Trend watch: How we ate in 2019
The great sandwich wars
Popeyes launched the defining battle of 2019 when it dropped a new sandwich: a crispy fried slab of chicken breast on a toasted brioche bun with pickles and mayonnaise. That was a clear encroachment on territory occupied by Chick-fil-A, and when the widely beloved fast-food chain subtly acknowledged the challenge on Twitter, the contest was on. Consumers chose sides on social media and rushed to Popeyes franchises everywhere to wait out long lines for a taste of the potential usurper. The new sandwich was entirely sold out at one point in August, and when the dust cleared, both Southern-born chains looked like winners, with sales up and all would-be rivals looking like also-rans in a category that was already eating into burger sales.
Faux meat everywhere
A more significant revolution was playing out elsewhere in the fast-food landscape. In August, Burger King brought plant-based meat to the masses when it started selling its Impossible Whopper in 7,200 locations nationwide. Customer response was so robust, it drove the biggest boost in Burger King revenues in four years, and while some patrons claimed not to be fooled by the Impossible’s taste and texture, many skeptics were won over. “My senses were instantly blasted with Whopper’s trademark wall of flavor,” said David McGrath in the Chicago Tribune. “I was not disappointed.” Though beef remains king— Americans consume 6.4 billion fast-food burgers annually—behavior is clearly changing. In late August, an Atlanta Kentucky Fried Chicken conducted a test run on plant-based fried chicken and ran out of the Beyond
Meat product in just five hours. McDonald’s is meanwhile testing its P.L.T. (Plant Lettuce and Tomato) sandwich in Canada. It predicts annual global sales could reach 250 million.
The hard-seltzer bubble
OK, “bubble” might not be the right word. Hard seltzer came out of nowhere this year, but the cans of White Claw or Truly that you probably saw at every summer party signaled a wave too large to evaporate. White Claw claims to have outsold Budweiser at times during the summer, and apparently did so despite widespread shortages. But a reckoning could arrive one day, when drinkers realize that the low-calorie, low-alcohol, slightly sweet, gluten-free beverages aren’t much better for them than beer or wine.
“Ultimately you’re still getting drunk,” said Esther Mobley in the San Francisco Chronicle, “and there’s just no way to spin that as a healthy choice.”
The new asceticism
If there was one new trend in dieting, it was not eating at all. “Intermittent fasting” was the most searched-for diet term on Google in 2019, reflecting new momentum for a concept that started sweeping through Hollywood and the executive set in Silicon Valley a couple of years earlier. Today show co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager committed together to giving the practice a whirl, swearing not to eat anything for at least 12 consecutive hours each day. Other methods involve fasting for 24 hours at a time two or three times each week, but in every case the hope is that giving the body a break from digesting food will deliver a range of health benefits. A similar urge to abstain is emerging in Americans’ drinking patterns. Young adults who label themselves “sober curious” are swearing off booze for a month or more at a time or curtailing consumption drastically—and bars are responding by developing high-end mocktails and botanical elixirs. Millennials, said Amanda Mull in The Atlantic, “might just be tired of drinking so much.”
Ghost restaurants
No, they aren’t the spirits of restaurants past. “Ghost restaurants” are operations that prepare meals for delivery customers only, and the growth of online food-delivery services is fueling their spread. A restaurant that requires no space for seating and no budget for servers or ambience obviously costs a fraction of what a traditional startup would, and when a menu concept flops, the food can be changed. The potential here is vast, especially considering that the ghosts can keep multiplying after gobbling up a large share of the current takeout trade. As a Forbes story predicted, “Eventually, ghost restaurants will start to replace home kitchens.”
Ugly produce
Potatoes that look like W.C. Fields and tomatoes that appear to have suffered horrific head-on collisions earned fresh attention this year as webbased services such as Market Misfits and Imperfect Foods popped up, promising to help reduce food waste. The companies box and ship misshapen fruits and veggies to buyers who pay far lower prices than they would for unblemished groceries. Critics claim that most ugly produce has always been used anyway—for products such as juices and salsas. But some farmers say the movement has helped boost wholesale prices, motivating them to harvest some perfectly edible food that would have otherwise been left to rot.