At PSE Associates, we work with restaurants and pubs selling different food and drink options from High Street brands to the most exclusive names in the hospitality industry. Our clients help us to keep up with the latest trends when it comes to what people are eating and drinking; over the past few years, for instance, we’ve seen the rise and rise of different gins and a trend towards more vegan menu options. So, we thought we’d look at what’s on the horizon for 2019.
When we’re talking to clients, one thing we’ve noticed recently is an increased focus on interior design. How a venue looks is important and one reason for this is Instagram! We’re all used to people photographing their meals and even their drinks – particularly cocktails – but a cool interior will also make it onto Instagram. While you’re checking out the latest restaurant interiors, why don’t you follow us on Instagram @pseassociates.
In terms of what people will be consuming this year, after an explosion of Middle Eastern inspired restaurants during 2018 – with Turkish eating places appearing on every High Street – experts tell us that the next big thing will be Sri Lankan and Burmese food.
Up until now, Sri Lankan food has arguably been shoehorned in with Indian. Nowadays though, we don’t just go out for ‘an Indian’, having had our taste buds opened to the different regional cuisines this country offers. Our client, Kricket, has brought that home to us with its modern approach to regional Indian cuisine, with dishes inspired by the food of different areas such as Goa, Bombay and Hyderabad.
Vegetarian and, indeed, vegan food has been in the news already in 2019, with lots of people committing to Veganuary. According to data shared by M&S, 3.5 million people now identify as vegan, 20% of under-35s have tried veganism and 25% of our evening meals are now meat-free.
It’s pretty certain then that 2019 will continue to see a growth in both vegan restaurants and vegan dishes on menus.
Meat, though, is still on the plate for many and the latest trend in 2019 is likely to be goat. Described as a versatile meat and popular in Caribbean, Indian and African dishes, it is becoming more mainstream.
According to an article in The Guardian last year healthy-sustainable-flavour goat meat is sustainable, healthy (it is lower in saturated fat and cholesterol than most red meat) and full of flavour.
Interestingly, the article’s author, Felicity Cloake, mentions a visit to our client Kricket (in this case the Soho restaurant) where goat dishes included then a ‘rich, offal-spiked keema’ and a curry, described by Time Out as the ‘best thing on the menu’.
Another trend which is surely set to continue is the decrease in the use of plastics, with paper straws replacing plastic ones across the restaurant and pub trade during 2018. Here at PSE Associates, we have a firm-wide commitment to recycling wherever we can and reducing the amount of plastics we use as a firm too.
When it comes to what those paper straws are going into, gin is likely to remain popular. Sales of UK gin doubled in value in the past five years, with exports and domestic sales totalling £2.2 billion in the year ended 16 June 2018, according to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The number of distilleries has more than doubled to more than 300, as artisan gin makers have appeared nationwide. Flavoured gins and pink gins are likely to remain popular through 2019
PSE Associates provides traditional professional Quantity Surveying and Project Management services to many brand leaders in the leisure, retail and commercial sectors.