• Business Articles
• Financial Articles
• Business Blogs
• My Bank Products
• Company Intelligence
• Business Wire
• What's Hot in Small Business
• Local Resources
• Industry Solutions
• Calculators

Home>Business Resource Center >Industry Solutions >Restaurants

One of the biggest "people" businesses around today, the restaurant industry runs on a mix of fine food, top service, good management and effective marketing. The information offered in the sections below addresses these key factors and many more. Sample this eclectic menu of timely reports, technical tips and breaking news to satisfy every craving for success.

Click on the links below in order for the article to expand.

• Restaurant Trends To Watch This Summer
  

  By Bret Thorn

  As the weather heats up, restaurants will naturally be turning to stone fruits, wild salmon and other hallmarks of the summer to entice guests. But several trends not specific to the season will also likely hit their stride this summer, ranging from popular new beverages to specialized service to new culinary techniques.

  Cider: The next generation

  Hard cider’s popularity is accelerating, according to research firm GuestMetrics, which analyzes point-of-sale data at full-service restaurants. Cider sales in restaurants grew by 40 percent in 2012. But year-over-year sales in the first quarter of 2013 jumped by 70 percent, the company said.

  “Ciders obviously have made a huge jump in the market,” said Joe O’Connor, beverage director of Big Night Entertainment Group, which operates six restaurants in the Boston area. “They are appealing to all and easy to drink,” he said, adding that they’re particularly popular at brunch and in the early evening, and as a bonus they happen to be gluten-free.

  Several restaurant chains added cider this spring, including 223-unit California Pizza Kitchen and 66-unit Smokey Bones. The Counter, a 37-unit casual-dining chain based in Culver City, Calif., offers cider, too, and 1,550-unit Chili’s also recently marketed hard cider.

  This summer we are likely to see second-generation versions of cider, according to Anthony Norkus, the craft and specialty grand manager at Louis Glunz Beer Inc. in Lincolnwood, Ill. “We’re going to see a lot of experimentation with cider,” he said, such as barrel-aging and the addition of hops near the end of the fermenting process, adding a floral aroma that can be found in beers such as India pale ales.

  Chef’s tables: The special treatment

  New fine-dining restaurants are few and far between these days, but as chefs with high-end experience open more casual venues, they still want outlets to express their fancy side. So many of them have set aside special tables where they can work their culinary wizardry for those customers who want to see that kind of a show.

  Since many restaurants have open kitchens these days, it’s easy to set up counters at their edge where foodies can watch the action and get special treatment.

  At The Storefront Co. in Chicago, chef Bryan Moscatello has set up a 13-seat J-shaped Kitchen Counter that loops from the main kitchen to the mixology station and on to the pastry area. Guests can order a three-course or six-course meal, or do a three-course cheese or dessert tasting.

  “Some people have been here eight, 10 times and have never eaten in the dining room,” Moscatello said.

  Customers with particular penchants for cocktails or desserts can sit in front of those stations, where they can talk to the bartenders and pastry chefs and get extra tastes of what they are working on.

  Not only does the Kitchen Counter give guests the specialized experience they’re looking for, but it also gives Moscatello and his team a chance to use items like beef tongue or lamb neck that they get when they buy whole animals, but don’t get enough of it to make an actual menu item out of them. The counter also gives them a chance to perform operational tests on items — making sure the pickup doesn’t take too long or require too much burner space, for example — before putting them on the main menu.

  Executive chef Phil Rubino uses his five-seat Mamma’s Table for a similar purpose at Moderno in Highland Park, Ill., testing out cocktails and food in a private enclave with its own lighting controls and a private curtain.

  At Niche in St. Louis, the four-seat Chef’s Counter is for guests seeking special tasting menus. And the six-seat Kevin’s Table at Gunshow, Kevin Gillespie’s new casual restaurant in Atlanta, serves a similar purpose.

  As more high-end chefs open middlebrow restaurants this summer, you can expect to see similar vestigial places for fine dining.

  Smoking: More than barbecue

  Grilling is always a popular summertime activity, as is barbecue — which Southern cooking aficionados define as cooking with smoke — but smoke is weaving its way into a growing array of items these days.

  Florian Wehrli, executive sous chef of Crystal Springs in Hamburg, N.J., attributes that in part to improved technologies, such as the “smoking gun,” which can be used to inject smoke into sauce and other unexpected places.

