The Beer Trends For Restaurants To Watch

Restaurant owners that serve alcohol need to be aware of two trends that are making waves in the industry. One is a trend that is can only increase your alcohol sales, while another could possibly damage your sales.

Craft Your Millenials Audience

Nation’s Restaurant News reports that the current young generation of drinks, Millenials (and to a fair bit, Generation X), are not the fans of Budweiser, Miller Lite, and more that their parents held on to have fallen out of favor versus craft beers. Craft beers are small and independent beer companies that produce much smaller quantities than their larger brethren, and at the same time, limit themselves regionally, for the most part.

With Buffalo Wild Wings, they initially tried to go in-depth with their descriptions of the drinks, eventually finding that shorter descriptions would be more effective and memorable. Much of the generation tackling these unearthed curiosities of craft beers will be able to do their research on their smart phone, and may even tackle a restaurant with the lone intent of trying a certain beer.

If your restaurant caters to younger crowds (not too young; they still need to be able to drink), you should look … Read the rest

Seamless and GrubHub Merge

Until this week, there have been two major online takeout services. Seamless, based in New York City, and GrubHub, started in Chicago, equally offer the same service: allowing customers to place orders online for takeout. Each were the modernization of a service many people never wanted to do- taking the “talking to a person on the phone” out of the ”ordering food without leaving your house”. Plus, with digital ordering, orders have an opportunity to be more accurate for both the consumer and the restaurant.

Until this week.

Seamless and GrubHub have announced plans to merge together into one mega-takeout company, with a name yet undecided. GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney will become CEO, while Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will be President.

Between the two companies, about $875 million was made in food sales, according to Huffington Post.

What does this mean for restaurant owners? If you’ve not signed up for either service, you might want to do so soon, or see how their new program sets up. Either way, it’s a consolidation of two of the biggest players in modern restaurant business forming one super-company that can do little but improve the amount and frequency of ordering from them. … Read the rest

Lessons Learned From “Kitchen Nightmares”

Kitchen Nightmares has proven, time-and-again, to be, at worst, an entertaining look inside the restaurant business. Gordon Ramsay’s American adaptation of the show might be a little loudmouthed and belligerent than his British persona, but that’s what the media has told us we want in our hosts.

May 10th’s episode, focused on Amy’s Baking Company, has made waves in the restaurant and television worlds, for being a spectacular show of how not to handle criticism and issues that arise at restaurants. Gordon Ramsay, for the first time in his American production, left Amy’s Baking Company with the belief that the owners, Amy and Samy, would not be receptive to his help.

The episode is currently available on Hulu. What can restauranteurs learn from it?

Give your staff their tips

This may be one of the more obvious things when running a restaurant, but if a customer is leaving a tip, that tip is usually meant for the waitstaff that took care of them (and is usually left because they were happy with their service). It is not meant for the owner of the restaurant, unless explicitly stated. Even in that situation, the waitstaff is traditionally paid below minimum wage, and … Read the rest

A Twist On Taco Shells

Taco Bell has stumbled backwards into an amazing business, with the Doritos Locos Taco (and its newly-bred Cool Ranch variation, alongside another upcoming, flamed-fueld flavor) being both a boon to their bottom line and the economy of America as a whole. It was (conceptually) a simple change; make a taco shell out of a Dorito chip, or coat a taco shell in the infamous Doritos dust.

But why stop there?

Food Beast is reporting that Taco Bell in Southern California is testing a Waffle Taco. Naturally, this will not be a daytime, ground-beef-and-lettuce taco, but it is a sausage patty and egg (and syrup, at your discretion) breakfast beast that would make early-morning Taco Bell fans run to their borders with 89 cents in hand.

Ingenuity will always reign with the home craftsman, though. DudeFoods has created the Bacon Weave Taco, making a shell entirely out of everyone’s favorite pork variety. His rough instructions give a good idea where to start on making one of your own, but he suggest filling it with “seasoned ground beef, sour cream, lettuce, tomato and shredded cheese.”

We know where your mind has ventured, and we’ve thought about it as well. Combining … Read the rest

McDonalds To Double Up On Quarter Pounders

Jules: Well, if you like burgers give ‘em a try sometime. I can’t usually get ‘em myself because my girlfriend’s a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian. But I do love the taste of a good burger. Mm-mm-mm. You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?
Brett: No.
Jules: Tell ‘em, Vincent.
Vincent: A Royale with cheese.
Jules: A Royale with cheese! You know why they call it that?
Brett: Because of the metric system?
Jules: Check out the big brain on Brett!

The last time the Quarter Pounder with Cheese ever got any major media attention was in the 1994 classic, Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarintino. It’s a simple, solid burger for fast-food fans, featuring a quarter pound of 100% pure beef (as always stated, before cooking), seasoned with salt and pepper, and topped with two slices of cheese, onions, and pickles, on a sesame seed bun. It’s a reserved Big Mac. The Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese features an additional meat patty, but that’s where the differences, and the legacy of the burger, end.

Not so! GrubGrade reports that McDonald’s will be introducing three new Quarter Pounders, replacing their fading Angus … Read the rest

Instawares Bakes: Ice Cream Bread

There are two things that are nigh-universally liked in America; bread and ice cream. The problem is, neither are traditionally diet-friendly and healthy; as Scott Pilgrim VS. The World famously reminded us in a line delivered by Michael Cera’s titular “hero”, “Bread makes you fat?” It’s nothing but carbs, at it’s basis. Ice cream, on the other hand, never has had any notions of being healthy. It’s milk, cream, eggs, and traditionally a variety of other ingredients to give it flavor.

At some point, someone realized something amazing. All bread is, at the source, is water and flour. Water can be replaced by another liquid, such as… melted ice cream. In Katrina’s Kitchen has a great recipe for ice cream bread. Wikipedia encourages three parts liquid to five parts flour for most yeast breads. Her recipe is largely simple.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix 1.5 quarts of softened ice cream with 3 cups of self-rising flour.
Pour in a pan and bake for 35 minutes.

It’s suggested to not use a low- or non-fat ice cream.

Have you already started to think of recipes that could use this bread? Just looking at what Ben & Jerry’s offers, … Read the rest

Could You Eat Insects For Nutritional Benefits?

It can be considered a delicacy in certain situations, or it can be a disaster if you want it to be. Many insects are actually dense in protein, reproduce fast enough to be sustainable, thrive in conditions that might be too hard for larger mammals to grow in, and are ecologically responsible. Have you ever thought about adding insects to your diet?

A new report by the United Nations states that eating insects could help fight pollution, malnourishment, and hunger, Huffington Post reports. The Food and Agriculture Organization recently finished a study, stating that edible insects such as grasshoppers, ants, and more would be a boon to society if we, our pets, and our livestock, ate them. They produce, on the large, less harmful greenhouse gasses, feed on waste, and produce for agricultural feed. They also reproduce quickly, are high in protein, and contain many vitamins and minerals.

Who’s The Pest? Event even makes a point to show that they can be delicious. In the following video, Beeswax Ice Cream might be the most sane thing you’ll see, but the dishes are apparently delicious.

Epicurious recently gave some crawling critters a taste test, and came up with the following … Read the rest