Marketing
5 ways restaurants are engaging diners for Halloween
Here’s how restaurants are hoping to scare up brand awareness—and sales.
Financing
The poultry purchase
Restaurants traditionally rely on chicken and turkey to be menu profit makers. Usually in good supply and always a good buy in relation to other proteins, operators often turn to poultry to keep costs in check when red meats and seafood skyrocket. But that strategy may be dampened in the months ahead.
Few ingredients cross over as many culinary borders as rice. These days, restaurant kitchens have many more types available from which to choose. “It’s important that the variety meets the needs of the foodservice operation and the specific dishes it’s intended for,” says Gary Reifeiss of Producers Rice Mill in Stuttgart, Arkansas.
Until the spring of 2008, the lunch crowd at Stockton’s Pub and Grill, a full-service restaurant in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, was thick with professionals from nearby real estate, law and accounting offices. But as the nation settled into a recession, the lunch crowd begin to thin out, and owner Doug Stockton noticed that customers in business attire became especially scarce.