  But old-school smoking methods are in play, too. Wehrli also covers seared meat with herbs and garlic and wraps it in hay, which he soaks in white wine and then lets smolder in the oven, imparting a sweet, smoky flavor.

  E. Michael Reidt at Area 31 in Miami, is smoking grains, cheeses, salt and grapes, giving them a flavor many guests associate with bacon, without having to add any meat.

  Mike VanBuskirk, executive chef of Cobalt Restaurant in Vero Beach, Fla., smokes items to add to his eggplant purée, tomato jam and other ingredients, and Danny Trace, the chef of Brennan’s of Houston, is smoking soft-shell crab for the season.

  Mark Bibby, vice president of culinary at Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill, based in Orlando, Fla., anticipated the growing popularity of smoke late last year, when he installed smokers in each of the chain’s 66 locations and introduced a smoked prime rib whose success exceeded management’s expectations.

  By adding bold flavor and highlighting chefs’ creativity, unconventional uses of smoke speak to many trends and will likely be particularly widespread this summer.

  Local: Version 3.0

  In independent restaurants it’s now assumed that local, seasonal items will be used when they’re available — some chains have worked on introducing such items for years. So to distinguish themselves, chefs are beginning to add something special to their local stories.

  For example, Brian McPherson, chef of Jackson 20 in Alexandria, Va., uses kaffir lime leaves from a special tree in the restaurant’s garden that he got from a monk at a Lao Buddhist temple in Virginia. He uses those leaves to infuse olive oil that he drizzles on his big eye tuna carpaccio with pickled radishes and herbs that, naturally, are picked from his garden.

  Don’t have any Lao Buddhist monks with gardens in your neighborhood? Don’t worry; there are other approaches, such as what executive chef James Rigato does at The Root Restaurant & Bar in White Lake, Mich. He completes his local story in a more holistic manner by, for example, pairing a beer from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with whitefish caught in Lake Superior.

  You can expect to see more of that kind of multifaceted local sourcing this summer.

  Source: Nation’s Restaurant News, May 8, 2013 (http://nrn.com)

  Collapse

• Independent Restaurants Spur Real Estate Development
  

  By Randy Parham for The Tennessean

  Artists are typically at the vanguard of cultural development, even in commercial real estate.

  For example, the “loft” concept so popular today in multi-family living began when artists, lacking the cash to live in “nice” neighborhoods, moved into abandoned industrial space in “dangerous” neighborhoods and transformed factory floors into wide open living spaces and studios.

  These transformations could be stunning (they were created by artists, after all) and before long, regular folks decided they also wanted to live in a “loft” (a word invented by the artists) and the formerly “dangerous” places became trendy neighborhoods commanding high prices for real estate — which, ironically, the artists could no longer afford, so they moved on to another marginal part of town and the cycle began again.

  This transformation of neighborhoods by creative types is underway in Nashville in a big way, except the artists work in kitchens instead of studios.

  Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past couple of years, you know that Nashville has become a culinary destination. The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Conde Nast, Bon Appétit, The Guardian, Food & Wine — it seems that just about every major news outlet in the country, and beyond, is raving about the explosion of great restaurants in our city.

  And a remarkable real estate transformation has occurred in the wake of this flood of great food.

  From East Nashville and Germantown to Charlotte Avenue and 12South, pioneering chefs have played a role in raising property values and spurring commercial real estate development. They’ve done it by drawing in people from outside the neighborhood who, because of their positive experience at the restaurant, come to see the restaurant’s neighborhood as trendy and cool instead of far away and undeveloped. When a restaurant’s fans tell their friends, the circle of influence widens. Within a few years, a formerly unappreciated part of town is perceived to be an attractive place to live and work.

  East Nashville and Germantown are particularly good examples of this phenomenon. When Holland House, The Pharmacy and Mas Tacos Por Favor opened in the McFerrin Avenue neighborhood of East Nashville several years ago, it was a fairly unexplored part of town that was rarely visited by outsiders. Today, it draws people from all over town and new condominiums have gone up across from Holland House.

