The Bottom Line

Jonathan Maze The Bottom Line

Restaurant Business Executive Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants. He writes daily about the factors influencing the operating environment, including labor and food costs and various industry trends such as technology and delivery.

Jonathan has been widely quoted in media publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post and has appeared on CNBC, Yahoo Finance and NPR. He writes a weekly finance-focused newsletter for Restaurant Business, The Bottom Line, and is the host of the weekly podcast “A Deeper Dive.”

Financing

Price may not be the only thing hurting restaurant traffic

The Bottom Line: An aging population could be putting some pressure on industry sales, as older people tend to eat out less often.

Financing

The downfall of Eduardo Diaz's Pizza Hut empire

The Bottom Line: How did one of the pizza chain’s largest franchisees fall out of favor with the brand and lose nearly 90% of its value in just three years?

The Bottom Line: The casual-dining chain’s 31% same-store sales number was shocking by any standard, and stands up to some of the best quarterly performances of recent vintage.

The Bottom Line: Here’s a look at how the new Starbucks CEO is changing some of the moves made by Laxman Narasimhan and Howard Schultz as he deploys the restaurant turnaround playbook.

The Bottom Line: Data from Technomic shows that the drive-thru chain is outperforming its much larger rival on numerous metrics, which may help explain the brands' diverging performances.

The Bottom Line: Here are a few key topics we’re watching as restaurant chains start reporting their end-of-year earnings next week, including Starbucks, McDonald’s, the Trump effect, optimism and weather.

The Bottom Line: The closure of 79 Wahlburgers locations inside Hy-Vee supermarkets shows that just because you can open a bunch of restaurants in a short period doesn’t mean you should.

The Bottom Line: The coffee shop giant is making changes in its support staff, joining a long line of big restaurant companies that paired turnarounds with corporate reorganizations.

The Bottom Line: Excessive management turnover at companies can create their own set of problems as new executives look to make their mark. The restaurant industry is loaded with examples.

The Bottom Line: The fast-casual burger chain’s plan to build 1,500 locations, not 450, will fundamentally change what the brand is all about.

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