Kansas City based casual dining concept Houlihan’s has been around for almost 40 years. In that time they’ve seen the rise of the casual trend and a lot of ups and downs. In the early 2000’s Houlihan’s was seeing more down than up, and a new management team was brought …
Read More »Cooking In Public: Restaurants Bring Food Prep To The Customer
Cooking in public is the new trend in the restaurant industry. Kitchen culture has captured the American public’s attention in recent years with the explosion of celebrity chefs, various reality shows featuring said chefs, and dedicated cable channels like the Food Network. All of this media attention has made consumers …
Read More »Managing Social Media Marketing For Restaurants
2010 is the year of social media, and the food service industry has really started to embrace the world of social in a big way. As I’ve mentioned on The Back Burner before, the biggest expense marketing with social media is your time. That’s good news for tight marketing budgets …
Read More »Move Over Beer: Craft Cocktails The Latest Trend
Move over beer, craft cocktails are the latest trend. For generations Americans have had a fairly straightforward approach to cocktails – gin and tonic, highball, rum and coke – without ever giving a second thought to the possibilities a true bartender genius is capable of when given the space. Back …
Read More »Making The Grade: Should Restaurants Post Food Safety Info?
The Center For Science In The Public Interest, an advocacy group that has tangled with the food service industry before over menu nutrition labeling, is pushing for letter grades of restaurant’s latest health inspections to be posted in the front window. This food safety info works on a 100-point scale …
Read More »How Tech Companies Are Competing To Help You Market Your Restaurant Locally
Marketing your restaurant online is a concept that’s relatively new to the food service industry as a whole, and is still a foreign concept to many restaurateurs. This is not helped by the speed with which marketing channels online are moving. By the time you set up a Facebook page, …
Read More »The Age of the Groupon: Does It Make Sense For Restaurants?
Groupon, along with BlackBoardEats.com and a whole array of other discount coupon websites have proliferated in the last year as restaurants struggle to get customers through their doors. These sites operate by getting large discount vouchers from restaurants (usually in the 50% range) and then marketing them to a large …
Read More »Could The iPad Change Food Service?
The unveiling of the iPad earlier this month left a lot of people wondering what all the hype was all about. For many, the mini-notebook looks and feels like an oversized iPhone without the ringtones. But as the iPad hits the market and continues to sell well, more and more …
Read More »Induction Cooking: The Future Of Your Restaurant?
The presence of a large multi-burner gas range at the heart of the cooking line is about as fundamental as it gets in any restaurant. That iron and stainless steel behemoth uses a lot of energy, throws a lot of heat, and requires a dedicated ventilation system just to keep …
Read More »A Review Of Klick Kitchen By Chef Forfeng
The following is a great review of Klick Kitchen by an industry insider with a lot more personal experience in the food service industry than I have. I came across Klick Kitchen last year and while the concept was intriguing, the price at the time was not. Since then they …
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