Wageningen, 09 June 2006 – Noldus Information Technology becomes the technical partner in the “Restaurant of the Future”, a unique facility for innovative consumer research under construction in Wageningen, The Netherlands. The Restaurant of the Future will allow testing of new food concepts, products, equipment or restaurant design in a real-life context.

Consumer behavior
Today’s food industry has to cope with highly fickle consumer behavior. New products suffer from a high failure rate, which proves that choice behavior is often unpredictable. Over the years, freedom of choice has vastly expanded for consumers. Understanding and predicting food choice, eating and drinking behavior has thus become an increased focus of consumer research. Since this behavior is predominantly based on unconscious processes, behavioral observation in a real-life context is considered a better way than interviews and questionnaires. Researchers want to pay more attention to the dynamics of preference, the explicit and implicit role of memory and the influence of situational factors

Restaurant of the Future
In order to enable the development of innovative consumer studies, a unique facility will soon be opening its doors in Wageningen: the Restaurant of the Future. The €2.3 million project is an initiative of the Center for Innovative Consumer Studies (CICS), in partnership with Sodexho, Europe’s largest catering company, Kampri Group, a manufacturer of professional kitchen equipment, and Noldus Information Technology. The Restaurant of the Future is a future-oriented research center where factors underlying food choice and eating and drinking behavior will be investigated. René Koster, head of CICS, explains: “These factors will be studied in a behavioral context, which ensures validity larger than encountered in many current research paradigms. Ultimately we hope to be able to better predict consumer behavior, which opens the way to more efficient product and concept development and ditto communication about food products.”

Facilities
The Restaurant of the Future will include:
• An experimental restaurant for studies of the effect of different assortments, presentation of products and use of counters, and buying and eating behavior of visitors.
• A restaurant kitchen in which new cooking equipment can be tested.
• Excellent sensory laboratory facilities in which trained panelists evaluate products on their sensory characteristics, with setups for physiological measurements.
• Rooms for focus group discussions.

Data collection and analysis
Noldus Information Technology is the technical partner in the consortium, responsible for the video, computer and data acquisition equipment in the research center as well as observational data collection and analysis software. The Observer XT will serve as the core research tool for behavioral studies. In collaboration with CICS scientists, Noldus will work on further development of The Observer and associated software tools for automatic movement tracking, facial expressions recognition and behavioral pattern detection, of which prototypes will be tested in the Restaurant.

Benefits
The Restaurant of the Future will be open to interested parties who can use the facilities for concept or product development, sensory profiling, testing of new food products, kitchen equipment, or restaurant furniture, or to gain insight in situation-dependent product appreciation.

Noldus Information Technology, founded in 1989, is a leading developer of software and integrated solutions for behavioral research. More than 3500 companies, governmental organizations and universities in over 75 countries use Noldus products to enhance the quality and throughput of behavioral measurements. The company operates from offices across Europe and the United States, and a global network of qualified distributors.

Press contact:
René Bourgonje, marketing manager
Noldus Information Technology BV
P.O. Box 268
6700 AG Wageningen
The Netherlands
Phone: +31-317-473300
Fax: +31-317-424496
Email: info(at)noldus.nl