  The same thing happened in the Eastland Avenue/Chapel Avenue part of East Nashville, which is home to Eastland Cafe, Rosepepper Cantina and the Walden development that is home to Silly Goose, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Ugly Mugs and The Wild Cow. According to David Lea of Keller Williams Realty, who sells a lot of homes in this part of town, home values have increased by 50 to 65 percent over the past decade — the period that coincides with the invasion of great eateries.

  In Germantown, the transformation is even more dramatic. Early settlers such as the Mad Platter and Monell’s restaurants, which sprang up in Germantown about 25 years ago, anchored the first block of renovated historic homes. Then came City House, Germantown Cafe and the Cupcake Collection, and most recently Silo and Rolf & Daughters.

  After Mad Platter and Monell’s started bringing in new people to Germantown, the word started getting around about this quaint historic community behind the Capitol. Within a few years, Germantown had become hip. As a result, commercial real estate developers saw an opportunity to renovate the old Werthan Bag factory into loft-style condos — arguably, the only true loft-style residences in town, since they really are in a converted factory. Recently, Werthan Lofts, which is now an unqualified success, finished its fifth phase.

  Within a few years of Werthan Lofts’ beginning, the team of Associated Estates and Bristol Development Group planned and built Vista Germantown, a huge and hugely successful apartment complex across from Germantown Cafe and home to the Silo restaurant.

  Germantown is an example of the complete commercial real estate cycle for infill development fueled in part by pioneering chefs: Restaurants beget renovated single family homes, which lead to new multifamily complexes, which pave the way for new commercial real estate development.

  And it all began with enterprising chefs who wanted to unleash their creativity but could not afford to open restaurants in the “nice” part of town.

  Source: The Tennessean, April 26, 2013 (http://www.tennessean.com)

  Collapse

• Eateria Provides Small Restaurants with Bountiful Opportunities
  

  By Will Schmidt

  For small restaurants, cooking fantastic food on a regular basis is difficult, but trying to fill seats and retain customers is a whole different issue. Many of these restaurants are cornerstones of communities, and Ola Ayeni, founder of Eateria, has made it his mission to help keep their doors open.

  “Independent restaurant operators and small chains do not have the time, knowledge, and resources to effectively promote their business in this digital age,” explains Ayeni. “As a result, many people stick to the traditional and antiquated marketing techniques, which no longer work.”

  Set up as a business-to-business digital loyalty tool, Eateria provides an opportunity for small restaurants to do their own marketing on an incredibly simple platform. Emails, text messages, social media blasts, and coupons can be sent by the restaurants directly to their customers via the Eateria dashboard. Since everything is designed on pre-existing templates, restaurants save time and maximize their marketing efficiency.

  “The dashboard is so simple a 10-year old can effectively use it,” boasts Ayenia. “Not only will Eateria automatically send out coupons, emails, texts, and social media alerts, it also sends welcome emails, anniversary reminders, and special birthday offers. One click and you’re done.”

  Eateria also has a built-in coupon validation system for users who receive offers. Restaurants can use their landline, smartphone, email, text message, or Internet browser to verify the coupons for legitimacy. To avoid blocking up busy work schedules, the Eateria team provides fast and efficient service no matter what platform verification comes to them from.

  The validation service factors into Eateria’s most powerful tool available to restaurants: data collection. Anything sent out to customers is tracked so restaurants know who opens a message, where they are located, or if an offer is redeemed. The critical component to all of this is that the individual restaurant owns all of their data.

  “It is absolute, and there is no guess work behind it anymore,” a triumphant Ayeni explains. Having unlimited access to this data allows a restaurant to get a grasp on exactly where they stand within their market to better attract and retain customers.

  Other companies like Groupon and LivingSocial collect the same data, but disallow access to companies. Because of this, small restaurants can have a hard time retaining customers and do not get a clear picture of their business as it relates to their market. As an obvious result, profits begin to fail. There is a strong need for a company like Eateria. Small restaurants need to know that somebody has their back, especially in the wake of news showing a darker side to Groupon.

  With Ayeni’s model, small business can rest assured their best interest is at heart. Ayeni wants to take his business one step further and use Eateria’s efficiency, affordability, and accountability to help teach small restaurants stronger tactics for success.

  The Eateria team plans on taking their service nationwide in the future, and since everything operates on a web-based platform it can be accessed anywhere Internet is found. So the next time you are in the neighborhood, give Eateria a whirl and see what special offer might come your way. You will get some great food and help a small restaurant towards success in the process.

