Sweet & Sour

What happens when you have two experienced and irreverent columnists on staff? You let them take on the most important topics of the day in the restaurant industry. Nancy Kruse and Peter Romeo discuss and debate almost anything impacting restaurants every month.

By Peter Romeo and Nancy Kruse on Mar. 28, 2023

Sweet & Sour: Columnists Peter Romeo and Nancy Kruse consider if menu pricing has hit the red zone. Someone check with a customer, quick.

Operations

Reports of mid-market restaurants' death may be greatly exaggerated

By Nancy Kruse and Peter Romeo on Feb. 16, 2023

Sweet & Sour: The pandemic has fostered doubts about the viability of mid-priced dining. But isn’t the pandemic fading fast?

Operations

The attacks on ServSafe badly need a scrubbing

By Peter Romeo and Nancy Kruse on Feb. 10, 2023

Sweet & Sour: Critics are blasting the life-saving program as a con job. They apparently prefer to kill the truth instead of germs.

Food

Red sauce, milkshakes and bologna masks: Nancy and Peter’s 2022 dining adventures

By Nancy Kruse and Peter Romeo on Dec. 14, 2022

Sweet & Sour: Here’s what the veteran trend spotters say they’ll remember most from the year that's ending. Slice of Spam, anyone?

Workforce

Call the scrap yard. We have a labor model to be picked up.

By Peter Romeo and Nancy Kruse on Nov. 22, 2022

Sweet & Sour: The restaurant business has grappled with labor challenges for about 40 years now, but never a situation as trying as the current one. It’s time to rethink the very nature of restaurant work.

Topics

With the old guidelines this scrambled, what's next for tipping?

By Nancy Kruse and Peter Romeo on Aug. 22, 2022

Sweet & Sour: The longstanding protocols for who, what and when to tip have been upended. Here’s how the turmoil could shake out.

Operations

Remembering the days when restaurants provided service

By Peter Romeo and Nancy Kruse on Jul. 05, 2022

Sweet & Sour: Is the pursuit of frictionless interaction just a ruse for getting guests to do more of the work themselves?

Food

What even the robots might have missed at this year’s National Restaurant Association Show

By Nancy Kruse and Peter Romeo on Jun. 08, 2022

Sweet & Sour: From android armies to a different sort of pot pie, here are the surprises we long time show-goers discovered at the industry’s first annual convention in three years.

Marketing