Ruby Restaurant Group is hoping to make a splash in the fast-casual market and add 20 franchises of its smaller “dinette-style” stores this year. The smaller units have half the footprint and half the startup costs of a standard Ruby’s Diner outlet. Ruby’s has been testing the 1960s-vibe dinette concept for about eight months in…

Habit Restaurants hopes to make its fast-casual outlets a habit in the Middle East. The chain’s first-ever international franchise agreement is with Food Quest Restaurant Management, which will develop up to 50 new Habit Burger Grill units in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman over the next decade. Habit Burger debuted in…

Both the House and Senate are considering bills that would permanently lower the taxes paid by restaurant operators. The legislation would create a 15-year tax-depreciation schedule for new restaurant construction as well as restaurant, leasehold and retail improvements. If the bills pass Congress and are signed by President Obama, it would end the uncertainty that…

The Federal Trade Commission has blinked. Last Wednesday night, the regulator was close to voting to block Sysco Corp.’s $3.5 billion purchase of rival US Foods, but postponed the decision after an intense day of meetings with Sysco. Sysco, the country’s largest broadliner, met last week with the FTC’s five commissioners in a last-ditch attempt…

It was an active year again in 2014 as business life-cycle factors and a healthy E&S market kept the pace of merger and acquisition activity relatively high. As has been typical lately, The Middleby Corp. was particularly active. Dealer activity was somewhat restrained after a very busy 2013. And there continued to be a number…

If you live in the Northeast, it may not seem like this winter is milder than last year’s. But it is for much of the country and that is helping restaurant sales trend higher, according to Black Box Intelligence, as reported in Nation’s Restaurant News. According to the research group’s Restaurant Industry Snapshot, which tracks…

The party had to end sometime. The run-up in consumer confidence took a pause during the first half of February, according to the preliminary reading from the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, released Feb. 13. The index fell unexpectedly to 93.6 from a final measure of 98.1 in January. That reading was the strongest…

Nearly 80% of restaurant operators polled for Restaurants Canada’s Restaurant Outlook Survey reported increased or equal same-store sales in the fourth quarter of last year. The percentage reporting lower sales fell to only 23%, the lowest percentage since the survey began in 2011. But operators are less optimistic about sales trends during the next six…

We’ve been so busy with getting ready for The NAFEM Show and our biennial FER Industry Excellence Awards program that we haven’t had a chance to do our annual round-up of the year in mergers and sales. It was an active year again in 2014 as business life-cycle factors and a healthy E&S market kept…

TriMark USA has consolidated two of its divisions, Atlanta-based TriMark Century Concepts and TriMark Strategic, into one newly combined unit. The new entity, known as TriMark Strategic and based in Coppell, Texas, should enable the company to gain a stronger footprint in the southeastern United States. While continuing to serve local and national customers, TriMark…