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Does The Rise of the Spanish Mean the Death Of French Cuisine?

French food has always been the gold standard in fine dining.  Over the years the fusion of French cuisine with flavors from around the world has bred a culture of ingenuity and dynamism that helped perpetuate French style cooking as the center for culinary excellence.  But recently some trends have …

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Bars and Restaurants Using Spotters To Increase Profits

A bar spotter, or “nightclub secret shopper,” is a person sent into a bar by the owner or manager to conduct a secret quality control review of bar staff.  Spotters carefully observe bartenders and other employees, watching for telltale signs of theft and misconduct.  Most spotters were once bartenders themselves, …

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Why Chipotle’s Food With Integrity Is Good Business

Everybody in the food service industry is talking about locally sourced food these days.  The National Restaurant Association has called local,organic and sustainable ingredients one of the biggest trends of 2010, and consumers have defied logic by proving they are willing to pay more for better quality. The Mexican-themed chain …

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Is The Grocery Store Stealing Your Business?

The days of visiting your local grocery store once a week to stock up on food supplies is starting to give way to more frequent, even daily visits, and customers are buying a lot more than a gallon of milk.  What started as a simple salad bar and deli in …

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New Bill To Hike Tax Deductibility of Business Meals

A bill was introduced to the House of Representatives recently that proposes to increase the percentage of a business related meal that can be deducted from 50% to 80%.  The bill, sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), has twice been introduced in past sessions of Congress and has twice failed …

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7 Sustainability Tips For Your Restaurant

More and more restaurants are exploring ways to make their operations “sustainable.”  Yes, it’s a buzzword, and yes, it’s a trend most commonly associated with San Francisco restaurants and other yuppie hideouts.  That doesn’t mean most of the restaurants out there can’t utilize sustainability in their operations. Trends show that …

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Restaurant Marketing Trends: Do You Have A Leaky Bucket?

Think of your restaurant as a 5 gallon bucket.  Every day you fill that bucket with customers.  Sometimes there’s a steady flow, sometimes it’s just a trickle, and sometimes it seems like a flood.  No matter what kind of day it is, every customer flowing through your doors grades their …

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What Are Your Restaurant’s Perks?

The Stew blog, written by the Chicago Tribune’s food beat staff, posted an interesting article recently talking about the little perks that make a restaurant meal a more pleasant experience. Yet as great as these perks are, they seem pretty generic – best practices that any restaurant worth its salt …

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Chefs Say Cut Portion Sizes, Not Ingredients

One of the biggest trends in food service these days is nutrition labeling for entrees and the development of “healthy” menu items that appeal to growing consumer concerns over what they eat. A recent survey of 433 chefs conducted by Penn State and Clemson universities has shed some light on …

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The IRS Wants You To Buy Restaurant Equipment In 2009

If you have already purchased restaurant equipment in 2009, or are planning on doing so before the year is up, make sure you get your accountant to take a special 50% depreciation allowance for all equipment that is purchased, installed and used by December 31st. This tax provision was extended …

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Kogi Is Kool – How One Taco Truck Is Taking LA By Storm

Los Angeles has long been famous for roaming taco trucks that service the myriad neighborhoods of this sprawling metropolis, serving classic Latino fare.L.A. is also known for its distinct Asian cuisine, which is often blended with more traditional American foods to create wonderful hybrids. Well, now Korean BBQ, a hot …

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Technology Trends: Restaurant Teleconferencing

The technology needed to allow a person to sit in one room and communicate visually and verbally with a person in another room somewhere else far away has been around for some time now.  It’s been imagined in the movies for decades, going back to Star Trek all the way …

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12 Restaurant Management Tips

One area of the restaurant industry we have continually focused on here at The Back Burner is management.  I don’t have to tell you that restaurant managers are often overworked and under-appreciated, and that’s on top of the stress involved with trying to manage a business in one of the …

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Green Consumer Trend Still Going Strong

Every restaurant has had to deal with revenue and expense challenges over the last year.  And many have probably wondered whether green practices and products in their restaurants are worth their while, both in terms of cost to purchase and the time it takes to implement new green consumer trend …

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