Candle Lamp has successfully completed its previously announced acquisition of The Sterno Group. The combined companies, led by Candle Lamp’s current executive team, will be known as SternoCandleLamp.Sterno, founded in 1893 as S. Sternau & Co., is synonymous with gelled portable heat used in food warmers. Riverside, Calif.-based Candle Lamp makes liquid-wax table lighting and…

Burger King Worldwide has plans to get bigger in Colombia and expand into Siberia. The chain has inked an exclusive development deal with Fondo Escala Capital and Promotora to further its brand in Colombia by more than 100 new stores within the next five years. The home of the Whopper entered Colombia in 2008 and…

There are fewer than 100 days until NAFEM `13. Booked your rooms and tickets yet? Found a seat for the closing night banquet’s headliner, Jimmy Buffett? If not, hop to it. The show, Feb. 7-9, 2013, is just around the corner. And Florida in February (especially with a side trip to Margaritaville) is a popular…

Made good? Achieved your goals? It’s a good time to tell your story, or share the details of someone else’s accomplishment. The National Restaurant Association is looking for operators across the country to apply or nominate a fellow industry professional for its 2013 Faces of Diversity Award. The award, sponsored by PepsiCo Foodservice, recognizes the…

In case you didn’t see it, we wrote the following analysis of the foodservice equipment and supplies market, and how it is developing compared with our July forecasts, for last week’s FER Dealer Report. Since then, our forecasting partner John Muldowney and I have had another conversation, based in part on third-quarter releases from ITW’s…

It can hardly be termed robust, but real growth of gross domestic product in the U.S. came in at 2% in the third quarter on an annualized basis, according to the advanced estimate released Oct. 26 by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The gain, stronger than many economists had expected, was driven…

It doesn’t make much sense to most informed observers, but consumer sentiment held at a five-year high in the final October reading of the Thomson/Reuters University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index. The final reading was 82.6, down only slightly from the preliminary mid-month reading of 83.1. Both were the highest readings for the index since…

The expected seasonal decline in gasoline prices has finally kicked in, following the unexpected run-up of prices this late summer. The average national price for a gallon of regular gas has plummeted nearly 13 cents in the last week alone, and at $3.548 a gallon, is nearly 24 cents lower than a month ago. Declines…

We usually define restaurant locations as strip sites or stand-alone or mall placements. Now a county in Maryland is looking at putting parked food trucks in their own business category as semi-permanent foodservice facilities. The Anne Arundel County Council is mulling a bill creating that definition and enforcing a five-year-old state law that says such…

A letter-grade system, like those used for health inspections in New York and North Carolina, is under debate for restaurant and bar owners in Baltimore. Legislation mandating that the city health department implement a grading system and create an online database of grades is being reviewed by the City Council’s health committee. Every member of…