Menu Matters Monthly Minute | September 2026
A few things have changed…
We took the end of summer off from the Menu Matters Monthly Minute, but we had a very good reason. Multiple, actually. We had some news we wanted to share all at once, and as we head into the fall it feels like the right time to relaunch the whole thing.
First, the team is bigger! Erin Murray joined Menu Matters this week as Senior Director, Client Partnerships. If you've spent any time in food and beverage insights over the past three decades, there's a good chance you've already crossed paths with her at Datassential, Mintel, Sara Lee, Barilla, Bimbo Bakeries USA, or GfK. We've admired how she works for years, and we're thrilled she's now doing that work with us. Many of you will be hearing from her soon. Send her an email if you want to say congrats.
Second, The Mess Hall has a new home. Our podcast is now part of the Heritage Radio Network, the world's largest collection of food and drink podcasts, which was recently acquired by our friends at The Food Institute. You’ll find the same messy conversations about the thorny topics that matter to this industry, now published even more often. The first HRN episode is out today (more on that below), and if you already subscribe, you shouldn't have to do a thing.
Third, we're launching Trendscout, our new travel and trends guide. Every time we come back from a scouting trip, someone asks us where we ate, what we ordered, and what we noticed. So we're compiling it all in Trendscout. The first issue covers three days and eleven stops in Tampa. More on that below too.
And fourth, Menu Matters is now a proudly certified women-owned business from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council. Maeve founded this company more than a decade ago and the certification formalizes what has been true from the start. For our clients, it can also count toward supplier diversity goals.
So that's the news! We're incredibly excited about what the future has in store.
We're already planning research, innovation sessions, scouting trips, and speaking engagements for 2027. So if you've got a thorny problem you’re dealing with, drop us a line. Those are the projects we love.
DID YOU KNOW?
63% of people were already thinking of cutting back on the holidays. In June.
We asked a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. adults about their holiday spending plans over the summer, when the holidays were still five months away. Nearly a quarter (23%) had already decided to cut back, another 22% were thinking about it, and 18% said it was in the back of their minds. Only 9% said they weren't planning to cut back at all.
While this is a decision that many people typically start thinking about in October or November, high prices have been a nagging concern all year long. Younger households are even more likely to cut back: 61% of Gen Z and 62% of young Millennials were already thinking about it, versus 45% of Boomers+.
Where are they cutting? Gifts and travel go first (43% plan to spend less on gifts, while 30% plan to travel less or stay home). And while everyone still wants to enjoy a holiday meal, they are making changes: 29% plan to cook more from scratch instead of buying prepared, 17% will buy more store brands for the holiday table, and 10% will make the same dishes in smaller portions. It's all about trading down.
Again, younger consumers were even more likely to cut back, with 36% of Gen Z and 38% of young Millennials saying they would cook from scratch, against 18% of Boomers.
Find out more in our upcoming Grey Matter report on this topic, launching soon.
Introducing Trendscout: Three days and eleven stops in Tampa.
We're often asked which restaurants, dishes, ingredients, and trends we've found most interesting lately. So we started Trendscout, our travel notebook published after every scouting trip.
We picked Tampa first because it's a city that holds the old and the new at the same time, which is a tension so 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 at the restaurant that invented it for lunch and cocktails on a rooftop above a converted streetcar warehouse by sunset. Over three days we hit eleven stops, from a tableside mozzarella cart at Rocca to a cigar factory still running century-old machinery to a restaurant supply store selling velvet apricots and startlingly cheap Tomahawk steaks to the public.
Inside you'll find 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.
And, if you want the stories behind the stops, this month's episode of The Mess Hall opens with them.
Where should we go next? Let us know. And if you'd rather your team see it in person, we organize and lead scouting immersions across the country 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:
How engineered yeasts are turning waste into edible protein.
What is “intrinsic capacity and how can it inform longevity?
You can catch every #FridayFive, #MondaySparks, and more here and here.
