The position of v.p.-marketing for

Tom Lyons has joined

Kevin Vigeant has joined the Sandstone Group as v.p.-business development-foodservice. Vigeant brings 20 years of senior-level sales experience at equipment manufacturers and distributors to the company’s foodservice division. Sandstone is the parent company of Alluserv, Geneva Designs, Lakeside, Multitera and PrisonBilt. “We are excited to add Kevin to the Sandstone Group. His extensive knowledge of…

Dual branding seems a natural for two health-conscious chains. Planet Smoothie, an Atlanta-based franchise system with 100-plus units in 18 states. More than half of its stores are in Florida and Georgia. “The consumer profiles of Tasti D-Lite and Planet Smoothie are very similar, so combining the two complementary brands will provide both brands an…

Busy times at

Blended revenues for seven large publicly traded equipment and supplies companies rose again in the third quarter, the sixth consecutive quarter of gains versus the year prior. Reported combined revenues for the group, less the effects of major acquisitions primarily by Middleby Corp., were up 7.5%. This was slightly slower than the 8.5% gain in…

October wasn’t a great month for restaurant operators surveyed by the National Restaurant Association, but in spite of soft sales and traffic, they are feeling a bit better about the future. As a result, the group’s Restaurant Performance Index was off a statistically insignificant 0.1 point and stands at 100, exactly the index point between…

The national news and business media worked hard parsing last week’s report on employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reasons were simple, if the details weren’t: The unemployment rate surprisingly dropped from 9% to 8.6%, yet it was another ho-hum month of jobs growth with only 120,000 net new nonfarm payroll jobs created.…

Both the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index and The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index improved last month, finally getting back to last summer’s levels, which are still nothing to get excited about. But they have clawed their way back following the debacle of the debt-ceiling disaster in August. The University of Michigan Sentiment…