  Source: Tech Cocktail, April 7, 2013 (http://tech.co)

  Collapse

• Floridians eat more locally than rest of US
  

  By Andrew Kays, Alligator Contributing Writer

  Alan Hodges doesn’t know if locally grown foods are really healthier, cheaper and of higher quality than imported ones.

  “But consumers certainly seem to think so,” said the extension scientist in the Food and Resource Economics Department at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

  Hodges was one of the researchers in a consumer preference study by UF that found 20 percent of food eaten at home by Floridians was grown locally, to the tune of $8.3 billion in a year. Different studies indicate that other states obtain about 5 percent of their food locally.

  Hodges said the two biggest factors were the nearly yearlong growing season and the recent media attention on local and natural foods.

  Russ Welker, natural foods manager at Ward’s Supermarket, agreed.

  “Local food sales have grown significantly in the last 10 years, pushed by a big wave nationally in buying locally,” he said.

  Hodges said Gainesville residents spent an average of about $1,400 per household on local foods in a year. He said this contrasted with the statewide household average of about $1,114 spent in a year on locally grown food, primarily from retail grocers and farmers markets.

  “Small and medium farms, especially those in the North Central Florida region, have embraced the movement toward selling local products,” Hodges said. “They’re the ones most likely to take advantage.”

  Food taken home from restaurants accounted for $320 million of the total, according to the study. Hodges said he thinks there is a great opportunity to increase that amount.

  “For chains, the decision to buy local food is usually made at the corporate level,” he said. “For independent restaurant owners or their chefs, the decision is theirs whether they are going to.”

  Welker said quite a few Gainesville restaurants bought Ward’s locally grown and raised products, and Summer Break didn’t affect sales much.

  Both Hodges and Welker noted the diversity of consumers of locally grown products.

  “We have the rainbow of humanity coming through each year,” Welker said.

  Source: The Independent Florida Alligator, March 26, 2013 (http://www.alligator.org)

  Collapse

• How Can You Get A Meal Delivered From Local Restaurants?
  

  By Jeanie Groh, Star intern

  In September 2011, Dennis J. Toms was out of a job.

  One day, while taking lunch to his wife at work, he joked that someone should start a business delivering meals. The idea stuck, and in October 2011, he began drafting plans for EZ-Lunch Shelby.

  “I was thinking about a lot of different ways to generate income,” Toms said. Once he started looking into starting a meal delivery service, the idea “just snowballed.”

  Toms, now CEO of EZ-Lunch, said the business delivers meals from 27 local restaurants to individuals' homes or offices. Customers place their orders on EZ-Lunch’s website or over the phone, and then EZ-Lunch places the order at the restaurant, picks it up and delivers the meal.

  Toms went to “a number of restaurants” with his business plan, looking for places that would be interested in partnering with them.

  About a year later, EZ-Lunch began delivering meals in Shelby. They hand-delivered menus and took orders over the phone.

  The website launched on Jan. 1 of this year, and customers can now view menus and order meals.

  EZ-Lunch accepts payment by credit and debit card online and over the phone.

  EZ-Lunch adds a delivery fee of $4.95 to orders less than $20 within Shelby city limits. Deliveries more than five miles away from the EZ-Lunch office in downtown Shelby are charged an additional 80 cents per mile. Customers outside of Shelby city limits are asked to call in their orders, rather than ordering online, so that the correct delivery fee can be assessed.

  EZ-Lunch drivers go to special measures to ensure the quality and freshness of each order is preserved during delivery. They use insulated food-warming bags. Delivery time depends on the location of the restaurant and the customer; however, most orders are delivered less than 10 minutes after leaving the restaurant.

  “We do not deliver more than one order at a time,” said Ann Long, EZ-Lunch office manager.

  EZ-Lunch is the only meal-delivery service in the area. The closest competition is pizza companies that deliver, Long said.

  Not only is a food-delivery service convenient for people who are unable to leave work for lunch or dinner, EZ-Lunch has found that many of its customers are homebound.

  “It makes me feel good to know that we’re providing a service for people who need it,” Long said.

  “The number one goal is to have a good, solid business – to be dependable,” said Toms.

