What Google’s new food report reveals about future noncommercial trends

The mad data scientists at Google crunched the company’s food search numbers from January 2014 to February 2016, and the results are in. The Food Trends 2016 report divides the data into six categories: Sustained Risers, Seasonal Risers, Rising Stars, Sustained Decliners, Seasonal Decliners and Falling Stars—what Google defines as “trends to watch” and “trends to forget.”

While the report covers all food-related queries on the search engine and not just those related to noncommercial industries, we saw some similarities to menu items trending in FoodService Director’s segment-based censuses and 2015 Chefs’ Council menu trends survey. With that in mind, we took a look at hot and fizzling trends in Google’s report to see what could be big with operators in the near future (Buffalo cauliflower FTW) and what’s falling in line with current noncommercial favorites.

Google Rising Stars: Three cheers to turmeric

The bright yellow ginger cousin, popular in Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine, also tops the search engine’s list of Food with a Function with 56 percent growth from November to January. While it hasn’t specifically popped up in any of FSD’s segment censuses or surveys yet, the huge popularity of international flavors among noncommercial diners means it’s probably not far from trending.

Google Rising Trend: Traveling through taste

Pho and ramen were ranked No. 1 and 2, respectively, in this section of Google’s report, with pho consistently showing 11 percent year-over-year growth since 2013. This may be an area where FSDs are ahead of the curve; noodle bowls with international flavors like gochujang, Sriracha and black garlic were huge among diners in the Chefs’ Council survey, with multiple operators predicting them as the breakout food trend of 2016. Some Google trends that could be next for noncommercial: Hispanic and Tex-Mex flavors, and dishes such as taquitos, empanadas, queso fresco, cotija cheese, pastelitos, adobo seasoning and elotes. (And “Mexican chips.” Who actually searches for “Mexican chips”?)

Google Rising Trend: Bite-sized snacks

Searchers are looking for flavors both sweet (mug cakes, mochi ice cream, French toast sticks) and savory (cheese curds, Buffalo cauliflower bites, mac and cheese bites) in their wee snacks, with flavor, health and customization among their top priorities, Google’s report found. While noncommercial customers have been reaching for scratch-made and grab-and-go snacks, the tiny trend could be a natural fit here; 58 percent of Chefs’ Council survey respondents said they are serving more snacks than in the past two years.

Google health benefit trends: Healthy, not stealthy

Searchers still are trying to figure out whether those pesky granola bars are healthy. The popular snacks showed a 94 percent increase in queries since January 2014, while terms like “honey and cinnamon benefits,” “healthy ade kombucha,” “is almond milk healthy,” “fenugreek benefits” and “bone broth benefits” also spiked. (I admittedly had to Google “fenugreek”; it’s a seed.) Noncommercial operators we surveyed trended more toward local produce and clean labels in their pursuit of health rather than specific dishes and ingredients; 77 percent of respondents in our Chefs’ Council survey said they expect GMO-free to be a big health trend in 2016, while 67 percent said the same of antibiotic-free foods.

Google dietary restriction trends: Gluten still going strong

While it may seem like the gluten-free movement should have exhausted itself by now, it hasn’t lost momentum among Google searchers or noncommercial operations. “Gluten free foods” as a search term showed 140 percent growth since January 2014, while “gluten free bread,” “gluten intolerance,” “gluten free pasta,” “gluten free flour,” “is quinoa gluten free” and “is rice gluten free” also posted gains. (Quinoa and rice both are gluten-free, in case you didn’t feel like Googling it.) Half of respondents in FSD’s 2016 Healthcare Census saw gluten-free as an increasing trend in the next two years; 87 percent of college and university operators said the same in our 2015 C&U Census.