Attending the International Hotel, Motel + Restaurant Show next month in New York? Don’t forget to check out the winning design in the IHMRS 2014 Foodservice Pioneering Concept competition. The winning concept, “BOWLS—Food That’s Good For You!,” has been built to a scaled working model on the exhibit floor at the IHMRS, Nov. 9-11 at…

Going to NAFEM ’15? Join FER during the show to honor the winners of our 2015 Industry Excellence Awards. The event, Friday evening, Feb. 20, at the Anaheim Marriott, will celebrate the career accomplishments of 17 companies and industry professionals. Register now to share an exceptional evening honoring the 2015 recipients of the Management Excellence,…

McAlister’s Deli has a five-year plan to open another 10 locations throughout Colorado, North and South Carolina and Wyoming. Three stores—in Charlotte and Fayetteville, N.C., and Florence, S.C.—will open later this year. The franchise group leading the expansion, Southern Deli Holdings, currently operates 47 locations in those states as well as Missouri, where it recently…

Jeff Johnson has joined

Yo! Sushi, the London-based conveyor-belt sushi chain, plans to launch 50 new sites in the U.S. over the next six years. It will open four stores in New Jersey and Florida by the beginning of 2015. The expansion follows a move from rival sushi chain Itsu, which recently announced that it was expanding into the…

The 1,030-unit Buffalo Wild Wings chain is dipping into the taco segment, making a majority investment in Rusty Taco, a privately held, fast-casual chain. Dallas-based Rusty Taco specializes in street-style, fresh-made tacos at two company-owned stores and seven franchised locations in Dallas, Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Minneapolis-based Buffalo Wild Wings also has a minority investment…

The Society for Hospitality and Foodservice Management sums up its 35 years as three decades, five years and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours influencing and defining corporate foodservice. The society will mark its anniversary at its National Conference, Nov. 4-6, at the Mohegan Sun Hotel & Spa in Uncasville, Conn. The milestone conference, themed…

S. Truett Cathy, the founder of the privately held Chick-fil-A restaurant chain, died Sept. 8 at age 93. Cathy, credited with creating the original Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich and pioneering quick-service food in malls, built the nation’s largest quick-service chicken chain based on systemwide sales. With $5 billion in annual sales in 2013, Chick-fil-A is also one of the…

Starboard Value, the activist investor group hoping to wrest control of Olive Garden from parent Darden Restaurants, released a soup-to-nuts prescription last week on how to "fix" the 800-unit family-style Italian chain. Apparently, much of it starts in the kitchen. Starboard’s nearly 300-page slide presentation lays out the changes it would make if it won…

In case you missed the news last week, Foodservice Equipment Reports magazine has announced the recipients of its 2015 Industry Excellence Awards. Seventeen awards are given: six to organizations for Management Excellence; six to individuals near or under the age of 40 selected as Young Lions; and five to Industry Service Award winners. The honors…