Foodservice educators across North America earn recognition for their creativity in the culinary classroom.

The Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) recognized three educators in the 2014 CAFÉ-Idaho Potato Commission Innovation Awards at the 10th-annual Leadership Conference of the Center for the Advancement of Foodservice Education (CAFÉ) in Salt Lake City this summer.

“Our involvement in encouraging innovation and creativity among culinary instructors and students is very rewarding to us as well as the recipients,” says Don Odiorne, IPC’s vice president of foodservice. “After all, one of the goals of our Idaho potato growers is to reach the next generation of farmers, too, and equip them with the skills to continue to learn, progress and succeed in a changing world.”

Ten years’ worth of surveys, interviews and roundtable discussions reveal the evolution of trends in the education segments.

Courtesy of Y-Pulse (ypulse.org), a division of Olson Communications 

Ten years ago Y-Pulse (www.ypulse.org) began tracking foodservice trends through the nation’s leading foodservice directors in the education segments, as well as their young customers, to give food marketers insight on what would shape the tastes of tomorrow’s consumers. This latest report identifies how young consumers’ tastes are setting the pace for tomorrow’s menus.

In K-12 schools, lunch has become a learning lab empowering young consumers with the knowledge they need to make mindful nutritious choices. Today’s school foodservice directors are serving up a lot more than breakfast and lunch; 96% consider teaching nutrition education to be an important part of their job. On college and university campuses, foodservice directors are on the cutting edge of experimentation with new foods, new concepts and new delivery systems for some of the most demanding consumers in America.

Pastry-chef instructors from Joliet Junior College, SAIT Polytechnic and The Pennsylvania School of Culinary Arts hope to become the 12^th, 13^th and 14^th CMPCs in the United States.

Four pastry chefs from across the nation will gather at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 16-23, for the ultimate test—the American Culinary Federation’s (ACF) Certified Master Pastry Chef® (CMPC) exam. The eight-day long exam gives candidates the opportunity to earn the highest professional distinction available and join the elite group of only 11 CMPCs in the nation.

The Certified Master Chef® (CMC) program was initiated in 1981 and granted official recognition by the World Association of Chefs Societies the next year. The CMPC examination, first held in 1993, requires exacting familiarity and proficiency in a broad range of pastry styles and techniques. The most recent CMPC exam was held in 2005 at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Frank Vollkommer, CMPC, corporate executive chef at Hillcrest Foods in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was the only candidate to pass the exam and receive the master-chef certification. Currently, there are 67 CMCs and 11 CMPCs in the United States, with a CMC exam scheduled for late 2014.

“How are you today?”, though arguably better than nothing, is so overused and insincere that it fails to distinguish the service culture of your retail foodservice outlets. To employ an effective interaction strategy (and increase sales), understand that customers respond on conscious and unconscious levels to every aspect of their engagement with your instructors and student employees.

By Renee Zonka, RD, CEC, CHE, MBA

Last month, I wrote about how an “interaction economy” is replacing the “experience economy” with which the United States has identified since 1999 upon the publication of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine, II, and James H. Gilmore. As I stated, everyone can identify with the basic premise of an experience economy, in which companies state an “experience” when they engage customers in a memorable way.

In the candy and chips aisles, Sriracha is undoubtedly the pepper of the year, as evidenced at the Sweets & Snacks Expo in May. And “free from” claims reign supreme in this industry. A foremost food-trends expert surveys the landscape of cross-over flavor demands between the snack shop and restaurant.

By Sharon Olson, courtesy of Olson Communications

It might seem simply a sweet indulgence to attend the annual Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago, but there is a refreshing perspective and much to be learned from a show that is centered on candy and snacks. The energy at the 2014 Sweets & Snacks Expo, May 20-22, was a remarkable contrast to the National Restaurant Association Show on the other side of McCormick Place.

Here, business professionals are scurrying around the show with bags of samples and the sparkle of excitement in their eyes at almost every booth. A curated display of couture style made completely of candy wrappers tells the visitor that this show is a world all its own.

This report explores some of the parallel perspectives on the trends seen at the candy show that have relevance to the food business and not just the sweet side of foodservice.