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A few years ago, we wrote about food trucks in a blog entitled, “Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Starting Your Own Food Truck.” In truth, we weren’t prescient enough at the time to know quite how explosive the trend would be. Street food in general and food trucks in particular have become a huge business.
Hardly a new trend, but apparently here to stay, street food has been increasing in popularity for the past several years, and food pundits are predicting that in the next few years it will go mainstream and even upscale. Street food can now be seen at catered events. at posh hotels, and in conference centers, offering stylish menu ideas that go beyond burgers and fries or soups and sandwiches.
As we’ve already discussed, choosing the right refrigeration unit (or units) for a commercial kitchen is an essential part of setting up a food-service business. A full range of refrigerators – all with a different purpose – includes reach-in units, undercounter fridges, walk-ins, merchandisers, and more.
There is a new concept in the food-service industry and it’s called the “ghost restaurant.” Because there has been a recent surge in consumer preference for off-premise eating – eating at home or at the office and not in a restaurant – restaurants have started to accommodate this trend by redesigning the traditional sit-down concept to create “ghost” restaurants that focus exclusively on takeout and/or delivery.
In a previous post we discussed how you can keep your restaurant staff safe from everyday kitchen hazards, covering everything from slips and falls, to burns, lacerations and more. Now we want to focus on fire hazards – how to spot them, how to prevent them, and how to keep your staff safe from them.
Reality shows that involve cooking have taken over the airwaves, and it’s hard to switch on the TV without seeing “real” chefs go head to head over a simmering white sauce or lightly braised chicken. But before there was MasterChef and Chopped, there were fictional TV chefs who made us laugh, cry and want to run to the kitchen during commercials to get a bite to eat.
Whether you think of them as the pre-game warm-ups of the restaurant industry, or the sound-checks of the hospitality business, pre-shift meetings are a vital part of running a successful restaurant. Starting each shift in your restaurant without a pre-shift meeting or “pep-talk” is to overlook a great opportunity to connect, encourage, and educate your team.
Instagram is everywhere and in a previous post we discussed how to create Instagrammable food to promote your restaurant. However, for a restaurant’s purposes, Instagram is so much more than rainbow toast and unicorn shakes. It’s more than customers coming in, ordering something, photographing it and then sending it off to the digital world known as Instagram.
For those of us old enough to remember the robot from the TV show Lost in Space (or young enough to still enjoy it now on syndication), wildly waving its arms to communicate, here’s a news flash: the world of robots has changed. Robots in the food industry have less to do with R2-D2 or Woody Allen’s Sleeper, than with, speed, automation, efficiency, and customer service.
The restaurant industry is notoriously competitive and physically draining; however, sometimes the hard work and financial investment pays off and your restaurant turns into a huge success. If that happens, and if you’re an ambitious and confident business owner, your thoughts might turn to opening a second restaurant based on the belief that doubling locations could mean doubling your success.