Ideas, research, and case studies from the garnish team.
Last week, more than 53,000 foodservice professionals descended on Chicago’s McCormick Place for the 105th National Restaurant Association Show. By the time the show wrapped on Tuesday, the trade press was already arguing about what came next. Three 2026 National Restaurant Show trends rose above the noise, and every one of them is going to…
Mother’s Day is the second-busiest restaurant holiday of the year. Valentine’s Day wins by a hair, but the gap is small, and Mother’s Day puts a different kind of pressure on the kitchen. Sunday, your team, your floor, and your menu all got pushed harder than they will on most other Sundays in 2026. Which…
A restaurant menu has always been a sales tool — it tells guests what’s worth ordering, what’s in season, what the kitchen is proud of. But menus are quietly becoming something else: a safety tool.
Beef tallow is having a resurgence. Depending on who’s talking, it’s being framed as a return to “traditional” cooking, a better-tasting frying fat, or a cleaner alternative to seed oils. That debate can rage on elsewhere. For people like me who live with Alpha-gal Syndrome, beef tallow in a fryer is not a food-trend talking…
Last month, I visited a restaurant whose menu promised “Grandma’s Famous Meatloaf – A hearty, home-style comfort food masterpiece made with love and served with creamy mashed potatoes and garden-fresh green beans………….$18.99” What arrived was…
In 2018, a missing comma cost a Maine dairy company $5 million in overtime payments. One tiny punctuation mark. Five. Million. American. Dollars. The court case hinged on this sentence in Maine’s overtime law: “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of” agricultural products. Notice what’s missing?
Here’s a restaurant reality check: two identical plates of spaghetti with marinara sauce. One menu calls it simply “Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce…… $12.” The other calls it “Rustic Tuscan Spaghetti with San Marzano Tomato Reduction 18.” Guess which one customers order more often?
You spent months sourcing heirloom tomatoes and local goat cheese from a small dairy farm, yet your menu reads: “Tomatoes with Goat Cheese.” That’s like calling the Mona Lisa “portrait of lady.” Let’s add some flavor—minus the flowery prose that makes diners gag.
I walked into a new local restaurant last month—exposed brick, Edison bulbs, the works. Super-nice vibe. Then I opened the menu. Ceasar Salad with Parmesean Cheese………. $8.00 My heart sank.