In the annual Publican Food Report survey it was found that 76 percent of pubs describe their menu as traditional British and 70 percent of pubs serve scampi. Martyn Smith, head of catering development for the Barracuda Group, informed that scampi and chips remains one of our top five menu favourites across all five of their brands: Smith & Jones, Varsity, Barracuda Bar, Juniper and Cape.
According to him it is particularly dominant in their more traditional and community-based outlets, so ensuring they select only the best scampi available is vital for their consumers’ enjoyment. Barracuda is now working with Whitby Seafood as its scampi supplier. The brand is well known for its heritage, quality, and strong brand confidence among consumers. Martyn also said that long before ‘provenance’ became a buzz word in the industry, and they wanted to display ‘Whitby wholetail scampi’ on their menus because of the loyal following and brand recognition it had, and still does today.
It is truth that consumers also like to balance familiar products with a little experimentation. Over the past few years, Barracuda has seen increasing interest in global cuisine and introduced more ‘food-of-the-world’ dishes to its menu, including Whitby’s mini Thai fish cakes and Thai battered prawns. Commenting on this Martyn said that Thai fish cakes have been added to their tapas sharing menu, introduced in spring 2007.
It is fact that sustainability is an increasing concern for consumers, so ensuring menus offer seafood choices from sustainable sources will help tap into the feel good factor Martyn told that the customers are increasingly environmentally conscious and we aim to reflect this mood.
