An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, “From iPad to plate, technology speeding up food at Bread Co.”, highlights some of the early findings of some of the technology improvements being made, known as Panera 2.0. Here in St. Louis Panera is still called St. Louis Bread Company or Bread Co for short. They …
Erik Tversland
McDonald’s tests delivery in New York
As part of their turnaround strategy McDonald’s has launched a delivery service test in the NYC market. The market consists of 88 stores and the ordering and delivery will be managed through Postmates which is a mobile app technology that allows customers to place orders through their mobile device. The delivery is then performed by …
MIT Is Developing Sensors To Detect When Food Is Going Bad
An article on fastcoexist.com talks about an MIT lab working on a sensor that will tell you when food is going bad vs relying on labels placed on the items. The stat in the article cites that in the US we waste 40% of the food that we harvest. They claim that sell by and …
Healthy Kids Menus
An article on NPR is citing a study that was done by ChildObesity180 on the fast casual restaurant chain Silver Diner changing up their kids menu to offer more healthy options. The study tracked some 350,000 kids menu orders covering 6 months before and 6 months after they changed the menu. Healthy meant the meal …
A Restaurant Without A Restaurant
There’s a great article in Wired about David Chang’s new venture, Maple. Talk about going crazy with implementing technology in a restaurant. Maple is a fine dining restaurant that you can’t dine in. That’s right they only offer delivery ordered through their mobile app. They have one kitchen in the financial district of Manhattan with …
Chipotle removes GMO ingredients
Chipotle announced that they have removed all GMO ingredients from their menu. GMOs are getting a lot of buzz the last handful of years or so, and being in St. Louis where Monsanto is headquartered, I certainly hear my fair share of the GMO arguments. For Chipotle the move makes sense, they have been talking about …
Pizza chains thrive on convenience, value, technology
Nation’s Restaurant News posted an article today on the turnaround and success of large pizza chains recently. Publicly traded pizza chains posted a 6.4% same store sales growth in the 4th quarter of last year. Domino’s posted 14.5% sales growth in the first quarter. Marco’s Pizza’s net sales rose 41% last year. So there are …
McDonald’s works on turnaround
McDonald’s has been a huge topic in the industry this year with their dismal financial performance, commitments to changing their food supply and raising the minimum wage at the corporate owned stores. Nation’s Restaurant News posted an article online following McDonald’s earnings call. Here are some of the highlights from the article: New CEO Easterbrook …
Spending at Restaurants Tops Grocery Stores for First Time
For the first time since the commerce department started tracking this stat in 1992 consumers have been spending more in restaurants than they have in grocery stores. This happened in March of this year. Again more promising news for the restaurant industry. Dailyfinance.com sites that “experts” believe it’s a combination of the sign of consumer …
Are consumers rejecting giant restaurant chains?
McDonald’s has been in the news a lot lately between their slugging financials and the most recently announced pay increase. This article from Nation’s Restaurant News examines the possible reasons for the sluggish performance of 4 of the top 5 restaurant chains; McDonald’s, Subway, Wendy’s, and Burger King. Burger King is the only one of the …