Thinking Truffle Advertising in 2012? I Bet 248 Million Turkeys You Won’t See Any.

Having just finished off more turkey-and-dressing leftovers, a look ahead to the hot food trends of 2012 is worth a post. Trendy foods that catch on may result in beyond-local marketing and advertising a year or two later.

Hmmm: how about the opinion of Loni Kay Stark from the West Coast? In ”The Hottest Food Trends for 2012,” she’s pointing to gourmet French fries and savory flavors; those’d be vegetable and bacon and lobster. Grilled cheese sandwiches are the new burgers. Hand-pulled noodles and vegetable desserts. Breakfast favorites re-purposed – consider savory-grilled waffle with artisanal cheese. And red hot chili peppers.

Writing for Forbes, Andrew Bender is betting on mead and charcuterie (artisan-cured meats); botanical ice pops and, yes, truffles. (I am not giving him any credit for Brussels Sprouts which ”have made it to the delicious list.” I think not!)

What’s attractive about these look-ahead, often-locavore kinds of food and drink, is that some will be taken up by major food producers or retailers and you’ll see ad campaigns to support them. Kraft Cracker Barrel’s already begun to push ”aged” cheeses into the big, broad middle market. Botanical ice pops are strictly local now – how long before one of the bigs picks up the idea for a ”healthy” treat line? Chaucer’s Mead from California is already available at 70-plus locations of Total Wine and More. Keep your eyes peeled for trendy food adverts in 2012.

On the other hand, I saw hardly any turkey ads around Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s because this time of year turkeys are...everywhere. If there’s any new trend in turkey, it’s the many fresh, even unusual ways the bird can be prepared for Thanksgiving.

Trend-wise, though, it’s a no-brainer: the number of turkeys expected by be raised in the US this year is 248 million. Hard to beat that with your hand-pulled noodles.

Ads themselves have been sparse. There was the Carl’s Jr, ”Turkeyburger” commercial – starring Miss Turkey! That was back in the Spring. Plus plenty of ”Go Vegan” messages this time of year…not really the same. Nope. Aside from grocery store supplements, most Thanksgiving turkey messages come from the cuisine and homemakers’ magazines.

In the midst of our holiday-induced turkey torpor, it doesn’t hurt to see what’s going to be hot, food-wise, in the coming year...at least in ”parts of the United States and Canada where cooking is treated quite seriously,” to follow an argument by novelist Neal Stephenson. He contrasts this with a ”midwestern/middle American phenomenon” of which traditional Thanksgiving is a part.

One thought more: trend-setting friends and colleagues, writing on Facebook the week leading up to Thanksgiving this year, unfailing mentioned...turkey as the key item of their feasts. Not tofu-turkey. Not gourmet boar meat or wild Alaska Chinook salmon. Turkey.

It goes so well with beer.

Baron Turkeys! A Powerful Thanksgiving Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Here’s a great big Happy Thanksgiving wish to all of you…and specially to Jim and Ann Baron of Thatched House Farm, Dutton, Warrington, Cheshire. Which is not around here but 4,705 miles across the sea…as the turkey flies, so to speak.

They produce Baron Turkeys, the kind of thing one discovers surfing the web, searching for this year’s Thanksgiving blog topic. I hope that the Barons of Cheshire don’t mind a modest invasion of their privacy. I think it’s in a good cause.

First, let me point out that the UK mainly doesn’t appear to do Thanksgiving. Turkeys are a Christmas item over there. Baron Turkeys “…specialise in supplying turkey growers to be reared on for Christmas.” That is (as I understand it), the Barons don’t actually sell you oven-ready turkeys, but ones that you can raise yourself to full-fledged…uh…turkeyness and then take care to prepare it – yourself, again – for your feast.

I found Baron Turkeys on the off-chance, Internet-wise. Theirs is a functional website with just four pages; straight enough. Oh – and just two photos of the poults – the young domestic turkeys they offer for raising. The human touch is provided by a single paragraph on the HOME page:

Our business was founded in the '60s by Ted Baron, an experienced poultry farmer and continues in the family today being run by Jim and Ann Baron. The main delivery driver Peter has worked here for 26 years.

I wish I had discovered these Barons earlier, so that I could invite them to join us here in Texas for our family Thanksgiving. The finishing touch: I could have had some Baron Liberator Doppelbock shipped down here from Seattle.

Perhaps if I let them know about this post, though, they’ll send a few snaps over for an American (me) who shares a name if not an actual as-it-were family relationship. Now Barbara Nytes-Baron and I hope the UK Barons will have a great Holiday season. As well as the American Barons, Slaviks, Murphys, Eisenbergs, Bonds, Sabels, Musils, Hoffmans, Nyteses, Kaplans and Yonkas; our friends and colleagues near and far. Starting today.

NOTE OF FOOT: I’m trusting that the roadview photo of Thatched House Farm, from Geolocation.ws, is correct. Wouldn’t I feel like Mr Turkey my own self if I’d got it wrong?