Say a menu item doesn’t sell. Is it overpriced, poorly described, not satisfying to the customer or a combination of these? To understand the basics of restaurant-performance management systems, here are three key teachings that would be part of any 101-level course on the topic.

By Dave Bennett

In the restaurant business, competition is fierce and plenty. Owners use various types of operational strategies to stay ahead of the curve and keep profits streaming in. Measuring restaurant performance is a critical ongoing activity—to see how operations are going today, and to reveal opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and unit profitability in the future.

Strong restaurant performance-measurement systems require vast amounts of data. Your data tells you how things are going, and you, in turn, use that data to make decisions. For instance, let’s imagine that your data is telling you that customers aren’t ordering a certain menu item. Is it overpriced? How does it taste? How is it described on the menu? Armed with that knowledge, you can decide how to respond: Remove that item from the menu, which will also streamline your inventory; offer it as a limited-time offering with a new menu description; or lower its selling price to see if that boosts sales.

Serving a term of 18 months, Carroll is joined by John Sloane of Macau as vice president of the global organization serving 10 million chefs from more than 105 nations.

Charles Carroll, CEC, AAC, executive chef of River Oaks Country Club, Houston, was recently named president of the World Association of Chefs Societies, or Worldchefs.

Worldchefs, founded October 1928 at the Sorbonne in Paris, is a global network of chef associations dedicated to maintaining and improving the standards of global cuisine. An elected executive committee and a board of continental directors that oversee the regions of Asia, Europe, Africa, Pacific and the Americas govern the organization.

“Worldchefs spans over 105 countries and 10 million chefs, and I am proud to be a part of this great team,” said Carroll. “The board is focused and excited about the next 18 months and we are dedicated to all our members around the globe.  I encourage everyone to visit www.Worldchefs.org to learn more about what we are doing and our next congress in Athens, Greece, September 2016.”

Hot sauce is becoming ubiquitous in homes and at foodservice outlets, according to recent NPD Group research. And while the classic Louisiana type still rules, it’s by far not the only hot seller, evidenced by spreading-like-wildfire sales of fruity habanero and chipotle varieties.

Hot sauce, the hotness of which is often ranked by quantity of flames or symbols of hell, is, well, hot right now, says The NPD Group, a leading global information company. Fifty-six percent of households have hot sauce on hand in their kitchens, and Sriracha, a relatively new Asian hot sauce, is already stocked in 9% of total U.S. households and 16% of households headed by someone under age 35, according to NPD’s recently released audit of U.S. kitchens.

The popularity of hot sauce also extends to away-from-home dining experiences. Cases of hot sauce shipped from foodservice distributors to restaurants and other foodservice outlets increased by double digits over the past two years, reports  SupplyTrack^®, a monthly tracking service that tracks every product shipped from major broadline distributors to their foodservice operators.

Classic Louisiana-style hot sauce is still the leader in terms of case volume shipped from distributors to U.S. foodservice outlets, but shipment growth has tapered off because of the wide variety of hot sauces now available, finds NPD. Case shipments of some habanero hot-sauce flavors, particularly habanero with fruit flavors such as mango, grew triple digits in the year ending December 2014 compared to same period a year ago. There were double the cases shipped of chipotle hot-sauce flavors and Sriracha in 2014 than in the previous year, finds SupplyTrack. 

The 10 best-selling categories have shifted since just 2013, and today, cheese is still tops, but refrigerated pasta, functional beverages and nut and seed butters show big gains. Why should we care? Because foodservice is an increasingly important sector to that industry, with growth of nearly 31% since 2012.

The specialty-food industry is a bright spot in the U.S. economy. In 2014, sales of specialty food topped $100 billion for the first time, with retail and foodservice sales reaching a record $109 billion.

Retail sales of specialty-food sales grew 19% from 2012 to 2014 versus a tepid 2% increase for all food. The industry, fueled by small businesses, now boasts 15 segments that exceed $1 billion in sales, including cheese; coffee; meat, poultry and seafood; chips, pretzels and snacks; candy; and yogurt.

These findings are from a new report from the Specialty Food Association produced in conjunction with research firms Mintel International and SPINS/IRI. The report, “The State of the Specialty Food Industry 2015,” tracks U.S. sales of specialty food through supermarkets, natural-food stores, specialty-food retailers and foodservice venues. Specialty foods are broadly defined for the report as products that have limited distribution and a reputation for high quality.

Fresh mango, in abundance this summer, delivers flavor, color, texture and nutrition to menus. To celebrate, Chef Allen Susser shares his recipe for a refreshing fruit salad.

When June rolls around this year, be prepared to observe Mango Month with style. Fresh mango delivers both flavor and nutrition, qualities restaurant patrons appreciate, while mixing easily with savory, sweet and spicy ingredients. And fresh mango is plentiful, especially during the summer months.

