The impact of food trends on menu innovation

The search for the right 'pedigree' of innovative menus is endless. As the consumer foodservice markets are converging to one global market, increasingly demand for new menus is evitable. In today's global foodservice markets, the fast changing trend of consumers' preferences and acceptances poses a huge challenge for restaurateurs in managing their new menu innovation. Empirically, little is known the trendsetting in managing menu innovation amid facing market uncertainty. While there are several attributes that have been known to impact menu innovation, this chapter specifically aims to provide empirical evidence of the moderating effect of food trends on the link between innovation orientations and new menu development (NMD) process in a recently concluded research study of chain restaurants in Malaysia