Just this week I came across the above graphic and an article out of QSR Mazazine citing a national study that showed 74% of consumers expect better food safety. The same study also found “that while a slight majority (53 percent) of U.S. consumers say that their level of concern about food safety has stayed …
News Story Review
Food-borne Illness Just Got Very Serious
It’s of course always a serious issue, but there hasn’t been a sentence such as the one laid down last week for the former owner of Peanut Corp of America. A 28 year prison sentence for the salmonella outbreak at his manufacturing facility in 2008/2009 that killed 9 people and got another 714 people really …
Social Media Influence on Restaurant Patrons
Caught an interesting article on VegasInc.com about social media in the restaurant industry and effective it is in attracting customers. You might be surprised by some of these findings. I was. adults who use Instagram has doubled in two years from 13Â percent in 2012 to 26 percent in 2014 62% of Americans say social media …
Same Store Sales Increase in August
Driven by Fast Casual, the restaurant industry posted strong same store sales in August according to the Black Box Intelligence report.  Here are some of the stats from the Nation’s Restaurant News article: 1.7% increase in same store sales in August YTD same store sales up 2.2% The industry can post it’s 5th straight quarter of …
Restaurant Delivery Services
I came across two articles today discussing restaurant delivery services, specifically in Seattle. One on Geek Wire and the other on The Stranger. Both of them were very different in the story they were telling which was interesting. The Stranger talks about how Postmates is reeking havoc on the restaurant industry. Mainly causing “resentment” between …
Staffing Challenges in North Jersey
An article over the weekend in The Record interviews a few folks in the restaurant industry in norther New Jersey about some of the challenges they are facing around finding and keeping employees. It’s not just isolated to one specific function, but all employees in all departments that are becoming increasingly more difficult to staff. …
Slower Restaurant Employment Growth in San Fran & Seattle
A preliminary look into employment data by Forbes Contributor Stephen Bronars points to slower employment growth since the minimum wage increases in San Francisco and Seattle. In the article Higher Minimum Wages in San Francisco and Seattle Mean Fewer Restaurant Jobs takes a look at year over year quarterly changes in employment averages. Here are …
Will Minimum Wage Increases Accelerate the Robot Invasion?
There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post, “Minimum-wage offensive could speed arrival of robot-powered restaurants”, suggesting that $15/hr minimum wage will accelerate the move to robots in restaurants. It mentions that shedding labor in the restaurant industry isn’t a new phenomenon. According to the article in the late 60’s a McDonald’s would have 70-80 …
Norm Macdonald Takes Over as the Colonel
I caught an article on entrepreneur.com about KFC bringing in Norm Macdonald to replace Darrell Hammond in their attempt to revive Col Sanders as part of their latest marketing campaign. The author focusing more on the marketing aspect of the change, but he’s a little harsh on some points. Probably trying to get some shock …
Early Job Loss Results From Seattle
We have been actively following the minimum wage hike in Seattle very closely at OpsAnalitica.  We have written four blogs about it this year. We found this article from the American Enterprise Institutes that discusses restaurant job losses in Seattle since the beginning of 2015, it is only 3 paragraphs so I encourage you to read …