Are Millennials important to your restaurant or food brand? Do you want to know more about how they think about spirits, beer or wine? Where they go to buy food and beverages?

If the answer is yes, we invite you to think about joining us in a special study of Millennials and their love affair with fine food and good times.

Working with clients across a variety of food and restaurant brands makes us aware of how important Millennials are to most food-related industries. And studying Millennials has left little doubt of the importance of food and drink in their lives. Little wonder then that everyone from casual restaurants to Kraft Foods is making Millennials a marketing priority.

We will be working with a handful of project sponsors to create a vivid portrait of this group's love affair with food and drink. It can be used to advise sponsors on emerging social trends, tastes, ingredients, ethnic foods, and bar and restaurant choices. They can be used to inform decisions on new products and menu items, packaging, advertising, social media and more. There will be just one sponosor for each subcategory. If you would like it to be your brand, join us!

Although Gen Y enjoys less disposable income than older cohorts, they also have fewer demands on that income and spend a disproportionate amount of it on food and alcohol - 15% compared to 11% for older groups. Millennials love to dine out with friends, and enjoy making special meals at home. For them, food is a social activity, a means of self-expression and more. In fact, 22% of 18-24 year olds agree that they "try to eat gourmet food whenever they can." That figure is 20% higher than the average for all adults. Two out of three Millennials are what Mintel classifies as 'Cooking Enthusiasts' who make an average of 4.4 'elaborate' or 'gourmet' meals a year. Organic? Locally grown? Premium? Millennials are at the vanguard of these trends as well. Millennials are also driving growth in the beer, wine and bourbon categories where they tend to prefer premium / imported brands. In restaurants, Millennials are trading up from fast food to casual dining: 18-24 year olds were the only age group to show a decline in the average number of meals eaten at QSR's between 2007 and 2008. ·

Why such a high interest in gourmet food and beverages? Today's young adults were exposed to education, dining and travel experiences earlier than previous generations. Perhaps as a result, Millennials - roughly defined as young consumers age 18-29 - are more sophisticated than previous generations in their appreciation for food, beer, spirits and wine. They are already exerting a disproportionate influence on casual restaurants, wine, and imported beer marketing.Their influence will continue to grow as their income and buying power increases. We predict that today's "millennial marketing" will be tomorrow's just plain marketing.

To ensure a fresh approach, we are partnering with Outlaw Consulting, a leading Gen Y research firm. Outlaw's teams have studied Millennial trendsetters for over 15 years on behalf of a range of fashion and technology clients including Nordstrom, Levi's, and Microsoft. They maintain a continuously refreshed panel of 200 trendsetters, who will comprise a portion of our sample. Analysis will highlight areas where trendsetters are different from mainstream consumers, and therefore allow an understanding of emerging attitudes/trends. The study will use a range of Web 2.0 technology to interact with our Millennial participants in a natural way and capture their experiences literally as they unfold.

* What motivates their interest in new tastes, flavors and experiences? What are emerging new preferences? What motivates these desires?

* Where do they learn about new food, restaurants, recipes, wine and distilled spirits products?

* What is the role of word of mouth, social media, on-premise consumption and off- premise parties on brand and category preferences? Who do they look to for recommendations?

* How important are characteristics such as 'organic', 'locally grown' and 'hormone free' in their food and wine choices? Do they do more than token gestures along these lines? What exactly are they doing? What more would they like to be doing?

* How interested are they in travel shows, cooking shows, celebrity chefs and other food and wine media? Which ones are most influential and why?

* How is interest in food and gourmet impacting wine consumption vs. spirits. What wine categories generate increased interest?

* What are their different restaurant eating occasions? What drives or triggers a night out? What do they look for in a restaurant experience and how does that vary ?

* How important is the dining experience relative to the food? What would get them to eat out more often?

* Which brands do they love and why?

* How is the economic downturn influencing their overall spending and brand choices? Where are they cutting back and what are they holding 'sacred'? If they had more money, how would they spend it?

This is the only study we've seen that aims to address questions like these. Interested? Contact us to learn more.