Through constant research as well as attending many industry programs, I have learned a great deal on what can be done in the “greening” of new restaurants.  Here’s a list of top ways your restaurant can go green: The most obvious is to use high efficiency refrigeration, but there are …

In Counting Plates: Parts One we discussed the difficulties faced by managers, servers, and guests resulting from shrinking renewals budgets. I advanced the idea of treating glasses, plates, and tableware as inventory rather than purely as an expense. This allows the cost of these items to be more accurately reflected …

The Back Burner is written by the employees and friends of Tundra, and while we usually try to make this blog as informative as possible without imposing our brand on the information, sometimes there’s just going to have to be an exception. Don’t worry, we’re not going to suddenly turn …

Small independent restaurants have been dropping like flies over the past year.  Chances are, if you’ve made it this far through the recession, the worst is behind you.  That doesn’t mean tough days aren’t ahead, but hopefully you’ve at least stopped just trying to stay above water and have started …

Summer food festivals have been a fixture in American culture for years.  From the Taste of Chicago to the Alabama Crawfish Festival , food festivals large and small have kept growing and expanding, even through recent economic turbulence. Tens of thousands of restaurants participate in these festivals across the country.  …

Every year, your restaurant’s green credentials on the street gets more important.  According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), it’s one of the hottest trends this year.  Companies across the board, in and out of the food service industry, have scrambled in recent years to label their brands as green, …

Health inspections are a regular part of life in any food service business, but too often it’s easy for a restaurant or commercial kitchen to fall into the trap of just passing the inspection rather than regularly practicing good food safety procedures. This series is intended to help your business …

A popular topic lately, in a couple different restaurant discussion forums I participate in, is the question of who owns the recipes your restaurant uses? Let’s look at a couple possible scenarios that could affect your restaurant: Your executive chef or kitchen manager quits. Maybe one or two members of …

The HACCP, or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, is a set of guidelines and procedures for food safety originally developed by NASA for astronaut food 30 years ago.  NASA needed a food safety program with “zero tolerance” to protect astronauts from foodborne illnesses while in space.  One can imagine …

Technology has made data easier to store, manage, and collect than at any other time in human history.  That power has resulted in amazing improvements in the efficiency of business, and restaurants have benefited just as much as any other – few restaurateurs can imagine running their business today without …