Menu Strategies and Opportunities in the COVID-19 World

Lizzy Freier is a Senior Research Manager at Technomic, a Winsight Company, with a focus on menu trends. Lizzy covers trending flavors, ingredients, dishes and preparations for food and beverage at independent restaurants, emerging chains and top chain restaurant brands. She has also analyzed global trends. She has presented at numerous conferences in the U.S. and Canada on menu trend development for restaurant operators, manufacturers and distributors.

Donna Hood Crecca is Principal in Technomic’s Advisory Group and leads the firm’s Adult Beverage Practice. Donna has spent nearly three decades covering, researching and consulting for the alcohol marketplace, with a special focus on adult beverage in restaurants and bars.

Nancy Kruse, President of The Kruse Company, is the best-known and most widely quoted menu analyst in the restaurant industry. She authors The Kruse Report, a column on trends that appears monthly in Nation’s Restaurant News. Prior to founding her own company, she was Executive Vice President of Technomic, Inc. Nancy was a Woodrow Wilson fellow in Russian Literature at the University of Wisconsin and also received a Master of Arts degree from the Film School of Northwestern University. More recently, she completed coursework at the Culinary Institute of America, where she is a frequent lecturer. In demand on the speaking circuit, she has addressed groups throughout the U.S. and abroad. Nancy is an active member of the Women’s Foodservice Forum and Les Dames d’Escoffier International. Named by Linked In as one of the Top 100 INfluencers in the US, she blogs regularly on food-related topics on the Linked-In website.