As of this month, one can count only16
Potbelly Sandwich Works has signed up franchisees to open 10 shops in London over the next five years. Those would be the Chicago sandwich chain’s first outlets in Europe. Potbelly, which has 347 stores, expanded into the Middle East in 2012, where it operates a dozen franchise stores in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab…
The improving jobs market and falling gasoline prices are among the factors underlying an upward revision of Technomic Inc.’s 2015 forecast of foodservice operator sales, released to the firm’s customers last week. Technomic now forecasts total foodservice industry sales will grow 3.9% in current dollars with real growth pegged at 1.5%. This compares with the…
It’s conventional wisdom that when gasoline prices come down, foodservice sales—at least at commercial operations—go up. It’s conventional wisdom because there is a huge body of evidence to support it. So we were taken back a bit when Joe Pawlak, v.p, at Technomic, told us last week that while lower gasoline prices are indeed a…
Wholesale food prices fell for the second consecutive month in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Restaurant Association, while menu and grocery-store prices continued to rise, pushed higher by earlier run-ups in wholesale prices. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and others are predicting food prices should stabilize in the…
State taxing bodies have finally crossed the fiscal “trough.” State tax revenues grew 4% on a quarter versus year prior basis in the third quarter 2014, according to preliminary data on 48 of the 50 states compiled by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, N.Y. The return to growth follows a widely anticipated slowing and…
Two weeks ago in FER Fortnightly, we gave you the full details on proposed rate changes for shipping commercial warewashers and air curtains. Both segments are targeted for shipping classification upgrades by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association’s Commodity Classification Standards Board. The board meets next Tuesday, Jan. 27, leaving industry members nearly a week…
Pittsburgh and Seattle are the latest large metropolitan areas to consider requiring restaurants to post health department inspection letter grades on their doors. Operators in those two cities want more say in how the process will work Backers of the measures point to the self-proclaimed success of New York City, where the health department boasts…
Starting in June, New York State will require all restaurants and commercial buildings to install carbon monoxide detectors. The law was prompted in part by the February 2014 death of a Legal Sea Foods restaurant manager on Long Island from a carbon monoxide leak from a malfunctioning water heater pipe. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the…
Kevin Fink has been named executive v.p. of the Ali Group. He will relocate from Denver, where he has been president of Ice-O-Matic, to join Ali’s corporate team in Milan. Beginning March 2, Fink will report to Massimo Giussani, COO, Ali Group, and assist in the group’s overall support, control and development initiatives of its…