Page 40 - foodservice news magazine Nov-Dec 2018

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PRODUCE
2018: A YEAR IN FISHY REVIEW
WITH THE THE NEW YEAR NEAR UPON US, JOHN SUSMAN LOOKS BACK AND CONSIDERS THE MANY HIGHS AND TRENDS IN AUSTRALIAN SEAFOOD OVER THE PAST 12 MONTHS.
John Susman is the director of the seafood industry agency Fishtales. For more views, insights and understanding of the seafood industry visit thefishtale.com.au.
Year’s end gives one the opportunity
to consider and reflect, then plot and plan. For me that conundrum typically starts about February and ends on New Year’s Eve. After all, much of the fun of the New Year lies in the unknown, the prospect of something new, something different. Who knows what trends, tastes and opportunities are ahead of us in the food industry? After all, taste in food is not that different from taste in clothes, music or any other area of popular culture.
In the words of the inimitable fashion icon, Coco Chanel, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
For many of us in the food industry, the art of the deal is about trying to forecast the fashions for the coming year and position ourselves to service that fashion, profitably.
It seems that for many chefs and restaurateurs, the notion of being fashionable can be misinterpreted as simply being different, often with disastrous results. The customer is the final filter. What survives the whole artistic process is what people eat time and time again.
From the perspective of food fashions, 2018 has been a year of consolidation. The ever-increasing supply of restaurant seats has created competition that has never existed before. Diminishing profits in the hospitality industry have driven up menu prices which increasingly drive diners away.
Never before has the consumer’s quest for value been greater. Value of course, being the often intangible relationship between price
and quality, rather than cost alone.
2018 has seen novelty take a back seat to
integrity, albeit there have been some bizarre and curious exceptions.
Wild-caught seafood supply has been down this year, due in part to the ongoing and severe drought along the eastern seaboard, confirming the adage “drought on the land means drought at sea”. Whether it be the tightening of supply and the associated increase in prices to record
levels of several species (flathead, blue eye, whiting.) Or a dawning of awareness by chefs of how special wild-caught seafood is, it seems that wild-caught seafood has never enjoyed such recognition.
Fueled by the seemingly insatiable appetite chefs have for social media, 2018 has seen an uplift in the level of both recognition and remit to catchers and growers who
have mastered the art of Instagram. Both small, artisan fishermen and large fishing corporations have taken to social media literally like ducks to water.
The fishing community have never been so closely connected with the end users of their bounty. Through savvy management of their Instagram accounts, the likes of tropical water specialists Ben Collison and Chris Bolton, abalone diver Ryan Morris of Atssu Divers and the boys from Gravity Fishing in the deep south of New Zealand are now in the kitchens, bars and even cars of chefs around the world.
Truth has long been a commodity used sparingly in the seafood industry. With the explosion of social media and unfiltered