  EZ-Lunch currently delivers about eight or nine orders a day and employs three office staff members and five or six drivers. The business is currently launching a marketing campaign in hopes of raising more awareness about the business.

  Toms hopes the company will see business increase to 15 to 18 orders a day, with a long-term goal of up to 40 orders a day.

  “Food makes people happy,” Toms said.

  That’s the maxim behind EZ-Lunch.

  Source: ShelbyStar.com, Cleveland County, North Carolina, March 11, 2013 (http://www.shelbystar.com)

  Collapse

• Liberty Grad Takes Food Truck To Head Of The Class
  

  By David Hayes

  Michael Kramer grew up in the kitchen. So, it’s no surprise to his closest family members and friends that his food truck Za’aTar is receiving rave reviews.

  As a youngster, if he weren’t entwined in his grandmother’s legs while she was cooking comfort food worthy of any diner, he’d be underfoot while his dad whipped up a pretty mean homestyle Italian meal.

  Now 22, the Liberty High School graduate said that in looking back, it was perhaps his mother who provided the most memorable life lessons to prepare him for what not to do while running a kitchen.

  “One time when we went camping, she was trying to fry up some potatoes for breakfast when she asked, ‘Why is the oil bubbling up?’” Kramer recalled.

  It turns out, she’d tried to sauté with dish soap rather than canola oil.

  After graduating from high school, Kramer decided to hone his love of cooking and enrolled in the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland, Ore. His first jobs in the outside world came in the kitchens of Seattle restaurants Serafina and Ciccetti.

  An opportunity soon presented itself to skip years of serving on the line to get him that much closer to owning his own restaurant. A fellow Le Cordon Bleu College graduate, Brandon Ochs, had some money burning a hole in his pocket from years of contracting in Afghanistan and he had an idea — that the two of them open a food truck.

  With food trucks dotting the landscape in cities across the United States, offering everything from hot dogs to haute cuisine, Kramer jumped at the opportunity.

  Thanks to the Labor and Industries requirements, their first idea was short lived — the southern comfort food staple chicken and waffles.

  “LNI said if we we’re going to have a deep fryer, our truck would need to have a fire suppressant system installed,” Kramer said.

  To keep their startup costs as low as possible, they decided to go instead with what they knew, freshly made falafels and other Mediterranean cuisine they’d learned while at Serafina and Ciccetti.

  “It turns out, we needed to get a fire system anyway,” Kramer said.

  Some research of the area showed there were about six to eight startup food trucks per month. Kramer wanted their idea to last and stand out.

  “There were two falafel trucks already, but I thought neither was very outstanding,” he said.

  So, they slapped some red paint on their truck, called it Za’aTar (pronounced Za-tar), after the Mediterranean spice, and stocked up on all fresh ingredients. Kramer became the head chef and Ochs would concentrate on the business end of operations.

  They kept their menu simple, offering just eight dishes.

  The next trick is finding a prime location to serve up to some hungry masses. Business parks in South Lake Union, Renton and Kent proved to be perfect matches.

  Word of mouth spread that Za’aTar was offering up something special. Kramer added it didn’t hurt at all that Seattle food blogger Roll of Jen named it one of her top three food trucks in Seattle.

  “We really wanted to change how people looked at food trucks,” Kramer said. “It’s not just a roach coach offering greasy food. You can actually get restaurant qualify meals from them.”

  It also didn’t hurt Za’aTar’s reputation that it received a perfect score during the state health department’s last inspection. Even they couldn’t wait for it to open.

  “The health inspector said he couldn’t eat the food served in his jurisdiction,” Kramer said. “But, he said he’s got spies and they said our food was good.”

  They use social media to get the word out where they’ll be any given day, from Twitter and Facebook to their website. Kramer admits the winter months can be slow for food trucks. However, to get the business to spring and the busy season that lasts through August, Za’aTar recently beat out about 16 other trucks to exclusively serve up its cuisine at Smash Putt, a combination pub crawl and miniature golf extravaganza, from March 1 to May 5.

  While Kramer hopes to open someday his own 15- to 20-seater, brick-and-mortar restaurant, he’s content to be serving the hungry masses from his truck, one falafel at a time.

  Source: The Issaquah Press, Washington, February 12, 2013 (http://www.issaquahpress.com)

  Collapse