Consumers’ growing consciousness about health and nutrition presents opportunities for restaurant marketers, but the issue of dietary prudence also poses balancing-act challenges.While it’s perfectly fine to promote more healthful or nutritious...

As domestic economic and competitive pressures grow, the casual-dining segment continues to face many challenges, and increasingly determined operators are rising to meet them.Just as the past few years have been no cakewalk for casual-dining...

It’s not that maps lie, exactly, it’s just that cartography can’t convey the cultural connections that exist between places on either side of a carefully drawn line. Although modern maps precisely divide Austria from Trentino-Alto Adige, in...

Prices aren’t the only numbers dropping in quick service. While more and more items get placed onto value menus and 99-cent burgers figure in more ad campaigns, many of the segment’s largest players also are slashing their number of corporate...

A mother of four children, Jan O’Connor wanted to make extra cash when she applied for a waitress job at a Monical’s Pizza in Bradley, Ill. That was 27 years ago. Today she’s still a Monical’s server. “I didn’t think it would last this...

From mom-and-pop sandwich shops to billion-dollar fast-food icons, the successful family-run restaurant is the culinary embodiment of the American dream. The foodservice industry is full of businesses that began as one person’s vision and...

Think of “American food” and there’s a good chance you will visualize a hamburger, French fries and a milk shake. But why? Why have chopped beefcakes on buns paired with strings of fried potatoes and ice cream puréed with milk and syrup become the...

Fifty years ago credit card usage was a luxury limited to only a small, exclusive segment of the population. These days, however, cards have all but replaced cash in the U.S. marketplace and nearly everybody carries at least one.While some...

Centuries ago, as traders crossed thousands of miles to secure spices and food products from faraway lands, they nurtured a desire for the exotic that is still strong today. “Globalization set sail on spice-scented galleys and sailing...

Last December, the value menu’s importance in the competition for cash-strapped customers jumped out from billboards touting Burger King’s $1 double cheeseburger as bigger than the equally priced version from quick-service leader McDonald’s.At the...