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While munching my muesli bar in the canteen yesterday and drinking a cup of excellent Italian coffee I overheard the boss talking about the food industry. Now its no secret that the boss is passionate about his food and boy does he knows his oats. I tried to listen over the crunch of my muesli bar and caught a lot of the conversation.

Well they were talking takeaway food, functional food, health food, organic food, dashboard dining, desktop dining, grab 'n' go, heat 'n' eat, slurp 'n' burp (thought of that one myself!), fast food, slow food, frozen, chilled and even ambient food. Wow, at first I thought they were compiling some kind of kama sutra guide to food positions and techniques but when I asked the boss later he explained.

It seems that these are all food industry trends that have evolved over the years and that we should be watching out for changes and new trends so we can give the customer what he wants when he visits our forecourts and stores. I offered the boss a bit of advice and told him I didn't think that people would go for that "slow food" idea, that I would be swamped with complaints because our customers don't have time to hang about. Withering is a good word to describe the look he gave me before he went off muttering "slurp 'n' burp indeed, of all the..."

As I finished my muesli bar I couldn't help thinking that not only had I blown another opportunity to be promoted out of the complaints department, I had also forgotten to ask him how he planned to get that slow food idea off the ground.