BlueCart recently introduced a report spotting purchasing trends in the hospitality industry. The 2017 Hospitality Report is designed to help restaurants, hotels and suppliers gain a competitive advantage by revealing the food and drink that’s most in demand.

It’s the first time BlueCart has issued such a report, but small businesses in this market will certainly want to take note.

2017 Hospitality Food Procurement Trends Report

“Our hope is that by providing this data to the public on a regular basis through these reports, it will allow businesses to stay up to date with what is popular in the marketplace and where they may want to focus their attention based on these potential emerging trends,” Konstantin Zvereff, BlueCart CEO, says in a press release.

The company says it compiled data from the report tracking sales among its users over the last three years. BlueCart is a wholesale procurement platform for businesses and buyers in hospitality.

“The goal of this report is to provide operators and distributors a top-down look at the market landscape, motivating operators and distributors to make better decisions and successfully grow their business,” writes Will Harmon, a marketing associate for BlueCart, on the company’s blog.

In it, BlueCart finds that seafood sales over the last three years increased more than four times over. Bakery sales are up 437 percent. Non-alcoholic beverages rose 249 percent but produce sales dropped by 41 percent.

Sales numbers could be skewed because this is the first time the report has been published and more data could have been presented later in the survey’s time window. It does identify trends, however.

Harmon adds, “Possible emerging trends include farmed salmon and shrimp demand rising, decreased sales in alternative cuts of chicken, and products that allow an “on-the-go” lifestyle surging in popularity.”

BlueCart provides a network of suppliers for the businesses using its service, which is available as a mobile app. As many as 37,000 businesses participated by submitting data for the report. To view the full BlueCart report, you can download it by following this link.

Image: BlueCart

This article, “The BlueCart Report Keeps Restaurants and Hotels on Top of Consumer Trends” was first published on Small Business Trends