New food options through creative cooking in local bodegas, food trucks and convenience stores.
Restaurants are adapting to changes in consumer demand, wants, needs and delivery methods by implementing variety based cooking and dining. Given there are many many options when it comes to food—and who doesn’t love food—there are always so many ways and times a person could eat a specific meal or dining option before they want something new. For example, the Big Mac is a delicious hamburger, one could eat that many times before they adapt to taste and price, but chains like Chipotle, Panda Express, and others have fantastic menu items but consumer demand is ongoing, people want to experience different foods, ingredients, and experiences to feather away from routine dining or a meal prep habit, not to mention the popularity of in home cooking, instructional videos and preparing and eating meals based on your own measurements and ingredient preferences. This being said, the competitive nature of food, food options, dining and the collective dining experience is constantly changing, especially during Covid days. One creative introduction going against the grain when it comes to food options and new dining methods are installed kitchens inside liquor stores, convenient stores, food trucks and possible places where edible food items are stored can be modified to make the dish of your liking based on the ingredients or items of your choice.
An example of this can been seen in many local based bodegas and mobile food trucks. You’ll find a conventional and traditional Liquor / Convenient store with an added grill and food storage equipment to facilitate your variety based meal needs. The concept behind this enables customers to get creative at there own liking by choosing any edible item(s) in the store and combining various foods and concoctions to create new sandwiches, salads, breakfast, and more. An example of this could be a burger and cheese between two Pop-Tarts, or an anchovies and cheddar cheese on spinach salad—the combinations in sweet and salty could go into the thousands. People are finding a liking to this in addition to there normal food routine, it also improves the cooks understanding of the different combinations of preference and may improve his or her mixing and matching skill.
Examples of this are also seen on food trucks, or pop up restaurants where the food or the cook have no specific menu or price but rather put things together based on your preference. Given these establishments are limited on ingredients and brands compared to a restaurant or bodega the concept is still fun and entertaining. There are also places where the menu has no price, the customer chooses what to pay but seating and interaction are limited.
Nevertheless, variety based experiences and settings are important factors in the food business. The important thing is that restaurants bring collaboration—a way to discuss, laugh, and think tank potential business ideas without the confounds and social boundaries at the office. It’s a initial stepping stone to bring ideas to life with chefs and concoction specialists renovating new flavor in taste, sights and sounds. The concept of the grab what you like and we’ll put it together provides insight on how ingredients and presentation will change, but also, how technology may work with the introduction of the Metaverse where people can acquire skills by grabbing objects and tools through access and combining them with other objects to build things.