Next year’s restaurant industry trend predictions are in, and they include avocado coffee (an Indonesian delicacy), gourmet egg sandwiches and Burger King Whoppers made with Halloumi cheese instead of burgers. 

Why it matters: As the pandemic lingers, its shaping what ingredients are available as well as how we eat, with newfound habits that we once thought were temporary turning out to be permanent.

Driving the news: A new forecast from Technomic, a food service industry consultancy, predicts that many trends of the past year — like ghost kitchens, meal kits and restaurants selling groceries — will likely persist.

• “We continue to see the push towards selling foods that are meant to be consumed outside of the restaurant, whether it’s to-go ordering or delivery,” says Aaron Jourden, a senior research manager at Technomic.

Jourden and his team scour menus from 25 countries to glean trends about what we’ll be eating and how we’ll consume it. They expect to see these dishes and ingredients popping up globally:

• Mutabal, a Middle Eastern eggplant dip like baba ghanoush.
• Plant-based eggs.
• Pao de queijo, a Brazilian cheese bread.
• Tlayudas, a Mexican-style pizza built on a crispy tortilla.
• Halloumi, a Greek cheese that Technomic says is “primed for the centre stage as a craveable, vegetarian-friendly alternative to meat.”

Another prediction: “Avocado coffee will expand out of Indonesia and other parts of Asia into global markets.”

• The drink, known as jus alpukat, is typically made with avocado, condensed milk, and either coffee or chocolate.

Details: Breakfast is rising in global clout, with more chefs making hand-held egg sandwiches with gourmet ingredients that can be consumed on the go. 

• “Egg sandwiches are having a moment in many parts of the world and will soon dethrone the chicken sandwich as the next must-have-on-my-menu restaurant item,” Technomic predicts.
• Sandwiches from a South Korean breakfast chain called Egg Drop have gone viral, with fluffy eggs served in pretty little boxes.

And salty foods are poised for a big run.

• “Salt is the new fat — an indulgent flavour enhancer sought after for its craveable comfort capabilities,” Technomic says in a report on 2022 trends.
• This includes everything from purslane to seaweed, salt-cured meats and fish, and cocktails that incorporate salt water.

Amazon is not primarily known as a logistics company, but in 2020 the company shipped more parcels than FedEx.

Why it matters: Logistics is a $1.5 trillion business — and it has long been controlled by a handful of key players, like FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. Now Amazon is poised to conquer it.

What’s happening: Amazon has 21% of the U.S. shipping market — right behind UPS (24%) and ahead of FedEx (16%). The USPS remains dominant with 38%, and all other shippers account for just 1% of the market, according to Pitney Bowes, which tracks the global shipping and e-commerce industry.

• Amazon’s rise is remarkable, as it had a zero share of the U.S. shipping market as recently as 2014, and it relied on legacy shippers like FedEx and UPS for all its deliveries.
• Since then, Amazon has poured resources into building a network of warehouses, trucks, planes and delivery drivers. As it strengthened its own shipping arm, Amazon took its business away from the other shippers.
• Now, the company is turning shipping from a cost to a source of revenue by offering its logistics capabilities as a service

But: Amazon still leans on legacy shippers for the last mile, that means even though more packages are coming from Amazon’s shipping apparatus, they’re getting passed off to other companies along the way.