Shaping the next decade of Travel Food & Beverage
Rooted in research. Designed for implementation. Built for scale.
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and tRetail Labs have formed a strategic partnership to accelerate sustainable foodservice across the Travel Food & Beverage sector.
The Travel F&B 2035 Vision
The Culinary Institute of America and tRetail Labs have come together to shape the next decade of Travel Food and Beverage.
This partnership brings together the CIA’s Menus of Change® initiative, an industry proven framework for creating food that is delicious, healthy, and commercially viable, with tRetail Labs’ nrtureAI platform, enabling these principles to be implemented, measured, and continuously improved at scale across complex travel environments.
The 2035 Travel F&B Manifesto builds on this foundation to define a clear direction for the industry. It moves beyond vision and advocacy toward real world transformation, where food becomes a central driver of traveler wellbeing, experience quality, sustainability, and commercial performance.
By 2035, leading travel environments will not treat food as a supporting service, but as a strategic pillar that shapes how people feel, behave, and engage across the journey.
This is the starting point for a new era of Travel F&B, designed not just for intent, but for implementation at scale.
Why now?
Traveler expectations are shifting,
with public health priorities and passenger demands converging.
Nearly 25% of Americans are actively limiting their meat intake
44% of consumers state they would likely choose a plant-forward dish featuring familiar flavors.
Airports are entering a new commercial reality:
as duty-free revenue softens, food and beverage is emerging as a primary growth engine—capturing dwell time, driving spend, and delivering experience-led value. At the same time, menu strategy is being reshaped by converging forces—health, sustainability, and global influence.
Evidence suggests a mismatch between consumer demand and available airport options,
with more than half reporting difficulty finding healthy choices, and a substantial share—particularly frequent travelers—expressing interest in plant-rich options. Yet, this growing demand remains structurally underserved in travel environments. Redefining “healthy, delicious” in the airport setting creates an opportunity to drive revenue while setting new standards for how food supports both people and the planet.
The jointly developed 2035 Airport Food and Beverage Manifesto responds to this gap and sets forth the business opportunity for applying the Menus of Change framework to the airport food environment over the next decade to better support human health, planetary health, and long term commercial viability at scale, now and into the future.
74% of operators say globally inspired dishes command higher price points
61% of consumers are interested in functional foods and beverages,
31% of Gen Alpha already consume plant-based foods
60% of Gen Z seek gut-health-forward options
49% of Gen Z are reducing alcohol
"CIA’s Menus of Change® initiative has helped define what the future of food must become, while tRetail Labs’ nrtureAI is the AI in foodservice that can enable those principles to be implemented, measured, and continuously improved across visitor facing food environments." — Sushanta Das, Founder and CEO of tRetail Labs
Proof of Concept
The Menus of Change framework is an industry-proven model that has already transformed major foodservice sectors:
Colleges & Universities: A collective shift using the framework between 2019 and 2023 resulted in an estimated $32.65 million in food cost savings and increased Healthy Eating Index scores by 19.7%.
Quick Service Restaurants: The Healthy Menus R&D Collaborative developed an umami-rich "mushroom-blend" strategy. Major brands demonstrated that replacing up to 80% of beef in savory dishes allowed for a 25% reduction in sodium without any detectable loss in flavor, sparking a 22% increase in blended burgers across U.S. retail chains.
About the Airport F&B Pathfinders Committee
The future of food in travel is best shaped together.
The Airport F&B Pathfinders Committee (APC) is an exclusive coalition of forward-thinking operators, airport authorities, and industry leaders dedicated to testing and scaling these solutions. By joining the APC, members will directly engage in building our 2035 roadmap, prioritize upcoming projects, and pilot groundbreaking services. Pathfinders receive exclusive discounts on services and the unique opportunity to position their brands as pioneers in the next era of travel hospitality. Contact Us to learn more about joining the APC.
Initiative Components
We are actively building resources and infrastructure to support the Airport F&B industry in achieving a systemic shift in service of a healthier and more delicious travel future.
The Airport F&B Pathfinders Committee: A thought leadership group pioneering healthy and sustainable offerings, and developing the roadmap for industry transformation through leader convenings, best practice sharing, and collective impact.
Launching 2026 and Beyond:
Evaluation Criteria and Awards
A model to evaluate airport F&B operations for leadership and opportunity to advance healthy, sustainable, and behavioral-science informed consumer trends along the traveler journey.
Trainings
CIA Culinary and Staff training to scale sustainable operations and improve business margins.
tRetail Labs Consumer Insights and Marketing Training to convert traveler behavior and emotion into actionable strategies that drive revenue, experience, and continuous improvement.
Research
Building the evidence base to accelerate a commercially viable, sustainable, and healthful industry transformation.
Consumer trend analytics for the decade ahead.
Customized, client-specific or topic-specific research.