As speeches go, it’s not just former President Bill Clinton’s keynote address that can draw your attention at next month’s here periodically.

The mood was good and operators appeared keen to invest, according to the exhibitors at INTERNORGA 2012. The international trade show, staged March 9-14 in Hamburg, Germany, featured more than 1,200 companies from around the globe. The show was attended by nearly 100,000 visitors from Germany and abroad; more than half of those visitors represented…

Houston is ground zero for

After posting strong growth in blended revenues through most of 2011, seven large equipment and supplies companies saw their sales growth slow in the fourth quarter last year. Combined sales rose 3.1% in the quarter, versus the prior year quarter, down markedly from the 8.5% growth of the second quarter and 7.5% increase in the…

Strong gains in same-store sales and customer traffic offset a slight downturn in foodservice operator optimism in February as the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index rose again in February. The overall index was up 0.6 point to reach 101.9. It was the sixth consecutive month the index has been at or above 100, the…

Chief financial officers at Prime Advantage member companies remain very optimistic about their own companies’ financial prospects this year, though they are slightly less upbeat about the general economy. The fourth annual CFO survey by the manufacturers’ buying consortium, which includes many leading foodservice equipment and supplies companies, reports that 69% of executives are more…

As we reported in the last issue of FER Fortnightly, the Top 500 Chains posted overall growth of 3.4% last year, nearly double that of 2010, according to preliminary data from Technomic Inc. That growth adds up to more than $8 billion. But while 60% of the 500 concepts reported gains in ’11, the gains…

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