Tony Shure and Colin McCabe, best friends and business partners, go way back. They went to the same school in New York City. Friendly but distant at school, they grew close after finding themselves, by pure coincidence, both freshmen at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. One of the things they had in common was […]

After 35 years in fine dining, Michael Namour was ready to try something casual. With $275,000 and a lot of elbow grease, he opened Buns with partner George Ash in May 2008 across the street from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The name, chosen to grab customers’ attention, isn’t the only […]

A lot of things keep restaurateurs up at night, but high on the list for quick-service operators in 2009 is the rising cost of food. Eighteen percent expect it will be the top challenge they face this year, according to the National Restaurant Association (NRA). After skyrocketing to near 30-year highs in 2007 and 2008, […]

Success in today’s competitive quick-service market requires companies to open more restaurants, faster and in the optimal locations. That’s all while trying to minimize sales cannibalization between restaurants and constantly evaluating which restaurants to close and which to renovate. For a franchise system to grow and improve its business, it needs to have control of […]

Turnover isn’t a simple behavior. People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons. While it’s easy to claim money is the reason people leave fast-food jobs, that’s only true some of the time. Take my job at Burger King. I started on a Tuesday. I was replacing a girl who started on Monday. She quit […]

A couple of years ago, Michael Oshman found a full line of foodservice packaging that claimed to biodegrade in landfills more quickly than any other plastic on the market. “It was like, ‘This is the product that we've been waiting for,’” says Oshman, who has been executive director of the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) since […]

Lean and Mean In the past six months, Ed Frechette has noticed a trend. “People on Wall Street are coming to Au Bon Pain for meetings and interviews,” says Frechette, senior vice president of marketing for the Boston-based chain, which has locations in New York City. Financial executives are not the only ones looking to […]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 10 years since Subway introduced the nation to a guy named Jared Fogle. In the first commercial, which originally ran only in the Midwest, that regular guy told a story that has now become a part of American pop culture: He’d been overweight as a kid—a product […]

Between 2006 and 2007 the checks written to CEOs in every industry super-sized. The median compensation for leaders of S&P 500 companies rose 23.57 percent, according to a study by The Corporate Library, a corporate data research firm. But now, as the cost of everything from beef to buns continues to rise while consumers hold […]

Gary Worthington grew up inhaling freshly baked bread in the kitchen of his childhood home in Grantsville, Utah, a small farming community 40 miles west of Salt Lake City. Decades later, Worthington still enjoys the comforting aroma, though now it comes from his own business. Worthington and his family operate Kneaders Bakery & Café, a […]

Twenty years ago brands were concerned with total quality management. Then along came customer satisfaction management. Recently, some organizations have begun talking about managing the customers’ experience. This is an advanced view that suggests that what really dictates whether the customer will be a long-term asset is how he felt during his total experience at […]

It is nearly 11 p.m. and Samantha Kelly is far from calling it a day. A freshman at Temple University in Philadelphia, Kelly closes her books, grabs her bag, and meets up with friends at the student center, where a Burger King is open until midnight. “We plan it all the time,” Kelly says. “We […]

In February, Subway announced Thys (pronounced Tice) J. Van Hout as the company’s new chief technology officer. Van Hout seized the opportunity to work with the international restaurant chain for a variety of reasons, the least of which include “leveraging technology to enhance the Subway experience at the store level and help increase franchisee profitability.” […]

According to industry experts, employees most likely to steal or treat cash handling carelessly are those in the lowest income strata with the greatest access to cash, who tend not to stay with one employer for very long. In short: a typical quick-service employee. To catch an employee stealing is challenging, costly, and time-consuming, and […]

Twenty experienced restaurateurs— marketers, operations specialists, and management executives from all across the industry—gathered in January in Orange County, California, to talk about the issues driving their businesses. All members of Technomic Inc.’s Operator Advisory Board, they went back and forth, passionately discussing the challenges shaping their daily work. And then the talks shifted to […]

Appraisals often are associated with annoyance—the mere thought of paying good money for someone to come into your restaurant and snoop around everything from the kitchen to your bookkeeping makes many operators cringe. But these valuations are a necessary part of doing business, particularly in the fast-food arena, where changes like the expiration of leases […]

With its golden sponge cake outside and creamy custard inside, Delimanjoo could be the love child of the all-American Twinkie and a French cream puff. The tiny (about 0.4 ounces each) snack cakes molded in the shape of miniature ears of corn are standard street and subway station fare in South Korea where they were […]

September 27, 2007, was a big day in Soweto, a township of more than a million people just outside the South African city of Johannesburg. Former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela and other dignitaries gathered with a local choir and a crowd of thousands to mark a very special occasion. It was […]

As Burger King (NYSE: BKC) steers itself to becoming a global brand, John Shaufelberger is at its marketing helm and looking toward Europe. In charge of creating “Super Fans” in every corner of the globe, Burger King’s new senior vice president of global product marketing explains how focusing on customers’ similarities will be the key […]

You might expect a 46-unit chain to lose some identity after merging with a company 22 times its size, especially when the company is Panera Bread, the fast-growing bakery café powerhouse. Au contraire says Paradise Bakery & Café President David Birzon. “We still see ourselves as the bakery-café leader in terms of quality. Before becoming […]

Franchisees are the backbone of the quick-service restaurant industry. It’s their entrepreneurial spirit and support that gives chains the staying power and reach to compete across the country and beyond. Without them The Colonel might never have left Kentucky and Pizza Hut would be nothing but a hut. Here, in no particular order, is a […]

The growing demand for customization in quick-service can be attributed to consumer insistence on a “me society” and operators’ intense battle for food-share. Customization in fast food began with the burger wars. The early McDonald’s model launched a take-it-my-way attack, with a batch and bin management method of burger delivery. Archenemy Burger King countered in […]