Yelp's 2023 Forecast

Phil: So 2023, it's time that we're starting to look at all these food trends that are coming out. Ours is gonna come out, in a few weeks from now. But Yelp does something interesting. What they do is they look at the millions of searchers to find the words, the phrases and the businesses that saw a significant increase between 2021 and 2022 across different categories. So I'm just gonna throw some of these out and I want reaction to it. Experiential dining, that was up significantly, but underwater restaurant searches we're up 263%. 

Sally: Yes. I find this fascinating. I wanna know more. I wanna know how many of these there are. What I do know, Phil, is that we do have one here in Nashville. We are one of You're kidding. One. Yes. And it's called the Aquarium Restaurant. And it's just a couple of miles down the road from my house at the Opry Mills Mall, right by where they have the Grand Ole Opry and a lot of tourist attractions. But this is a, this is an experience, a restaurant experience where you are surrounded by an aquarium and it's really cool. The food's not amazing, but it is a cool experience. 

Phil: So you have to go into the fish tank and get a fresh fish and have them cook it for you. Ok. Slushy drinks are up 77% and it's not just slushies for kids, but slushies for adults, pickle flavored foods up 55% oxtails which is, you know the tail of a cow, basically up 45%. What of these, what do you think are fads versus trends? 

Sally: Oh, fads versus trends. You know, we've seen pickled flavored foods before. I know we've seen that before and we've seen dirty sodas, Hojicha, and I'm not sure if I'm saying it correctly, as a kind of Japanese green tea that is brewed a little bit differently than regular green tea. We have seen a lot of tea trends over the past few years, so that one sounds interesting to me. What I really found, fun in here, I think about when the Cronut was really popular or any kind of like galaxy pastries or you know, we always have some sort of pastry that is a big trend it seems and does well on TikTok. But at the Lafayette Bakery they have got something called the Supreme, which is a cream filled croissant. Now that sounds amazing to me. 

Phil: See, you know, a croissant, a really good croissant, you know, is full of butter and really flaky. And then so you take that butter, you're really indulging the croissant, and then you stuff it full of cream. It's probably enough to eat for, you know, a week.  

Sally: Not healthy.