Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Today's Specials:
BUSINESS: Lean on Restaurant Employee Incentive Programs to Boost Your Profits
By using restaurant reward & incentive programs for staff, you can add thousands of dollars to your bottom line per month. So why aren't more restaurants doing just that?
DID YOU KNOWs…
Welcome to the Future
Lyft (Uber’s direct rival) is partnering with Google’s self-driving car unit Waymo, to help develop self-driving cars destined for your next pick-up. The two companies are among many others in the race to invent the first self-driving cars offered on the market. Changing gears.
Beer Lies
Multiple beer companies have been in the hot seat after a collection of lawsuits have been filed over whether or not a company’s beer is made in the state (or origin) as advertised. Here are seven beers that have been sued over where they’re brewed. Location, location, location.
Giddy-Up
Critically acclaimed Pittsburgh chef Justin Severino is under fire for one of his menu options called “Le Cheval,” aka horse tartar. Severino was hit immediately with angry Yelp and social media comments from horse lovers. He responded that the horse meat was a one-night offer channeling cuisine from Quebec.
FOOD FRAUD
Why it matters to you: Faulty food sourcing could put your reputation at risk.
In a study conducted in 2015, two researchers visited six popular Washington D.C. restaurants and took small samples of the seafood dishes they ordered. In their paper, they reported that one-third of the entrees they ordered were not the “species” that they thought they were getting. They actually found that the seafood ordered had been substituted somewhere along the supply chain for another type seafood meat. More often than assumed, meat in all forms could potentially be tampered with along the supply chain typically to produce more product for less money, supplementing more expensive meats with less expensive ones.
Food fraud is becoming increasingly more common in food handling and may take on many forms. In the past few years, there have been “far too many public reports of fraud with horsemeat being added to beef, honey mixed with corn syrup, virgin olive oil being diluted with lower quality oils and then laced with dyes to adjust the color and many others.” This is alarming at many levels, specifically for people with allergies. Ways to minimize food fraud in your food sourcing are by triple checking the reputation of food suppliers and whether they perform third-party audits. Food fraud is an issue that needs attention in our restaurants to make sure our reputation is not at risk.
RESTAURANT RECESSION
Why it matters to you: Restaurants are becoming “over-retailed” causing mass closings.
Restaurants have been experiencing a collective downturn when it comes to sales and some analysts have pointed towards chains making the problem worse. Business Insider ran an article examining the restaurant industry’s current recession and how top restaurant chains are contributing to the problem. According to the piece, in the first quarter of 2017, same-store sales fell 1.1% across the chain restaurant industry, with same-store traffic dropping 3.4%, according to data from TDn2K's Restaurant Industry Snapshot. The industry analytics company has attributed the problem to the fact that the United States is over-packed with restaurant options while top chains are continuing to expand.
The joint assumption is the concern that there are too many places to eat out for chain restaurants to succeed. Executives from both Starbucks and Olive Garden have referred to the US restaurant market as “over-retailed,” citing this exact problem. The recession that is plaguing restaurants has not reached the oversaturation that retail has experienced such as the Sears and Mancy’s mass closings. The competition to win over loyal customers is at an all-time high, and with growing external threats, restaurants need to build a strategy to increase sales. If restaurants can’t build their revenue within this year, it is projected they will likely close.
