Hospitality’s Addiction to Trends: How Copycat Concepts Hollow Out the Industry

Avocado toast, Espresso Martinis, butter boards: once a trend pops up in some influencer’s feed it will spread like wildfire through the hospitality world. One day it’s an ironic or outlandish dish on a menu in Brooklyn or Los Angeles. The next, it’s everywhere — the same drinks, the same fonts, the same ‘elevated’ bar snacks that each chef and operator swears is different, but is almost exactly the same and, most likely, not as good. And every time the industry chases the next shiny thing, it gives up another piece of its soul.

“I can do that better” or “I thought of that before they did” is a phrase that has been uttered in restaurants for years, but over the past decade it’s turned into something more dangerous: a race to replicate. A restaurant blows up on social media for a single dish, a design aspect, or a piece of branding, and within weeks, copycats start popping up. It’s not innovation, it’s mimicry. Instead of defining who they are, too many operators build their identity around what they’ve seen someone else do.

It’s everywhere. Cocktail bars that look like they all have the same designer. “Bespoke” menus that are identical down to the garnish. Food halls filled with carbon copies of the same three concepts. The minute something works for someone, it gets copy and pasted onto the next place in another town with no context, no story, no reason to exist other than “people like that right now.”

But for all the hype that goes along with it, they are all missing the most important thing: a point of view. The iconic places, the institutions, have something to say. You may not like what it is, but they still say it. They have vision, not a vibe. Copycats, on the other hand, are like a sound stage set: amazing from the TV, but when you’re on them, cheap and fake. These places may open strong, but they rarely age well.

The restaurant and bar graveyard is littered with the bones of operators who mistook a fad for a foundation. Every year something new and shiny comes along — a flavor, a cocktail, a design aesthetic, a hashtag, a “movement.” And every time, a slew of restaurants race to build entire concepts around it, convinced it’s the future. But, waves crash. They always do.

When your entire concept is tied to a trend or a theme itself, the countdown clock starts the day you open the doors. Karen’s Diner, the Australia-based theme restaurant chain, built its brand on being rude. It wasn’t hospitality, it was kitsch. The thing that made it famous also made it fragile. I love kitsch…for one visit. The schtick lasted only a few years before they went bankrupt.

Manhattan’s Flyfish Club is another case study in what happens when a restaurant concept leans too hard into a fad. Launching as an NFT-based members club, it promised exclusivity and a superb culinary experience. But the promise was only as strong as the market for NFTs, which as we all know came crashing down, later prompting the SEC to come in and make an example of the mess.

They have since reverted to a “traditional” members club which is another fad that everyone has been jumping on the bandwagon of. And while there are some uber-exclusive and profitable members clubs in NYC(like Zero Bond and Casa Cipriani), there have been more losers than winners in that game, just ask Soho House, the members club that made members clubs cool again 20 years ago. According to a Bloomberg article, “In its 30-year history, Soho House rarely turned a profit.”

For about five minutes in the mid-2010s, every café in America seemed to be stacking cake, cotton candy, cookies, and sprinkles on top of a milkshake and calling it a concept. What started at Pâtissez in Australia became the “freakshake” wave, and NYC’s Black Tap capitalized on the movement.

At its peak in 2016, Black Tap was doing around $45,000 in just shake sales. The shakes were a thing: made to be photographed (I’m guessing to be consumed as well). Instagram's algorithm fell in love with it, and within a year, copycats popped up everywhere. Seemingly every city had at least a few places trying to outdo each other.

But it didn’t feel like any of them were in the restaurant business. They were in the attention business. Attention fades, and not soon after that, the lines die down, influencers move on, and so do the customers.

Black Tap survived for two reasons, they were one of the pioneers in the space and the the shakes were merely the hook. Burgers, beer, and actual hospitality carried the weight once the fad faded. Everyone else? Well, let’s just say there aren’t many left.

These aren’t isolated failures, they’re endemic to an industry that is addicted to shortcuts. Trends just speed up the life cycle. They can help you get noticed faster, maybe pack the house for a few months. But at some point the novelty fades, and along with it, so does the ability to pay the bills. Real operators build around a point of view — something that outlives the moment.

When your identity depends on a fad, you’re not running a business, you’re running a fashion magazine.

From the outside, it’s very easy to judge the space, but it’s far more nuanced than that. Instagram and TikTok trends can be explosive, a place can blow up overnight, but similar to playing the slots, you’re going to get little wins here and there that keep you going — and yes, occasionally someone gets lucky and wins big — but in the long run the house always wins, and in this case, the fad always ends. 

There is also an idea that in order to be successful, you need to launch strong, be slammed from the get-go. Trends exacerbate this. I get it, you built this place, you went over budget and were delayed by six months, bills are adding up, you need to make money; it’s low hanging fruit. 

It can also feel a lot safer. Why try something different, something risky, when you can try something that is on-trend right now? There is an idea that there is less of a risk, but the reality is the risk is far higher.

At some point everything starts to look and feel the same, and it’s weak and boring. Trends can be sparks for other bigger ideas. For example, in the mid 2000s the term locavore popped up. What followed was farm to table, a trend that has become the norm in many restaurants — but it’s an ethos not a concept. When operators build entire concepts around these “sparks,” you end up with a cacophony of lookalikes all sitting in the void of mediocrity.

This obsession with what’s “working” right now is killing the spirit of the industry. There’s no tension. No point of view. No risk. And if everything looks the same, why should a guest choose one over another?

When the market is saturated with copycat concepts, no one stands out, everyone fights harder for a shrinking pool of customer dollars. Margins get thinner. Guests stop caring.

Worst of all, it kills momentum for the people actually trying to create something new. Original ideas get drowned out before they ever get a chance to prove their worth. Creativity is punished, mediocrity scaled, and the ceiling lowers for everyone.

Trends aren’t the enemy. A smart operator doesn’t ignore the trends, they read into them, learn from them, maybe steal a piece of them. But they don’t bet the house on them.

The places that survive don’t do so because they were the first to stack a milkshake or put a Negroni on draft. They last because they have a point of view, a through line, a story that outlives the moment. Something that turns them into a legacy.

Good operators understand a trend can get people in the door. But what happens after that is what matters — the service, the menu, the atmosphere, the consistency, the thousand decisions that create something special for not just their guests but their employees.

When everyone else is chasing whatever’s hot, the real move is to build something that still feels like itself when the hype is gone That’s the difference between a fad and a staple. 

The industry doesn’t need another “it” drink or mood board restaurant. It needs operators willing to build with conviction and vision, to set their own standard instead of following the crowd.