New regulations regarding food Allergies

http://www.nrn.com/breakingNews.aspx?id=379466&menu_id=1368

I heard this on the radio the other day, the health department in Massachusetts is revealing new regulations to prevent food allergy contamination.

The new regulations will require all restaurant staff to undergo training in order to protect their guests with food allergies. This will increase awareness among the staff about how to deal with guest that have food allergies. This will help significantly reduce the amount of mistaken food allergies thus keeping customers (at least the ones with food allergies) safer. The new regulations also require to post potential food allergies on menus as well as ask guests to inform the staff of any food allergies they may have.

This is a great idea, I don't know if you guys have ever heard the horror story about the two sisters that ate at a restaurant on Thayer street. One of them had asked the waitress for a bowl of chili and had informed her plenty of time that she was deadly allergic to peanuts. It just so happened that this restaurant thickened their chili with peanut butter, and the waitress didn't quite put two and two together. End all, the sister ate the chili and ended up dying. This incident could have been avoided if the staff were trained properly about food allergies. I think the new regulations in Mass will set a standard across the United States.

High Tech Hygiene

http://www.qsrmagazine.com/articles/tools/105/hygiene-1.phtml

This is more for a quick service restaurant, however i feel as if this should be used in all kitchens. It is a hand held sanitation log pretty much. It keeps records of when employees wash their hands, temperatures of the refrigerators, and their is even a probe to check the temperature of food. Sure people should be able to do these things easily on their own, but what makes it useful is that it stores the information automatically. This could save restaurants from spreading food born illnesses by following HACCP standards, and logging them for protection against lawsuits.

Time to evaluate the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding technology in Fine Dining. There are a lot of new innovative ideas that are going to change the way fine dining restaurants operate. One great idea that we saw way the new paging system, that allows guests to page their server, thus eleminating the serve asking how everything is when you mouth is full of food. Something I didn't like that we saw was the touch screen menu. I don't believe this is sutable for a fine dining restaurant since it just about removes the human elements from fine dining; Isn't that the point of fine dining? To have a great meal with great service within an elegant atmoshpere.

Though from all we the new technologies one that i believe is going to be a continuing trend is more efficient equipment, including kitchen appliances, refrigerator units and computer POS systems. These tool will continue to become more efficient in the future, thus reducing expenses and creating better profit from revenue.

After looking around a bit i finally found a suitable blog, it seems to be well organized and covers about the same topics as NRN.
http://restaurantandfoodserviceblog.com/

Burgers and Beer?

So this article is from Resturant News magazine. It states that there will be a burger king opening in Miami this month that will be selling beer. It is referred to by the author as a BK Bar. A non-conventional quick service restaurant with booze as its main attraction. I feel as though its a great idea. It allows them to bring in an entirely new market, they will still have the college vote either way but beer will bring more of them in the doors. However, It could be a sign of how poorly they are doing financially. If you ask me, though, A beer and a whopper and I'm all set.

http://www.nrn.com/article.aspx?id=378586

A guide to success in 2010

This is the article that I was talking about yesterday. It is about the restaurant industries projected outcomes for 2010. It not only talks about what the customer will want but it tell us how to achieve it as restaurant owners. It talks about the growth of the American restaurant industry and the effect that technology will have on it. At the end it gives the reader highlights for the up and coming year.

Http://www.resturant.org/tools/magazines/rusa/magArchive/year/article/?ArticleID=240

Technology: Restaurant Consumers See Most Value in Virtual Menus, Pagers

http://www.rimag.com/article/371375-Technology_Restaurant_Consumers_See_Most_Value_in_Virtual_Menus_Pagers.php

This article mostly deals with explaining how technology helps the restaurants turn over tables and be more efficient. People can use their phones to make reservations and even pick what table they would like to sit at. sure you could just call ahead, but these are new "apps" for new smart phones. Also in the restaurant they have touch screen menus at the tables. Sure it takes away the personal interactions with a waiter/waitress, however it ensures that you order your food just the way you would like it. Also this makes the restaurant more efficient as well as more profitable. It also says that people find it much easier to use technology at the begining stages of the meal, such as making the reservations, and the ordering process but not at the end with confusing payment methods such as paying by phone.

How customers perceive expectations and assess restaurants

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/159178336_2.html

This is an article from a magazine call "Entrepreneur" that analyses how a guest determines the expectations as well as how customers make final assessments of a restaurant. The article explains that there are three different categories involved in how a guest assesses a restaurant:

"The first group, functional clues, describes the efficiency of the service and the quality of the food itself. The second category, mechanic clues, embodies design and atmosphere, which create a set of expectations. Those expectations must be confirmed by the third category of clues, humanic clues, which comprise the demeanor and emotional aspect of the servers."

The article goes pretty in depth with the research used to come to this conclusion so it’s pretty long, but valuable information for any restaurateur.