The Future is Now!

The customer walks into a restaurant.  She passes the host stand that acknowledges her presence especially since it has been tracking her journey to the restaurant since leaving home.  She proceeds to her table.  All at once, her order is communicated to the chef to prepare her to meal to her exact dietary needs while her bank account is debited, including tip.  When the order is ready the server brings it to the customer who has been catching up on e-mails, meeting with a friend, etc.  A truly seamless business transaction that meets the expectations of all concerned.  How will that change what chefs need to know in the future?  The service staff? 

Are we preparing our students for that future?  Which, by the way, exists in independent forms waiting to be linked up soon by some App maker.

Moreoever, what do our student know of "Nutraceuticals?"  A combination of nutrition and pharmaceuticals already being formulated by food giants and on the market like Nestle?  What about Phytosterols?  Probiotics?  Conjugated Lineolic Acid (CLA)?  Tonalin?  Nutragenomics?

Here is my point.  Technology is a game changer in one industry after another.  And what about culinary arts and sciences?  I do not mean training a kid to program the merry chef to cook a burger or a pizza.  It is more than that to say the least.

I am talking about the evolution of what food will mean to people in the very near future beyond that of getting a foot long sandwich for five dollars and the reason they are enticed into buying "vitamin water."  Albeit important, while we dick around teaching a kid the difference between cooking tender and less tender cuts of beef there is an entirely different conversation about meat at Food Science programs like the one at Purdue that has a culinary arts emphasis. 

The simple truth is that customers are going to demand more from the food service industry and our students and those who teach them better be prepared to deliver.  Otherwise, our customers will start dining at some restaurant chain launched by a pharmaceutical company-food giant-bank that decides to launch a new age "health food" restaurant concept that is designed to treat their diabetes, hypertension, etc., in the way I described at the beginning of this blog post.  They will hire our students not to screw it up.