Consumer Trends
Love and dollars are in the air
Starting this weekend, thousands of couples will be donning their best attire, heading to their favorite restaurants and racking up hefty bills in celebration of Valentine’s Day. OpenTable, an online provider of free, real-time restaurant reservations, compiled a report on this year’s Valentine’s Day trends, keeping operators prepped and ready for the rush.
Food
Grown in Oregon
Many Asian restaurants rely on imported dried and canned ingredients to create dishes close to the originals. But that’s not the way chef Gregory Gourdet cooks at Departure, a modern Pan-Asian spot in Portland, Oregon.
While mothers continue to trump sweethearts when it comes to the most popular holiday to dine out, one-quarter of Americans will be sitting in restaurants on February 14, according to research from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). As Valentine's Day falls on a Thursday this year, the annual reservation survey from OpenTable also shows diners will be celebrating love well into the weekend. Results from both sources revealed a number of different dining trends and habits operators can use to sweeten the holiday for everyone
In compiling our second annual ranking of the fastest-growing up-and-coming restaurant chains in America —the ones tallying sales between $25 million and $50 million—we were struck by how many new growth stories there were to tell. Thirty-one of this year’s Future 50 growth chains, or 62 percent, are entirely new to the list. That tells us that the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in 2007, and that the restaurant business is still where it lives.