Trends to LOOK out for

Trends to look out for:

• Menus will blend, with traditional compartmentalization according to time of day being dispensed with in recognition of the fact that we now work 24 hours a day. More fluid ‘all-day’ menus will become the norm, allowing customers to eat what they need without having to conform to an outdated eating schedule.
• A new arrival experience will become common. Restaurants will need space to co-ordinate home-delivery systems, whether their own or those of dedicated delivery providers. Layout design will need to keep pick-up areas separate from in-house customer service, and maybe even provide separate food preparation and distribution systems.
• Biophilia – a re-connection with nature – is an emerging phenomenon, with increased demand for plant-based food. We will see more living green walls and indoor planting schemes. Locally sourced food and less use of plastics will be also be expected.
• Retail design needs to create an experience, and F&B is central to that. Cutting and carving retail developments to provide flexible and diverse F&B space could potentially increase commercial value and drive footfall, providing a vibrant community hub. It is our belief that F&B has become a crucial component for any successful retail or mixed-use development.
• In a saturated market, F&B providers need to differentiate themselves and to become as efficiently organized as possible. We are seeing that F&B provision is becoming a much more important component of retail and mixed-use developments, taking much more floor space, as people look for more of an experience from shopping and leisure developments.Trends
• It’s not just about retail. Anyone who pays attention to the retail industry knows that it’s getting more complex and multi-layered, adding hotels, apartments, offices and activities to traditional store lineups. Traditional retailers were joined by technology startups, consumer research experts, and unexpected retailers. Giving a Virtual Reality demonstration rather than purely talking about design and materials. In some ways, the world of retail is contracting and in other ways, our universe is expanding.
• The new luxury is for everyone. The luxury retail sector changed dramatically during the recession and Millennial's in particular have never really come back to traditional luxury. The new luxury is about exclusivity, convenience and experience rather than a particular price point. When Millennial's think about luxury, they also want the products they buy to be sustainable.
• Ecosystems make it happen. The newest brands are more like collectives than single monoliths. Different companies that encompasses more than 50 other brands, is on the cutting edge of collaborative branding efforts. They have a outlet that is a bit of a brand chameleon; any company who wants to collaborate at the outlet can re-brand it with a new name. A fitness studio, is another of their expanded offerings. Although the classes are not free, they are not designed to make the company money, but to drive additional foot traffic. Customers could come to the store to take a class and then decide to buy a health drink, for example. The idea of a product-only store is dead.
• One thing all the companies have in common, no matter how many brands they cover, is that they’re all looking into new sales channels and how to market them in the rapidly changing retail ecosystem.
• Millennial's and big data aren’t going anywhere. Everyone is a little sick of hearing about Millennial and how they’ve “killed” this industry or that product, especially Millennial's themselves. Nevertheless, as the largest consumer group anywhere, they will continue to be the basis for a lot of research and development efforts. As big data and real-time analytics get more and more sophisticated, that research will get more and more targeted.