What is it worth to establish your dealership’s credibility before more than 20,000 multiunit operators and design consultants? That’s the point of Foodservice Equipment Reports’ annual Top Dealer Report. The magazine will again publish a listing of leading equipment and supplies dealers and distributors in its June issue. And you don’t even need to pay…

These are busy times at the

A few days ago, a couple senior-level dealer friends in the sportcraft industry were commenting on how tough the market’s been lately. An almost snowless winter in this part of the country has dropped snowmobile sales to almost nothing. That, topping a couple years of economy-related slowdowns in a variety of categories, has made life…

It’s a new lineup of officers at the

The warm winter weather must have led to an early bloom of optimism for restaurant operators. The Restaurant Performance Index maintained by the National Restaurant Association fell back in January after surging in December. Still, in spite of a 0.8 point decline in the overall index, it remains at 101.3, well above the 100 level…

Noting the “direct correlation between disposable income and foodservice spending,” Technomic Inc. Executive V.P. Bob Goldin says the run-up in gasoline prices “could not have come at a worse time for our slowly recovering economy. Speaking somewhat ‘provincially,’ we are especially concerned about the almost certain adverse impact rising gas prices will have on foodservice…

Independent restaurants have dramatically lost share of traffic and units during the Great Foodservice Recession, according to the latest data from The NPD Group, the Port Washington, N.Y.-based consumer research from. Total restaurant visits fell from 62.7 billion in 2008 to 60.6 billion last year and nearly all that loss, 87%, was at independent restaurants,…

As operators dealt with rapidly rising food prices through most of last year, they were apparently plotting to get some of it back. In January, food-away-from-home prices jumped 0.4% seasonally adjusted versus December, the largest increase since August. Meanwhile, grocery-store food prices held steady in January, for the second time in the past three months.…