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What can you expect to see on menus in 2025? From salted egg yolks and chili crunch fusions to mushroom-infused teas and freeze-dried fruit powder garnishes, Kimpton’s in-house experts share the standout ingredients, menu items and techniques that will come to the table in 2025.
Tableside caviar service A prosciutto cart An authentic kaiseki tasting experience and members-only Japanese whiskey lounge Tableside s’mores These are just a few examples of ways restaurants across the country are hoping to attract guest by elevating the dining experience and creating a vibe highlighted by superior food and presentation.
Fast-casual Condado Tacos—which prefers calling itself “next-gen casual”—has long had a bar program with a selection of conventional margaritas and beers to go with its Mexican-style menu and vibe. But those same margaritas had been on the menu since 2014 when the bar, so to speak, was set a bit lower. By Patricia Cobe on Jul.
So much data is generated at every point within a restaurant, whether fast casual or fine dining. Foot traffic or heat mapping, menu item engagement, or consumer demographics by time of day. The question now becomes – how to make sense of that data and use it to elevate the dining experience. Data, Data, Data.
percent menu-price inflation rate. With households increasingly treating dining out as a luxury, every menu item and service interaction becomes a potential make-or-break moment. With households increasingly treating dining out as a luxury, every menu item and service interaction becomes a potential make-or-break moment.
A customer in Miami should bite into the same perfectly seasoned burger that delights diners in Seattle. The 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry report revealed that 22 percent of restaurant operators plan to invest in technology like POS software, back-of-house systems, and data analytics in the near future.
With the rising costs of goods, consumers growing more conscious of spending habits, and private equity-backed brands popping up in communities large and small, mom-and-pops are in danger of adding to the failure statistics. Today, independent restaurants can and should tap into those same tools–without the massive corporate budget.
Restaurant operators searching for something versatile that will cross the dayparts need to look no further than their breakfast menu as waffles have been breaking out of the morning. Profitability: Waffles are a low-cost, center-of-the-plate item and one of the most profitable breakfast item menu offerings.
Instead, you’ll see signage about the health benefits of plant-based eating — the “primary drivers of consumer choice are personal benefit,” says Goldman — and the menu board, designed like any one in other fast-food chains. The “ PLNT Impact Tracker ” on PLNT Burger’s website wants you to think about what you’re eating. Congratulations.
When properly deployed, they can transform the employee experience by improving daily operations, syncing front-of-house and back-of-house communication and execution, and delivering a memorable dining experience that won’t send staff to the walk-in cooler for a good cry.
Understanding your target market is the foundation of making smart decisions for your menu, pricing, and overall guest experience. Without a well-defined target market, restaurants risk wasting resources on strategies that dont connect and menu offerings that dont selltrying to appeal to everyone, but standing out to no one.
More recently, as chefs have been working up seasonalmenus to highlight local specialties and homegrown bars have been remixing native spirits, Sri Lanka drew millions of tourists in 2024 , announcing the islands comeback on the global stage after a few years of economic uncertainty. Travel around and youll be rewarded.
You need ideas that will wow new customers and get the regulars excited to come back in. Pick your event idea by looking at your: Venue size and layout Customer demographic Available resources Time of year (season) Community Write out each of these factors, and a picture will emerge of which restaurant event idea will best fit your location.
Youre delivering a great dining experience, yet foot traffic remains inconsistent, online engagement is low, and new customers arent coming in as often as youd like. This includes hours of operation (including holiday updates), your website link, phone number, and menu. Here are two ways to make a big impact on your local SEO.
When going through the ordering process, diners want three things: Speed Ease Clarity Your menu categories have more to do with delivering on those expectations than you might think. A well-organized menu—whether it’s a physical menu or an online menu—guides guests quickly to what they’re craving.
Since the pandemic, restaurants have endured a plethora of issues ranging from fluctuating dining restrictions to supply chain issues to rising food prices. Demand for Dining Out Isn’t Going Anywhere. But arguably no issue has proven to be as constant and bedeviling as the labor shortage.
Have you ever walked into a restaurant, excited for a great meal, but the server can’t answer your questions about the menu? Without the right training, even the best menu or ambiance can fall short due to poor service, leading to dissatisfied customers and lost revenue. Focused training also speeds up the onboarding process.
Menus are shifting quickly to digital screens, promising operational efficiency and a consistent brand experience from dine-in to drive-thru. While there are clear benefits to an all-digital menu system, to get the most out them, you must first take a step back to re-examine what your menu means to you.
To have a successful restaurant, the owner or manager must be skilled at managing both front-of-house and back-of-house functions. To help increase these profit margins, restaurant owners sometimes focus more on changes they can make to front-of-house, such as increasing their prices or boosting liquor sales.
In the kitchen – work responsibilities are divided into oversight and action positions – the number depending on the scope of the restaurant menu and the size of the operation, but basically there are chefs, cooks, and support staff. This includes back waiters, bus personnel, and bartenders.
Those same subconscious instincts come into play when we browse menus. This is the foundation of menu psychology, and for restaurant owners using online ordering platforms, it’s a powerful opportunity to influence how customers engage with their menu items. Keep each category focused.
Every day, youre juggling staff, food quality, inventory, customer service, purchasing, and moreall while trying to cultivate a dining experience that wows your customers enough to keep them coming back. Its tough, and cant be done passively. Great restaurant operations dont happen by accident.
