Senators Demand an Accounting of How Servsafe Fees Are Used
By letter to the National Restaurant Association. Six U.S. senators are pressing the National Restaurant Association to provide detailed information about its use of proceeds from the ServSafe food-safety training course to pay for lobbying activities. The group co-signed and sent a letter yesterday to the trade association, requesting that it clarify such matters as how much was collected in fees for the course during each of the last five years; how much of the money was channeled into lobbying and campaign contributions in each of those years; and what the program costs to run per enrollee. The letter gave the association a deadline of March 3. The communication also asks that the senators be provided with a full set of course materials so they can determine if the most basic curriculum merits any fee at all. It cites a New York Times report that described the material as so commonsensical and rudimentary that employees can pick up the do’s and don’ts within their first few minutes on the job. But the content strongly suggests the senators have already formed a damning view of the NRA channeling proceeds from the course into the revenue pool from which the association draws its lobbying dollars. The missive characterizes the practice as the “underhanded and unscrupulous weaponization of ServSafe.”
How Hospitality Tech is Changing the Restaurant Business
Digitalization and process automation. The restaurant sector was among the most impacted during the Covid-19 pandemic as it faced strict social distance requirements, lengthy lockdowns and strict hygiene measures. These challenges, however, also forced owners to switch to digital solutions faster, speeding up what could have been a much longer process toward digitalization. Digitalization and process automation have helped many restaurants not only emerge from the crisis but also to step into a new development phase in post-crisis times. In fact, automation has been shown to help restaurants save money, reduce storage costs and deliver the freshest and highest quality food. For restaurants, digitalization can reduce a restaurant’s need for hands-on labor and decrease the risk of human error. In this article, I’ll look at how four digital technologies can help improve the way the hospitality industry does business and what those in the industry should know about implementation.
Why Restaurants Should Collaborate with Local Breweries
Signature beers create unique entry points into a restaurant for all types of guests. From regulars and craft brew connoisseurs to travelers and locals seeking one-of-a-kind experiences. Because these signature sips can only be enjoyed at specific locations, they funnel traffic, awareness, and profits while helping restaurants stay fresh and promote the best available locally. By leveraging partnerships and collaborations with breweries, operators can brew up signature beers that draw diners. “When you partner with a local brewery, it’s another hook to bring people through the doors and [get them to] spend more money. … It’s a reason for someone to come in and enjoy their overall experience, then segue into other offerings we have at the restaurant,” says Keith Benjamin, cofounder and senior operating partner of Charleston, South Carolina’s Uptown Hospitality Group. “Travelers come to Charleston looking for the best food and the best beer, and when we bring that phenomenal local beer into our establishments with our own label, brewed locally, there’s really nothing like it.” Uptown Hospitality worked with fellow Charleston business Brewlab to create three signature beers that were tailored to fit each concept’s vibe and menu. Uptown Social’s “cavernous tavern feel” had IPA vibes, Share House was very “social butterfly” as a coastal cantina, which meant a Mexican lager, and Bodega’s New York ambiance meant crafting a wheat beer. Signature beers crafted through F&B community relationships offer exclusive and rare drinks and dishes for diners as well as marketing and traffic options for brewers and owners.
Hot Dogs are Getting Hot Again for Restaurants
One of the industry’s most nostalgic categories is riding a wave of comfort-food preference. Hot dogs are a classic and nostalgic food that generations of Americans have enjoyed. Memories of celebrating the Fourth of July, for example, are often associated with grilling the food by the pool or out on the deck. People crave hot dogs at the fair, the carnival, or the boardwalk. Hot dogs are hardly new to the consumer conscious, but industry professionals in the category are working to keep them relevant to modern diners. During the pandemic, online ordering and third-party delivery boomed, and the trend has proved to have lasting power—something that translates well to hot dogs. Being stuck at home brought a return to the comforting, nostalgic food people grew up with, now available through a few clicks on their mobile devices. One of those items was undoubtedly hot dogs. What normally is an occasion-based food shifted into an opportunity for convenience. Jenn Johnston, president of the QSR division at FAT Brands, where Hot Dog on a Stick is housed, says the pandemic surge continues to adjust dayparts. The snack brand’s year-to-date sales and transactions are each up 10 percent. “I think that is a testament to consumers really continuing to crave comfort foods post pandemic,” Johnston says.
