Lime Fresh Mexican Grill and will purchase the 16-unit chain for $24 million. Ruby Tuesday will gain 15 Lime Fresh stores; the Miami chain’s founder John Kunkel, will step down as Lime Fresh CEO but retain ownership of the flagship South Beach, Fla., location. Maryville, Tenn.-based Ruby Tuesday entered into a licensing agreement with Lime…

Franklin Machine Products has tapped industry veteran Keith Raymond as its new national sales manager. Raymond’s resume includes sales management positions with Component Hardware Group, JHL Enterprises, Kason Industries, and Polar Ware Co. He also was president of a start-up manufacturer of commercial gaskets. At FMP, Raymond will manage the company’s regional sales managers and…

An independent panel of judges has selected the finalists for thehere for full details on all the finalists. The winners in each category, plus an Innovator of the Year selected from all finalists, will be announced on May 5 at the NRA’s inaugural “Destination: Celebration” event, which kicks off the annual Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show in…

You can lead a server to the break table, but…oh, never mind. The California Supreme Court ruled April 12 that employers are under no obligation to ensure that workers take legally mandated lunch and rest breaks. The unanimous opinion in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court clarified state law on an employer’s obligations to ensure…

City drains and sewers clogged by grease and oil buildup from restaurant fryers are not just an American problem. Our Canadian friends are getting fed up too. The city of Vancouver, B.C., says it spends millions annually on heavy equipment to unclog the hardened grease that backs up in sewers and pipes, so it is…

The National Restaurant Association is rolling out the next generation of its ServSafe food safety manager program in print and online. The new “ServSafe Manager Book, 6th Edition” (formerly “ServSafe Essentials”) training materials include optimized, recalibrated and focused content.  The website, ServSafe.com, also has undergone a redesign to simplify navigation and reflect the improvements in…

Restaurant sales rose again in March, hitting a new record of $45.549 billion in the advance estimate by the Labor Department’s Bureau of the Census released Monday, April 16. On an adjusted basis, sales rose 0.3% compared to February and are running 6.3% ahead of March last year. It was the 11th consecutive month of…

After three months of declines, food prices at the wholesale level rose in March. Menu prices also posted another slight gain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly reports on producer and consumer prices. Wholesale food prices at the so-called “finished” level rose 0.2% versus February, the first gain since November.  A 12.8% jump…

A month or so ago, we asked Joe Pawlak, v.p. at Technomic Inc., when we should get worried about gasoline prices. “When they get to $4.30 to $4.40,” he wrote us. Pawlak has told us in the past that each successive run-up in the price of gasoline raises the threshold consumers have for when it…