ABSTRACT
The message of this chapter in the original edition of Strategic Questions in Food and Beverage Management was that the limited availability of publicly available trend data made it very difficult to discern what is ‘going on’ in food and beverage markets and yet, at the same time, there was longitudinal evidence of relatively slow and limited change in people’s tastes and preferences for particular foods, this evidence coming from mainly historical and sociological surveys of food habits largely ignored, or at best treated patchily, by food and beverage educators. The theme of this revised chapter is much the same, but with the added benefit, if indeed it is a benefit, that more – though perhaps surprisingly not much more – information is available than was the case 16 years ago, not least because of the increased availability of research by governments, market research organisations and other sources on the Internet. Current conceptions of food and beverage management are beset by myths, half-truths and the downright spurious when it comes to ‘facts’ about consumer tastes and preferences. In this (and the next) chapter we seek to uncover some of the evidence-based realities of dining out.
