The trend toward cooking international meals at home is likely to persist even as restrictions on indoor dining are lifted and restaurants reopen, said panelists during a Food Institute webinar, Wednesday.
“I think consumers will continue to want to cook at home, because they have learned the skills,” said Nona Lim, founder of the CPG brand that bears her name.
She also cited cost-effectiveness as one of the attractive aspects of home cooking, as well as the enjoyment consumers get out of it—especially if it is made easy by kits such as those her company sells through Whole Foods and other retailers across the country.
Rob Wilder, co-founder, vice chairman, and chief strategy officer at ThinkFoodGroup, which operates several acclaimed international restaurants created with chef José Andrés, said his company is also counting on people continuing to cook at home. The company tested a retail paella kit paired with a virtual cooking class during the pandemic, and the positive response has inspired a wider rollout. Consumers will be able to buy all the ingredients needed to make paella at home, and can then either scan a QR code to watch a recorded cooking class on YouTube or participate in a series of live classes online.
“It’s a way we can leverage technology, and this trend toward cooking at home,” said Wilder. “I think if people are cooking at home, they will be eating better food when they go out, too, and that’s going to help all of us.”
In addition to the paella kits, offered through the company’s Jaleo restaurants, Wilder said ThinkFoodGroup would also be expanding its retail operations. New items will include some products imported from Spain, and others created in the U.S. but “inspired by products from Spain,” he said.
“We’re really excited to up our game on the retail side, and we will have some exciting announcements about that side of our business which is small, but growing,” Wilder said.
Other topics discussed in the webinar, which was sponsored by investment banking firm Lazard Middle Market, included the evolution of consumer interest in international foods and the challenges of offering international foods that are both authentic and innovative.
Brian Choi, CEO of Food Institute, who moderated the panel, said FI’s research shows that sales of international foods will outpace sales of broader food categories during the next five years.
Consumers are showing increased interest in international foods for several reasons, Lim said, including the experiences from their own travels around the world, greater exposure of these cuisines on television, and the near-instant buzz that can be generated on social media.
“Trends happen so much quicker now than they might have 10 years ago,” she said.
Sameer Malhotra, CEO and co-founder of Café Spice Global Cuisine, said consumers are much more open to new flavors and ingredients than they were when his company first launched as an Indian restaurant in the 1990s.
One significant trend he has noticed is that consumers are also seeking out more plant-based options within international cuisines. Indian food, with its heavy reliance on vegetables, sauces, and spices, is ideally suited to meet those demands, he said.
The company, which now has a manufacturing business supplying products from multiple cuisines at retail, has seen increased interest from retailers for Café Spice’s plant-based options. It has been creating more vegetarian and vegan options, using cashew cream instead of dairy in some recipes, for example, Malhotra said.
Melding Innovation and Authenticity
The panelists said they have found ways to be innovative while retaining their products’ authenticity.
Wilder noted that modern authentic restaurants in Spain, for example, are constantly experimenting by using traditional ingredients in new ways.
“If you are not innovating, you are not an authentic modern Spanish restaurant,” he said.
Lim, whose company has been built around taking traditional Asian dishes and revamping them with better-for-you formulations, said her goal is to provide authentic flavors, sometimes using nontraditional ingredients and methods.
The company offers a vegan Pad Thai, for example, that replaces the traditional fish sauce used in that dish with a plant-based formulation that she said mirrors the taste of the dish people may be accustomed to when they order it in a Thai restaurant.
The panelists all said they consider product innovation a critical component of their operations.
Malhotra of Café Spice said his innovation team meets monthly, and the company often sends test products to a core group of longtime fans of the brand to gather their feedback. He and Hari Nayak, culinary director of Café Spice, also conduct cooking demonstrations on college campuses, both to generate buzz for the brand and gauge consumer response to new dishes.
ThinkFoodGroup, meanwhile, has a team of research and development chefs who work separately from the company’s restaurants and who are continuously experimenting with new menu items and refining current ones, Wilder said.
At Nona Lim, Lim said she has learned to become more conscious of retailers’ needs as her company develops its products.
“During ideation, you have to think about where you want your products to be in the store,” she said. “I think one of the problems we had in the past was that we spent so much time thinking about the end user, that we did not stop to think about which part of the store the product would fit in. Which buyer would you actually go to?”
Now she said, she tries to think holistically of the entire value chain for the product, from manufacturing to packaging to the end user.
Both Nona Lim and Café Spice have won sofi Awards from the Specialty Food Association for their creations.
Related: Restaurant-Level Products, Values-Based Shopping Top Specialty Food Live! Trends; Convenience, Comfort, Plant-Forward Drive Specialty Frozen Food Sales.
Image: Nona Lim