A restaurant incubator grows in Dallas. Honesty is the best idea at Wendy’s. Another startup makes it easy for restaurants to give to the needy. And more from The Week in Ideas.
Idea #1: Incubate restaurants. A new development in Dallas will house what its founders are calling “the nation’s first restaurant incubator.” Local chefs and aspiring restauratuers will be able to pitch their ideas to the group running the incubator. If they like it, they offer space in the planned 13-acre business development and help securing financing. “The idea of the incubator is to create scalable concepts that can be expanded on a national level,” Phil Romano, an investor in the project, told the local NBC affiliate. “The restaurant industry and real estate developers will come here to shop for new concepts and ideas that are being born right here . . . it will be a creative laboratory for entrepreneurship and innovative thinking about food.”
Idea #2: Sometimes a good name is all you need for a successful promotion.The Souper Bowl.
Idea #3: Don’t blame the economy for everything. Wendy’s CEO Emil Brolick took it like a man with investors this week, admitting that declining sales couldn’t be blamed on the economy, but instead were the result of “self-inflicted wounds.” Honesty is always a good idea.
Idea #4: Make giving back easier. I think we smell a trend. Last week we reported on a new service called Halfsies that allows diners to donate half of their meal to the needy. This week we learn about MOGL, a service that automatically donates a meal to a person in need each time a MOGL user spends $20 through the app at a partner restaurant.
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