“Fresh mango is available year ʾround, but we typically see the highest volume overall with at least three mango varieties in the market in June,” says Rachel Munoz, marketing director for the Orlando, Fla.-based National Mango Board. “The crop comes just in time to kick off summer with the unmistakable, signature flavor that fresh mango brings to menus.”

The third installment in a series on effective professional-development activities performed by students outside of the classroom.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we discussed how to assign observations conducted outside of the classroom and how to make them helpful in expanding our students’ education. This month, we will discuss shadowing individuals, another way to enhance the professional development of our students through encouraging learning outside of the classroom.

Obtaining Permission
If you want students to shadow a professional, it is important to consider whom you want them to shadow and what you want them to observe. You might have in mind the work of a chef in a certain type of restaurant, a maître d’hôtel or hostess in a fine-dining restaurant, or a purchasing agent for a hotel with several food and beverage outlets. If you know these individuals and want to set up the shadowing experience, it will be a lot easier on your students.

If you ask your students to make the arrangements, however, they learn a great deal more about making appointments and conducting themselves well with professionals. Even if you want your students to make the appointments, you might want to develop a list of local chefs and other culinary professionals who are willing to be shadowed and then share that list with your students. It can work well any way you choose; just consider what structure and level of assistance make the most effective learning opportunity for your students.

As instructors, we often think we are not doing much. But, says Chef Weiner, we are actually changing the world with every student.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

In May 2014 I shared a graduation speech for you to give to your students. One year later I think it is time to take a break from my “how to” articles of recent months on ordering, blanching, measuring, etc., and have us all take a moment to realize the impact we have on the world as culinary instructors. This applies to high schools, culinary academies, community colleges and four-year institutions.

Yes, the modern culinary world gravitates out from us. In the previous era, which didn’t end all that long ago, learning on the job or being an apprentice was the norm.

Today, almost everyone gets some form of culinary training before hitting the terra-cotta tiles of a commercial kitchen. We as instructors have a duty to send them out into the world with basic skills, a passion for cooking and, more importantly, knowing how to work. (As I frequently tell people, I don’t teach people how to cook; I teach them how to work in a commercial kitchen.)

Graduates will not remember many specifics of their educations, and will even realize that so much they thought would be important to their life paths isn’t. But they will remember those who influenced their learning in meaningful ways.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

Another academic year has come and gone. After students walk across the stage, every administrator, faculty member, student and parent has an opportunity to reflect on the two or four years that went into making graduation possible.

Deans and directors are beginning to plan time into their summer schedules for review of curriculum, some overdue maintenance on kitchen facilities, completing outcome assessment materials from the year coming to a close, and justifying budgets nearing the end of a fiscal year.

Faculty are putting course materials to bed and cleaning offices as they head into some well-earned time off. Students are breathing a sigh of relief combined with that uneasy feeling as they enter the workforce, and parents are still glowing with pride—knowing that their son or daughter has just completed another phase in his or her life.

Chef Charlie Ayers and other celebrity chefs support Earth Day San Francisco in honor of Earth Month.

Rock the Earth of Denver and Calafia Café of Palo Alto, Calif., held a joint fundraiser in honor of Earth Month on April 17. The popular café, owned by celebrity chef Charlie Ayers (pictured), hosted Dine Out for Earth California to celebrate the local food movement.

Several renowned Bay Area chefs joined Ayers in preparing a prix-fixe six-course meal starring locally sourced ingredients. Brews were provided by Palo Alto Brewing Company and wines were donated by Whitcraft Winery, Seamus Winery and Domenico Winery. The event also celebrated music provided by the Bay Area’s Dan Lebowitz (ALO), and Bo Carper and Rajiv Parikh (New Monsoon).

Proceeds from the evening benefited Rock the Earth and Earth Day San Francisco. Rock the Earth is a national not-for-profit environmental organization that works to protect and maintain America’s natural resources to ensure a healthy and sustainable environment through partnerships with the music industry and the worldwide environmental community. Earth Day San Francisco commemorated the 45th anniversary of Earth Day.

NAMI’s Ultimate Guide to Bacon video provides an inside look at how bacon is made; a companion brochure features bacon facts and history.

It is the meat that has become an American obsession, once eaten solely for breakfast, but now found wrapped around other foods, infused into cocktails and even made into personal-care products. To honor bacon’s role as a cultural icon, the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) has developed a new Ultimate Guide to Bacon, featuring a video tour of a bacon processing plant and downloadable companion brochure with bacon facts, history and more.

The video is the newest installment in NAMI’s Glass Walls series, taking viewers inside a typical bacon processing plant. It shows how bacon is made from harvesting the animal to separating the belly to curing and smoking the meat to cutting and packaging the finished product.