Menu Matters in the News
"America's love affair with the pumpkin spice latte may be coming to an end," CNN
"Are GLP-1s Killing the Restaurant Industry?" Viewpoints Radio
“Bringing diners back to their senses,” National Culinary Review
"Chicken still wins in foodservice, but faces boredom risk," WATTPoultry
"A Culinary Journey Through the Windy City," Catering & Event
"Gen Z loves frozen yogurt with protein and toppings," New York Post
"Restaurant 200: Meet the largest franchisees in the country," Franchise Times
"America's most searched ice cream brand may surprise you," New York Post
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.
Fahrenheit
“Mike and I receive many newsletters that offer interesting insights and new ways of thinking. One at the top of my list for unique perspectives and well-researched writing is Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History. The posts range widely, but they inevitably offer a new way of approaching a subject, with plenty of citations to back up the thinking. If you're a curious person who likes having your perspective challenged, this is a must-subscribe." MAEVE
“This is a recommendation for more recommendations, but I recently discovered Rec League. In all of our research, Maeve and I have heard over and over again that people prefer recommendations from other real people, not algorithms or influencers. Enter Rec League, which is a sort of social platform for recommendations across every category: travel, design, products, apps, even just ways to live life. We'll see if enshittification comes for it in the future, but right now the recommendations feel real and authentic. “ MIKE
“If you're in Cleveland, make your way to Fahrenheit. Chef Rocco Whalen offered three top-notch demos for an immersion we designed. One was a smoked Manhattan made using a custom-designed bourbon tower and tableside cart offering a selection of woods for smoking the cocktail. During the 45 minutes we were there, his team offered the group exceptional hospitality. The space is beautiful, the food is fantastic, and I can't wait to go back for another opportunity to experience that tower.” MAEVE
Where We’ll Be
Calgary, AB – September 13-14 – NEXT Foodservice + Hospitality Expo
New York, NY - September 28 - The Future Food Equation
Chicago, IL – October 6 – Spot the Trend: Survey with the Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network
Chicago, IL – October 14 – FED Summit
Munich, Germany – October 18-20 – IACC Europe Knowledge Festival
Chicago, IL - November 3 – RCA & Kalsec 2027 Trends Event
New York, NY - December 4 - NYPS - Ideation Fresh Food Service Forum
Has the alcohol industry lost a generation?
The Mess Hall is now on the Heritage Radio Network, and we couldn't be happier about it. HRN is the world's largest collection of food and drink podcasts. It feels like home.
Our first episode on the network is out today. Maeve and Mike start with the hospitality moments that stuck with them from a trip to Tampa, from a bubble-wrap save in the Columbia Restaurant gift shop to a $50 tableside mozzarella that turned out to be worth every penny. Then wine and spirits data expert Alli Meyer joins us to dig into what's really happening with alcohol: whether Gen Z is drinking, how brand proliferation and inventory gluts are hurting the category, why wine lists and shelves stopped telling people what things taste like, why sweet and flavored products get looked down on when people clearly want them, and why smaller bottle sizes might be the fix nobody is pushing hard enough. Plus, Alli answers our five questions.
You can find it on all of your favorite podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Overcast), and now at heritageradionetwork.org.
Use your end-of-year budget for the answers you'll need in 2027.
Every fall clients tell there are still so many questions the team has been putting off. Or new ones that popped up over the course of the year. Or foundational data that they need ahead of 2027 planning, but they don't even know where to start.
A Menu Matters custom survey can be designed, fielded, and delivered well before the end of this calendar year. We'll work with you to build a nationally representative study around the questions that matter to your business (or a category- or brand-specific sample if that's what you need), analyze it the way we analyze our own research, and deliver a report your team can actually use in planning. Recent client studies have covered everything from awareness and usage data to what captive diners in hospitals and campuses want most to concept testing menu items with a brand's customers.
Imagine starting the year with fresh custom data that directly answers the questions you have. Use it internally or publicize it for thought leadership.
Build our 2027 survey with us. Then eat the results.
Guinness Open Gate Brewery
Join us at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Chicago for an event with the Chicagoland Food and Beverage Network.
On October 6 at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in the West Loop we'll walk through how we design and field our annual Trends & Drivers survey, and then we'll build one together, tailored to the food and beverage industry, and put it in front of real people. In part two, we reveal what they said. And you get to taste the results!
If you've ever wanted to see how the data behind a trend call actually gets made, this is the one.
Tickets are $80 general admission and $40 for CFBN members, and each part is sold separately.
