On the floor at Fancy Food Show 2021

Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson of Sioux Chef, a rising trend for 2021.

No, not really. In a normal year we’d be on our way to San Francisco for the Winter Fancy Food Show 2021 where we’d sample wares, talk to producers, and guess what food trends would be hot and not in the coming year. But currently we can’t get into San Francisco (actually we can, but we’d immediately go into a 10 day quarantine) and the Fancy Food Show is happening virtually through something called Specialty Food Live! 2021.

Reminiscent of the many Zoom food tasting and preparation events in 2020, the Specialty Food Association offered vendors the chance to participate in a “virtual tasting experience” in which they could get their products into the hands and mouths of prospective buyers for a fee of $249; the sessions sold out. Beyond that there have been a number of online seminars we could access with our press credentials, and a virtual showcase where vendors are invited to put up a web offering equivalent to the experience of tasting at a booth at the live show. But specialty food businesses are typically not internet-savvy because so much of their business is done in person and the showcases we sampled were mostly predictable press releases.

Still, we found among the emails and web pages a few developments worth noting:

• The annual Trendspotters’ Index predicts that home-bound customers will be willing to spend more for a restaurant-quality food experience, eg “smoked watermelon salt for use on fruits and vegetables; a sauce that combined the seven toppings of the classic Chicago Hot Dog into one condiment [editorial comment: why?]; sliced Calabrian chiles; and cocktail mixes like a smoked maple old-fashioned syrup for at-home bartending.”
• Godiva Chocolates’ 128 retail stores are closing by end of Q1 2021, in response to the pandemic and changing consumer habits. “The company has begun to shift its focus to food, drug, and mass retail outlets and online options to meet growing consumer demand.”
• Costco, famous for its high quality goods and long checkout lines, is testing curbside service in Albuquerque. Consumers can choose from 2000 items and have them loaded into their cars for a $10 fee. There is a minimum $100 order, as you’d expect from Costco.
• We don’t know what it is but it sounds exciting: Farmstead opens a series of “dark stores” which we’ll guess are equivalent to “ghost kitchens” for restaurants that don’t have a physical presence; in this case the products are home-delivered high end produce and the service is making a profit in San Francisco while the new location in Miami has a waiting list.
• In Minneapolis, a new restaurant called Owamni will introduce Twin Cities residents to native American foods. Sean Sherman, the “Sioux Chef”, told MPLS Magazine: “It’s the food from exactly right here that’s exactly under your feet that seems foreign for some reason. People are always asking me where to get the ingredients for my recipes: Where do you buy fresh cedar for tea? You don’t. Go outside with a knife.”

If these tidbits leave you hungry, we feel the same way. But it’s not likely this hug-centric, mouth-stuffing event will return to its classic format any time soon.