Group has launched a café component that encourages customers to customize their meals using toppings, sauces, and fixings that embrace five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, and umami.
Called Find Your Flavor, the station “is all about bringing awareness to our taste buds, breaking them down by the five taste elements and offering a variety of condiments for each,” says Peter Klein, CulinArt’s director of culinary development. “Find Your Flavor is more than just flavorful…it’s educational, too. When each element is perfectly balanced—not only on the plate, but across an entire meal—the dining experience is lifted above and beyond.”
Find Your Flavor debuted at about 50 CulinArt school, higher education, and corporate dining clients this spring, with expansion companywide the goal. Within a servery or dining facility, the flavors are arranged in groups and displayed in clear displays with signage explaining and identifying each offering—for example, “Sweet plays well against sour and spicy,” and “the elusive flavor Umami is an inherently savory one.”
CulinArt managers can choose from up to eight products per flavor and make their selections—usually three per category—based on a number of factors including region, menu variety, and the insight they have gained into their customers’ likes and dislikes. The products are then arranged in a Find Your Flavor station that complements what is offered on serving lines and sold from display cases.
At a law firm in New York City, for example, customers use the Find Your Flavor station to enhance their burgers, salads, soups, offerings on a potato bar, and a la minute dishes, especially stir-fries and ramen noodles. The flavors are added to purchased meals at no extra charge, though flavors are also sold in souffle cups for a nominal cost. The most popular flavors among the customers are Everything Spice (Umami), Red Pepper (Spicy), and Sweet Chili (Sweet), says Andres Marsh, director of dining services.
CulinArt’s Fred Long launched the concept at George School, in Newtown, Pa., where he is director of dining services. The launch included educational tables led by a CulinArt registered dietitian, at which students sampled the various flavors; and Teaching Kitchens, in which students learned the science of each taste and how toppings, sauces, and fixings can enhance a dish’s flavor generally and specifically.
Since the launch, students have used Find Your Flavor to enhance their stir-fry experience as well as meals from the Global Flavour and Urban Eats stations (both are CulinArt concepts). “We relocated our rice cookers closer to the Find Your Flavor station to encourage it further,” Long adds. “Experimentation with this concept is limited only by imagination—of which our students have plenty.” At George, the most popular flavors are sriracha (Spicy), gochujang (Spicy), sweet soy sauce (Sweet), teriyaki glaze (Sweet), sweet chili sauce (sweet), vegan oyster sauce (Salty), and Japanese Mayo (Sweet).
At Archer School for Girls, in Los Angeles, Find Your Flavor is included with the purchase of any entrée or hot slide item, says Meghan Lambert-Jackson, director of dining services. But it has such appeal that even students bringing lunch from home use it to spice-up (or sweeten-up, salt-up, etc.) their meal, and pay per ounce. “Everyone loves the addition of the Find Your Flavor station,” she adds. “It is a fun way to change up your meal and make it your own creation. It allows anyone to completely cater to their own individual taste preferences.”
Spicy and Sweet flavors are the clear winners at Archer, Lambert-Jackson notes: Sweet and Sour Sauce, Barbeque Sauce, and Sambal Olek, an Indonesian chili paste. Usage is particularly high on Wednesdays when the menu is always Pan-Asian in theme.