The Savory Cocktail is Dominating Cocktail Menus
Welcome to the year of savory cocktails. The ’90s were dominated by sugary-sweet, disco-hued drinks. The 2000s? We leaned on classics from cocktail history — Sazeracs, Old Fashioneds, and other precisely-made drinks. Over the last few years something has shifted, and we now want our drinks savory, salty, packed with umami, or even pulled directly from the vegetable drawer. A quick glance at the World’s 50 Best Bars list for the past year confirms this hunch. Barcelona’s Paradiso took top honors, boasting fermentation-focused drinks like On Fire — a smokey Calvados and bourbon cocktail accented with tahini, sweet potato, and smoked milk — and Cronos, inspired by time and highlighting tequila, mushrooms, and spicy corn. Double Chicken Please (home of a ‘Cold Pizza’ cocktail) and Two Schmucks (a melon, cheese, and pepper drink) also made the top ten with their firmly food-focused menu. Ingredients like mushrooms and seaweed topped 2022’s top food trend predictions and in 2023, the New York Times forecasted that diners will ‘embrace the brine.’ “I’m seeing a shift — a demand in the market towards more savory flavors,” says Moe Aljaff, the founder of Two Schmucks, Schmucks, and The Schmucks (Aljaff’s new project).
One of the Most Famous Pizza Places in Italy Just Opened
In NYC. What is arguably the most famous pizzeria in the world has opened an outpost in the heart of New York City’s West Village. L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, a historic Naples pizzeria founded in 1870, has long attracted massive crowds at its original shop on Via Cesare Sersale, where tradition reigns supreme. There are only two pizzas on the menu: marinara (a tomato pie with oregano and garlic) and margherita (tomato and mozzarella). The crowds have only continued to swell since Julia Roberts declared in 2010’s Eat Pray Love, during a scene at Da Michele: “I’m having a relationship with this pizza.” The pizzeria’s first US location opened in Hollywood in 2019, but this is its first venture east. At the sleek new NYC location, which opened in December, the menu is rounded out with a few more pizzas (including a popular diavolo pie with salami), a selection of pastas, gorgeous salads, and a number of fried dishes like fritto misto and fried zucchini flowers, their centers oozing with cheese. On a recent visit, a server lets me know that the handmade spaghetti Nerano, featuring zucchini, Parmigiano, pecorino, and basil, is Stanley Tucci’s favorite pasta on the menu.
Restaurants Want to Do More Business
In less space. Inflation is driving up the cost of operating a restaurant, making efficiency more important than ever. So, operators are shrinking the size of their restaurants and reorganizing their kitchens. The restaurant of the future is smaller. It might not have seats. And employees will likely need to take an extra walk after work to get their steps in. In their never-ending search for improved speed and efficiency, restaurant operators have been cutting the size of their buildings. A string of new prototypes revealed over the past two years have featured fewer seats, or no seats at all, and kitchens reconfigured so employees walk less. All of it is designed to improve unit economics. The pandemic shifted much of the dynamic inside restaurants away from dine-in sales and toward a variety of new takeout options, including mobile ordering and delivery. Yet post-pandemic challenges, including labor shortages, higher wage rates and higher costs for food and energy, have increased the need for brands to look everywhere to find efficiencies in their restaurant designs. In December, restaurant menu prices rose 8.5%, but restaurants’ costs rose at an even faster rate. Wholesale food costs, for instance, were up more than 14% year over year in December. Wage rates spent most of the year rising in the double digits annually, though they were up just more than 6% in December after easing in recent months.
Restaurants Rethink How Long Their Business Day Should Be
Days – hours? Food, service and ambience have long been the fundamental means for differentiating one restaurant from another. Now a new variable is gaining importance as the industry’s labor plight forces a hard decision on operators: When should their restaurants be open? As this week’s edition of RB’s Restaurant Rewind reports, concepts are adding or forgoing dayparts as they more carefully balance sales potential against the difficulties of staffing for those hours. Brunch is drawing entrants throughout the full-service sector, but the worth of dinner service is being increasingly questioned. Meanwhile, even brands synonymous with round-the-clock service are skipping overnight shifts because of diminishing head counts—not of customers, but of potential hires. As Rewind host Peter Romeo notes in this week’s report, restaurant newcomers have been opting out of post-afternoon service for decades. The Restaurant Business Editor At Large suggests that the true instigator might have been a concept that was a rage in the 1980s but is little known today, called Le Peep.
Did You Know?
Restaurants are growing frustrated with their payment processors. Restaurants are tired of wrestling with their credit-card terminals. A new survey from research firm J.D. Power found that restaurants’ satisfaction with their merchant services providers fell 18 points in 2022. That was the largest decrease in what was an overall decline in small business sentiment about their payment processors last year. The widespread frustration is being driven primarily by the costs and fees charged by the providers, J.D. Power said. Those charges became harder to swallow amid a year of inflation and supply chain challenges that impacted virtually all industries.
Employee Tip
Inflation has Americans tired of tipping, but tips are actually growing. Despite reports of tipping fatigue among consumers, new data indicates that people are actually tipping more at restaurants. Square, the company behind many of the iPad point-of-sale machines you might see at a local restaurant or coffee shop, found total tips received in the fourth quarter climbed 16.5% year-over-year at full-service restaurants and 15.9% at quick-service restaurants. The hike comes in spite of high inflation and surveys indicating that consumers are feeling stretched thin thanks to an abundance of iPads asking for tips across all types of businesses.
Bielat Santore & Company – Restaurant Industry Alert
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