The restaurant industry is expanding at a strong pace again, but there's a difference to the growth and the strategies driving it. Chains are creating opportunities by peering further into the future and anticipating the trends in consumer preferences, restaurant recruitment, financing, politics and restaurant operations. They're hungering for ideas, innovation and insight.
Learn how some of the most successful restaurateurs are handling common challenges and opportunities.
He took the stage like a victorious general and made it clear from the get-go that this would be no ordinary presentation. “I don’t do speeches anymore,” former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi barked to a packed ballroom at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. “I rant.”
If you took a United or Delta flight to the 2012 Restaurant Leadership Conference in March in Scottsdale, Arizona, you had the option to forego a printed boarding pass, using a QR code sent to your smartphone instead. In a world where 80 percent of the population owns a mobile device (and only 47 percent own a toothbrush), cellphones and tablets are replacing pagers, wallets, credit cards and even keys. Here’s a round-up of mobile solutions from the floor of RLC to keep an eye on.
Energy saving may not be “an overly sexy conversation to have at eight in the morning,” acknowledged OSI Restaurant Partners’ vice president of procurement, Kristin Brooks. But a standing-room-only audience showed up at that hour during the Restaurant Leadership Conference to hear the Outback Steakhouse parent’s experiences in cutting utility costs.