Harry Styles Can Save the Restaurant Industry

I'm an avid consumer of pop culture and enjoy connecting what's happening socially to what's next for the restaurant industry. If guest counts are the determinant of health, we have some work ahead of us and might look to Harry Styles' to provide the answer.

A great brand can rise above the function of satisfying hunger and thirst to instead meet the emotional needs of their consumer. That's the aspiration. As an innovator tasked with creating promotions and strengthening an iconic brand, I looked to trends beyond restaurants to serve as inspiration. I was less interested in cauliflower becoming the new Brussels sprouts and more interested in what songs are being streamed or what apps are being added to smartphones. Specific needs and themes often arise which have applications to the restaurant industry. How can we as innovators, marketers, and brand stewards learn from their cultural relevance?

The movie Wonder Woman is a runaway success not only because it was a great movie, but also because its archetypes continue a dialogue about feminism that’s been threading through politics and pop culture. Spiderman: Homecoming has been called a return to form for the franchise by sending Peter Parker back to his high school roots. One review even cited John Hughes as the movie’s touchstone which roots Spiderman in the nostalgia trend we’ve been tracking since brown spirits, hipster haircuts, and game nights invaded Brooklyn. For us, old school menu items and flavors like Nutella, crepes, casseroles, and cake batter find a renewed relevance.

Movies and music alike reflect consumers’ tastes, sometimes eerily presciently. If we look at the Mumford & Sons zeitgeist closely, we could have foretold the changes in food service from mass market to independent edge. The Edison lightbulbs strewn across Mumford’s stage and even the vests they wore in their first video for “Little Lion Man” in 2010 became the gastro pub norm. Their sound eschewed synthesizers and we soon embraced their natural approach to creation with local, organic, and cleaner ingredients.

Harry Styles’ new album heartens back to Fleetwood Mac while other seemingly prefabricated artists like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga have embraced more organic musicality in their bid for longevity. Watch as this reaction to The Chainsmokers’ scientific perfection takes root. What's next for restaurants? Hyper-local doesn't resonate any more than local, so perhaps it's about simpler plates. Less sauces. Proteins as the hero. Seasonings as their facilitator. Mumford & Sons for the next decade.

This year’s song of the summer is “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber. Marketers has been working to broaden most any brand’s appeal to the emerging and empowered Hispanic consumer. All it took to turn a hot niche song into a blockbuster was adding Justin Bieber as a safe broadening of appeal. Bieber isn't Latin but that doesn't mean the song doesn't taste good. We could also get into how rap and R&B dominate streaming services yet tend to lag on the radio and – to a lesser extent – the Billboard’s Hot 100. Consumers are consuming differently. We could also emphasize how African-American consumers are generally underserved in our business.

Let’s look at apps. Bitmoji is a top app where users can create their own avatars and emojis. Marketers have spoken about co-creation and consumers need to express themselves through your brand. The restaurant company that breaks out of its old POP, purchasing and training regimens will use this trend to their advantage. Another app that’s expanding beyond the purview of Millennials is Venmo whose immediacy removes the financial anxieties of bringing friends together. It took a third party to capitalize on the splitting check issue we've been wrestling for, oh, 4 decades.

We operate within a broader culture. That’s the point. Having been a leader in casual dining, I know we would sell ourselves short if we simply looked to our industry for the trends. Fine dining might foretell what flavors will come next, but we must deliver more than just food to compete in today’s ever-evolving market. Takeout is our savior, but a few years too late since we first started tracking consumers’ need for faster experiences.

Deconstructing what's happening in pop culture has an application in our industry. Sometimes the correlation is strong. Sometimes it's tenuous. Every time, it's interesting. As Harry Styles’ says, just stop you’re crying… it’s a sign of times.