A March opening at the San Diego Zoo caps a string of 23 new domestic locations for Nestlé Toll House Café By Chip. The Dallas-based dessert concept recently opened a two additional stores in Canada and eight in the Middle East. Eight new units are currently under construction, with a total of 30 North American…

The artisan pizza chain has kicked off its sixth year in business with 39 new units over last year’s store count; in 2015, it recorded 62% growth, expanding from 63 to 102 units. Already with a footprint in 10 states—Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon and Texas—

Longtime member MAFSI member Joseph Byrne, founder of Byrne & Associates, has died. He was 87. Byrne founded his manufacturer’s rep firm in 1970, and remained an active member of MAFSI until his retirement from the Fairfield, Ohio, company in the late 1990s. Survivors include two sons and three stepchildren. Services have been held. In…

Roy Hook, Manager of Equipment Development at The Wendy’s Co. and a pioneer in quick-service cooking equipment engineering and design, has retired after 35 years with the chain. Over his career, Hook worked closely with a broad spectrum of foodservice equipment manufacturers and vendors. He invented the Dublin, Ohio, chain’s current hamburger cooking system and…

One of the factors that has fueled the growth of foodservice equipment and supplies purchasing during the past year has been dropping food prices at the wholesale level. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Restaurant Association reported another 1.2% decline in March, based on data from the Producer Price Index. It was the…

The first-quarter blahs—a feature of the U.S. economy almost every year since the end of the Great Recession—are upon us again this year. Consumer sentiment, as tracked by the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, edged down again in the mid-month reading in April, while eating and drinking place sales fell in March, too. The…

The growth of state tax receipts slowed in the third quarter of 2015, according to data from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, N.Y. Year-over-year tax-receipt growth for the third quarter rose 3.8% following increases of 6.9% in the second quarter ’15 and 5.1% in the first quarter. What’s more, the Institute expects…

Nearly 600 members of the National Restaurant Association joined tourists enjoying Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossoms to attend the NRA’s 2016 Public Affairs Conference and meet with lawmakers on issues affecting their businesses. The April 12-13 conference included a keynote speech by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a seminar on how advocacy is changing in a digital world, and…

A recent study by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government shows that states that turned to gambling as a fix for revenue woes have usually been disappointed with the results. And that may mean an end to the flurry of new casino building that has helped keep some segments of the foodservice equipment and…

The southernmost tip of Africa is hungry for American pizza, chicken and burgers. KFC, McDonald’s, Domino’s and Pizza Hut are popular outposts in South Africa, and Starbucks just launched its first two African outlets at Johannesburg shopping malls. The growth of American chains is welcome to consumers there but poses a challenge to established South…