From Forbes Magazine
By Damon Darlin with Josephine Lee

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW what's hot in the food business, watch the West. "Food trends do often come in from that direction," says Carol McGarvey, a food editor at the Des Moines Register. "They are coming in faster."

Here are a few food concepts currently doing well out West. Could one of them be the next Starbucks, a 1987 startup that currently boasts a market capitalization of $1.6 billion?

Black Bean Bonanza

America's favorite bean, the pinto, is rapidly losing market share to the black bean. Americans are eating 25 times more black beans than ten years ago, on a per capita basis. A staple of Caribbean cuisine, the black bean (genus Phasenlus vulgaris, also called the black turtle bean) migrated to Tex-Mex dishes courtesy of innovative chefs in the Southwest. There the black bean is already number one, says Luis Faura, vice president of sales and marketing for C&F Foods, Inc., a City of Industry, Calif. bean processor. (C&F is one of Los Angeles' fastest growing businesses, thanks to the bean boom.)

Having conquered the Southwest, the black bean is now moving into the mainstream. PepsiCo bought, and is expanding, Chevys, a chain of 69 Mexican restaurants that serves black beans instead of pintos with rice or as a relish. Los Angeles' celebrity-studded Patina restaurant uses fermented black beans in a sauce for lobster.