Breakfast is Back

Restaurants believe that breakfast is becoming more relevant to consumers. How do I know? According to the November 2007 e-Gazette Food Bytes, restaurants (from QSRs to Fine Dining) have been increasing the number of breakfast items on their menus (a statistic also known as "breakfast density") for the past 2 years. While QSRs clearly lead the way on providing breakfast to consumers, it is the fine dining establishments that are showing the most growth on breakfast menu items.

If you are developing a recipe library for your brand, website or cookbook, you should consider including a few recipes for this important day-part. Try putting a breakfast twist on a non-traditional breakfast item just to keep in interesting. If you are selling pizza dough, why not include a recipe for a ham, egg and cheese breakfast pizza? If you are selling crab cakes, think about a crab, artichoke, sundried tomato and Parmesan cheese breakfast scrambler. If your e-newsletter theme is this month is cheese, try including a recipe for pancetta and brie mini quiches. It is very easy to add fun breakfast recipes to your recipe repertoire just by adding fun new ingredients to the traditional dishes that people already know and love.

Welcome to The Undercover Cook

The Undercover Cook is a full service recipe consulting business. We specializes in writing recipes for consumer brand products, websites and cookbooks. What sets us apart from other recipe development companies is that by following cooking and food trends we understand how different segments of the population cook. One common mistake we see on consumer brand packaging and websites is complicated labor intensive recipes that don't match up to how the target consumer group really cooks. At The Undercover Cook, we carefully write recipes that fit within the skills set, time constraints and personal tastes of the specific group our client wants to target. We can also help guide our clients in developing beautiful food photography with maximum appetite appeal.

If you are a brand manager or product manager, you may ask why recipes should be important to you and your brand. Recipes are key to showing your consumers alternative usage occasions for your product (and we all know that increasing usage in existing customers is cheaper and more effective than just targeting new consumers to make their first purchase!). Recipes provide great content for brand websites and PR campaigns. Good recipes can turn your brand from just another product to a resource for consumers.

If you are a cookbook writer or recipe website manager you need good on-trend recipes as well. Your recipe needs will be based on your target reader. Are you targeting cheese lovers with specialty cheese based recipes or busy moms who want healthy meals for their families in under 30 minutes? Whoever your target is, you want recipes that are not above their skill level and not below their preferred tastes.

What ever your recipes needs, The Undercover Cook is ready to help you target your particular consumers. Go to theundercovercook.com to learn more.