After El Pollo Loco was featured in an episode of “The Apprentice” last year, I interviewed president and chief executive Stephen Carley about the topic of product placement. I asked whether product placement was getting out of...

NEW YORK Holding onto current sales and customers has jumped to the top priority for entrepreneurial operations like restaurants, surpassing such usual imperatives as growing the business, according to research released Thursday by American...

NORCROSS Ga. A franchisee of the 138-unit Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed four of its Atlanta-area stores. Norcross-based Greater Atlanta Bar-B-Q LLC made its bankruptcy filing last Thursday in...

SCOTTSDALE Ariz. GE Capital Solutions, Franchise Finance, the largest restaurant lender by assets and clients, confirmed Friday it would be “much more selective” and defer rate quotes on new deals as the credit chill that began last year becomes a...

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Jamba Juice store managers in Hawaii love the flexibility of their schedules, says Dean McPhail, chief executive and owner of JJC Hawaii LLC, the smoothie chain’s Honolulu-based franchisee. That got McPhail thinking: Wouldn’t the employees in his...

Back in the Dark Ages—by that I mean the 1980s—marketers were agog over the potential to expand their range of consumer targeting through the use of that new medium called the facsimile machine.Restaurants could fax promotional offers and their...