New Food and Restaurant Trends

In this essay, we highlight some of the most relevant changes in the gastronomic field, related to consumption patterns, food practices, the organization of food services and restaurant management. Food has become a determining factor in the definition of individual identity, and a prime focus of traditional media, social networks, consumer movements and associations. First at all, the chapter analyses the new role of social media in gastronomy, which changes the purchase procedure. We then intend to present the most significant innovations in the world of food consumption, with particular attention to super foods, which have had a great diffusion in recent times, fusion food, that relates local and global, novel foods (such as artificial meat and insects), which instead are starting to appear now on the market. In the second part of essay the analysis focuses on the changes in catering, which accelerated sharply with the Covid-19 pandemic. Restaurants are transforming organizational models and customer relationships, while hard kitchens, ghost kitchens and cloud kitchens are born to adapt to the needs of the delivery service.