Claus Meyer, our cover star (Eurofruit – May issue), knows a thing or two about marketing and a fair amount about fresh produce. The co-founder of Copenhagen’s Noma, officially the world’s best restaurant for the past two years, told us last month he was looking forward to speaking to delegates at our upcoming fresh conference in the Danish capital and to explaining how campaigns aimed at getting more people to eat a good amount of fruit and vegetables can achieve positive results.
As Meyer says in our interview on p24-25, the New Nordic Cuisine movement he helped establish a decade ago has helped to generate a real buzz around healthy eating and fine dining. OK, so expensive restaurant menus might seem out of step in an age of austerity, but of course not all of these diners are at Noma – it seats just over 40 and the waiting list stretches all the way to Legoland.
In the same way that expensive and outlandish concoctions on the catwalks stir an appetite among the wider population for more mainstream fashions, the Nordic region’s growing reputation as a centre of food excellence is having a positive knock-on effect on its foodservice and catering markets. Copenhagen now has more Michelin-starred restaurants than Rome, and most of them place locally sourced fresh produce at the heart of their food.
Consumers in the region, meanwhile, do appear to be saving money each month by forgoing things like holidays, second cars and new televisions, then spending some of it on better food and eating out. As a result, opportunities abound for fruit and vegetable suppliers.
