’ which focuses on circuses and sideshows, but there are collections covering uncanny cats, disembodied hands, cursed books and libraries, the fungal weird, deadly dolls, and deadly intoxication, to name just a few. Plus, the editors of each collection are incredibly well-chosen, putting each topic into historic and cultural perspective.” MIKE
Where We’ll Be
Chicago, IL - November 3 - RCA/Kalsec “The Real World” Event
New York, NY - November 16-17 - Mediterranean Diet Roundtable/UNESCO Event
New York, NY – December 4 – New York Produce Show Ideation Fresh Foodservice Forum
Are restaurants too loud?
The Mess Hall has a new, shorter format to go along with our longer interviews. In our first solo episode on the Heritage Radio Network, Maeve and Mike take on one of the most common complaints about dining out: the noise.
You can find it on all of your favorite podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Overcast), and at heritageradionetwork.org.
Bring our 2027 drivers to your team.
Our 2027 Trends & Drivers are coming together now: one main driver for the year and five sub-drivers, built on our own nationally representative research, with what each one means for people and for the industry.
Before your team locks its 2027 plans, we can walk you through them in a presentation or a working session, along with the trends we think matter most for your category. Bring the trend lists your team has been collecting, too. We’ll help sort out which ones apply to your business, and which ones probably don’t.
The Real World: Where Influence Meets Experience
Join us and Kalsec in Chicago on November 3.
For the fifth year, the Research Chefs Association is bringing Menu Matters and Kalsec together for an evening of insights and tasting. This year we’re looking at how the people around us, the places we’ve been, the cultures we’ve encountered, and the traditions we carry shape what and how we eat.
Mike will walk through the behaviors and cultural influences behind what people look for, choose, and share. Then Kalsec’s culinary team will bring those ideas to the table with a progressive tasting. Plan to eat, talk, and compare notes.
Tuesday, November 3, 6:00–8:00 p.m. Central
Charlie Baggs Culinary Innovations, 1071 W Division St, Chicago
Members $50, non-members $60, students $20
