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 …

In part one of my discussion of pre-shift meetings, I discussed the things a manager can do to harm the effect of a pre-shift meeting. It was by no means a comprehensive list. There are many other mistakes managers can and do make that harm their pre-shift meetings.  It does …

There are two types of temperature controls used in commercial refrigeration: 1. Thermostatic (either an air sensing type or evaporator coil sensing type) 2. Low pressure control Let’s start with thermostatic type controls.  An air-sensing thermostat does just that: it senses air temperature.  The control sensor tube is usually mounted in the …

The concept of the “third place” was first developed by Starbucks, and anyone who has been in a Starbucks immediately understands the principle: make your business feel like a home-away-from-home. Unfortunately for Starbucks they made way too many homes just as the economy turned south – tripling the number of …

Lincoln/Redco is a well recognized company within the food service industry.  In case you haven’t heard of them, they produce a variety of food prep equipment and commercial cookware.  Lincoln cookware has been in production in one form or another since the early 1900s.  Every chef is pretty particular about …

Finding a good pair of comfortable restaurant shoes for workers who are on their feet all day can be a challenge, but Crocs might be the answer. Crocs are known for their durability, comfort, and great traction on even the greasiest kitchen floor. And when Crocs came out with some …

I have worked for a number of companies over the years that held pre-shift meetings with the servers. They have been called a variety of things: line up, fresh talk, jump start, family meal, and many other names have been used to refer to these meetings. I have also managed …

Spring is well underway in most corners of the United States, and the warmer weather has every grillmaster itching to get some beef patties sizzling in the backyard.  For restaurants, the spring thaw can also be a great time as well, as you clean off the patio furniture and start …

Some restaurants allow an after-shift drink, after which the staff is allowed to hang around and become regular paying customers.  The issue has come up in my trainings and I have a definite opinion on it.  I prefer that employees do not sit at the bar and drink after their …

More and more it looks official – the U.S. economy is pulling out of recession slowly but surely.  The restaurant industry is cautiously optimistic about sales growth this year and consumers appear to be venturing out of their downturn shells. Unfortunately a growing economy – even one that’s growing so …