This edition of MRM's "Ask the Expert” features advice from Buyers Edge Platform on the topic of menu engineering. Need to make menu changes? The best results right now can be discovered through the alteration of menus based on what consumers need now, and on what sells best. Stay Alert.
Create a Prix Fixe Menu. A prix fixe menu features a fixed multi-course meal that is served to all customers on a specific night, often for holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Prix fixe menus can help increase sales and lighten the load on your kitchen staff. A prix fixe menu also gives off an air of elegance.
Staffing shortages are continuing to plague many restaurants as in person dining and delivery orders begin to return to pre-pandemic levels, with over one million jobs left vacant. The labor shortage is not only being felt by restaurant owners and back of house workers. percent in the second quarter of 2022. Today in the U.S.,
From there, well walk through the other major cost categories and share practical strategies to help you cut back without sacrificing quality or guest experience. This doesnt mean cutting corners and sacrificing the customer experience; its about knowing where your money is going, spotting leaks early, and fine-tuning whats already working.
These are tools that can help you streamline operations, easily schedule staff, and make sure you never run out of ingredients for your best-selling menu items. While the tech behind it might sound complex, the actual applications of AI in restaurants are surprisingly down-to-earthand, in many cases, incredibly practical.
With a critically shrunken talent pool, restaurants are racing to fill positions in every part of the business — front of house, back of house, and corporate teams. Across the United States, businesses are suffering from unprecedented staffing shortages in the aftermath of COVID.
Digital platforms can help time-strapped operators address their historically difficult questions by minimizing operational complexity, giving their crews more time to assist guests, and providing staff with the freedom to accomplish more in both the front and back of the house. My staff can monitor orders from almost any location.
When thinking about the future of the dining experience post COVID, it is easy to get caught focusing on things like digital only self-service, sci-fi-like drone food delivery and taking pills or shakes instead of food. The past year has created many challenges for the restaurant industry. But not in the way you might think.
Consider this – the menu is the most important component of a successful restaurant and once designed it can, and should, impact every other aspect of the business. YES – the menu is that important! The menu comes first and should reflect the philosophy of the owners and chef and how the operators expect to be perceived by the public.
From the moment you walk through that back entrance you are captivated by the dynamics of the environment, the structure of the operation, and the sensation of being enveloped by its alluring magic. Cooks are busy at work with their own preparations as breakfast orders from the dining room arrive at a harrowing pace. This is magical.
Rakuten Ready surveyed more than 100 customers to measure how behaviors around dining have, or are anticipated to change around the perceptions and impact of COVID-19 on restaurants, food delivery and order for pickup. Among the findings: Most diners are not overly fearful, with 57 percent making no change to their dining behaviors.
Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones. Since 2014, online ordering has grown 300% faster than dine-in and now accounts for roughly 40% of restaurant sales. In 2025, the US online food delivery market is expected to reach $424.9 billion in revenue.
Create an app to make it easy for Gen Z to place a mobile order, review their regular meals and stay up to date on seasonal specials and rewards. According to PYMNTS’ Connected Dining Report , 58 percent of diners have already made their meal choices before logging into an app.
Restaurant employees play an integral role in the dining experience, representing the building blocks of delightful guest experiences, ultimately creating loyal patrons who come back for more. However, in today's economic environment, restaurant staffing is being put to the test, posing a bigger challenge today than ever before.
In pursuit of these objectives, restaurants must reimagine dining experiences through enhanced restaurant technology, deepen their commitment to sustainability, and fine-tune their core offerings. Finding the balance between innovation and tradition is the secret recipe for enduring success in the evolving dining industry.
There are a number of proven strategies for being proactive about possible supply chain shortages including menu optimization, building partnerships and LTO maximization. Creating strategic LTOs is a great way to keep customers interested each season on the brand, but it's also important to be strategic about the recipes you create.
Most of the restaurant technology tools operators use every day were first introduced years ago, but it wasnt until the 2020 Tech Boom, brought on by COVID-19, that widespread adoption became essential. What was once a gradual process turned into a rapid transformation, permanently reshaping how restaurants operate and interact with customers.
Something is up at in the dining room of Ronin Farm and Restaurant in Bryan, Texas. “We can create wide open floor plans, serve hors d’œuvres to large groups, or set the tables for communal dining. Brian, the executive chef, changes Ronin’s menu daily to reflect the best of the week’s harvest.
This edition of Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine's Research Roundup features delivery data, tariff troubles, summer dining trends, and Beer Serves America. The report analyzed data from more than 30,000 QSR restaurants that generated a total of 4.5 billion transactions and $67 billion in sales in 2024. labor costs at 3 percent.
60% of guests who have a positive experience are likely to dine at a restaurant more frequently. From creating a welcoming ambiance to offering unique menu items, let’s explore the ways you can refine your restaurant's customer experience in 2024. Moreover, the menu sets expectations for the dining experience.
Additionally, as a result of the ongoing labor shortage, we anticipate more automated chatbots to support on-site team members and help streamline their work as well as operators looking for locations with smaller dine-in square footage in favor of adding more drive-thru lanes. Clinton Anderson, CEO, Fourth Enterprises.
This edition of Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine's Research Roundup features news of Drinksgiving and Thanksgiving trends, FSR challenges, and "out-of-the-box" dining habits. The annual report surveys 600 independent full-service restaurant (FSR) owners and operators from across the U.S.,
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