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Issue One, The Nostalgia Dining Issue

Crowd DNA’s monthly digest. Cultural insights to make the world go round…?

To look to the future of dining, we are going back in time. For all the appeal of uber convenient delivery or faster fast food (like the Taco Bells with no seating at all), there’s still a hunger for what eating out used to be like.

In this issue of Crowd Source, we look at dining nostalgia, and how it is used by a legacy food brand, helped one city restaurant go digital with humour, and inspired FoodTok recipes that taste good and make us feel good too...

For more appetizers and insightful mains on food from the Crowd team, read City Limits Volume Nine, The Super Food Issue – download it here .

1. No change is no bad thing…?

McDonald’s recent campaigns have put its 30 year history to good use. That’s the wonderment in the recreated 1982 McD’s in Brooklyn (cushioned booths! cash registers!), or the feel-good nostalgia of the recent campaign by Leo Burnett which tapped into 90’s nostalgia by featuring filofaxes, floppy discs, corded telephones and Teletext (and also retro trayliners and menu screen takeovers in UK restaurants).?

Read more here .

2. Happy childhood memories

For recipes that actually taste good from a TikTok creator, go follow the copycats of the retro American frozen meals, Kid Cuisine. What the chocolate pud or mac and cheese lacks in nutritional value (not a gut-boosting grain in sight), #kidcuisine makes up for in bringing up happy memories. Food nostalgia is big on FoodTok, from remembering much loved snacks to restaurants bringing back popular dishes.

Read more here .

3. Giving the past a glow-up

Fashion house Chanel takes over a diner in Williamsburg to celebrate its Chance fragrance. This removes the cringe (and the smell of fried onions, presumably) from revisits to the past. And in return, the staging of a launch in a diner serves up a relatability to the luxury fashion house.?

Read more here .

4. Nostalgia Menus

The restaurant chain Frankie & Benny’s ‘Bring It Back’ menu took us to 2003 when we could order a dish that included complex carbohydrates without any judgement (and with a Coca Cola float and chicken wings on the side). Frankie & Benny’s even took the prices back to 2003.?

Read more here .

5. Retro Digital Dining

There’s a third way to approach the digitisation of dining - neither data-tailored menus nor enacting a mobile phone ban. The interior of the 8-bit-bites restaurant in Brooklyn is designed with retro tech like LED ceiling lights, and tables where you can play PacMan and Super Mario Brothers. Still instagrammable, but this dining nostalgia evokes warm, shared memories in a way that tech in restaurants so often fails on.

Read more here .

Nostalgia In An Uncertain World

Read more at www.crowd.com

At Crowd, we report on how nostalgia plays an important role in how brands can deal with an uncertain world. In our recent webinar, Everything’s A Mess: Presenting The Opportunity In Uncertainty,?Crowd’s Rachel Rapp and Amy Nicholson look into its role in creating?opportunity when uncertainty prevails.

Read more here .

Meanwhile, we asked the Crowd team:

What of ‘the past’ do you refuse to let go of?

Stephanie, Head of Agency

"Texting because there are too many DMs and things to check these days - Messenger, IG, Whatsapp, etc etc. Just? text me! Or build an app that brings all my notifications from different apps together, and I'll just check that."

Jo, Associate Director

“I have a big collection of cassette tapes that I will never throw away, and my classic boombox that miraculously is still functioning.”

Olivia, Project Producer

“Using a manual diary! It’s a bit old fashioned but I have a Filofax which I buy new inserts for every year… I know I’ll remember it for sure if it goes in the Filofax? (which I carry all the time).”