Food

As if losing David Bowie and Prince weren’t bad enough, 2016 was also a gloomy year for the restaurant industry. In terms of sales, it was the worst year since the end of the recession, reports The Restaurant Industry Snapshot from TDn2K, which tracks weekly sales from nearly 26,000 restaurant units and more than 130 brands.

“Traffic growth year-to-date has been -3.0 percent, a very troubling scenario compared with the -0.8 percent reported for all of 2015,” Victor Fernandez, Executive Director of Insights and Knowledge for TDn2K, said in an October 2016 release.

If the slowdown continues, what can operators do about it? Here’s a rundown on the causes of the restaurant recession, plus some ideas for boosting business.

Diners want better, healthier, cleaner food — faster. They want it this second, actually.

That’s why delivery-focused restaurants are taking off. Look at Chicago’s Eat Purely, which promises chef-made organic meals delivered in 20 minutes. Sales have doubled each month since Eat Purely opened in March 2016. Millennials especially love when people bring them food; about 20 percent of the restaurant meals they eat are delivered.

The rise in delivery demand promises good things for restaurants: higher order volume, increased sales during off-peak hours, and lower front-of-house costs. It also presents some problems, including quality control challenges and high commissions for delivery partners. We take a closer look at the future of restaurant delivery.

Continuing with our recap series, here are the top blog posts from the Food blog for 2016. This was our most popular content!

Read on...and if you see content you like, be sure to join the HBC Community for regular updates, whether it's Beverage, Food, Hospitality or Recipes.

Soups. Shakes. Sauces. Smoothies. Most chefs rely on their blenders to make a few, standard menu items. But a high-performance blender, like the EXPEDITOR Culinary Blender series from Hamilton Beach Commercial, can lend its talents in a few unexpected ways. We found seven recipes for blenders that might surprise you, from pizza crust to lemonade. Why not give them a whirl?

Customer loyalty programs aren’t just for big business. Any size company, from a small café to a regional chain, can employ a cost-effective digital loyalty program to encourage customers to keep coming back. A repeat customer spends 67 percent more on a single purchase than a new customer does, a Manta and BIA/Kelsey report found; and, as Entrepreneur notes, “they should be rewarded for this action, as retaining customers is less costly than acquiring new ones.”

But how can a company ensure its loyalty program investment will pay off? Hamilton Beach Commercial spoke with Jenny Beightol, Director of Words & Reputations for Belly. With more than 12,000 clients and 6 million members, Chicago-based Belly is the leading digital loyalty solution for businesses. Here are six strategies for making your digital loyalty program a success.

We take great pride in our partnerships with leading foodservice equipment and supply dealers. To that end, Hamilton Beach® Commercial products were recently showcased by Hillphoenix, a pioneer in designing environmentally sustainable refrigeration systems and refrigerated display cases, in their presentation to grocery stores about creating Destination Centers to draw in more customers to the fresh perimeter areas of their stores. This piece was originally published on their Fresh Thinking blog on July 5, 2016. Read on to learn more about their strategy and recommendations for boosting business.              

In April 2016, Tampa Bay Times food critic Laura Reiley rocked the culinary world with an investigation into restaurants’ local sourcing claims. In the piece, titled “Farm to Fable,” Reiley found that dozens of local restaurants — many of which she had lavishly praised in past reviews — were misleading customers about the provenance of food. “Florida quail” was from Wyoming. “Florida shrimp” came from India. Local Zellwood corn… wasn’t.  

It’s not that every restaurateur was actively practicing deception. Many said they had neglected to update the menu, or that they simply couldn’t source everything locally all the time. Seasons change, prices go up, farms go out of business, and it gets complicated.

Does everything really have to be local? And how can restaurants can prioritize farm-to-table sourcing while also managing costs?

Got a surly server? That’s all right; customers won’t care once they taste their food. That’s what many restaurateurs believe, anyway. Here’s the cold truth: great food can’t make up for less-than-stellar service. Customers complain more about personal service than food quality, Jay Baer found in his research for “Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.”

“There seems to be an under-emphasis in employee training and employee skills in comparison to the emphasis on product quality,” Baer tells Nation’s Restaurant News.

How can restaurateurs fix this? Look to the best. Here are seven secrets of customer service all-stars. 

Even giants stumble. The past few years have brought huge shakeups in the foodservice industry, as fast-casual dining and technology innovations have dramatically altered customers’ expectations for eating out. As a result, big chains like Pizza Hut, Applebee’s and McDonald’s have had to change their game plans to regain the popularity they once took for granted.  

Here’s a look at what can smaller chains and independent operators can learn from the turnaround efforts of America’s biggest restaurant companies.

Imagine if every third customer to your restaurant ordered a meal, looked at the plate, then immediately threw it away.

That's pretty much what's happening. A whopping 25 to 40 percent of food that is grown, processed and transported in the United States will never be eaten. Around 80 billion pounds of food ended up in landfills last year, the Food Waste Reduction Alliance estimates, and 43 percent of that waste comes from restaurants and institutions.

Foodservice industry groups are working to reduce barriers to food recycling and donation efforts. But there's also a lot that individual restaurant companies can do. Here are six ideas for restaurant food waste management.