On Foodable Weekly

In this episode of “On Foodable Weekly,” we’re talking restaurant trends with Restaurants Canada. But though we’re talking Canadian culinary trends, this segment is chock-full of tips for operators of all kinds, in any location, on three main areas: sustainability, interior design, and bar technology. Watch the full episode as we connect with experts in these three realms at the Restaurants Canada Show.

Most restaurant concepts fail early on. The challenges of keeping afloat in an industry driven on passion over profit are aplenty, and one of them is expansion. Even if you’ve learned how to successfully run a one-unit, independent concept, scaling operations is a huge hurdle to conquer. Those who have seen great success with multi-unit concepts — and, even more, multi-brand businesses — are admirable, and we were fortunate enough to sit down with one of them on this episode of “On Foodable Weekly.” Sam Fox, the man behind Phoenix-based restaurant group Fox Restaurant Concepts, joins us to talk expansion pitfalls, how he has overcome them, and more.

In regards to the rise of chefs in the fast-casual space, Fox is a supporter but wonders if they’ll be financially successful, “because it’s really, really hard. It’s based on a lot of volume and really understanding your pennies. Every single penny in the fast-casual business, you really need to know where everything is going because you don’t have that full-service check, where there’s alcohol and there’s a higher check average, where you’re able to sort of make up some of those mistakes. In the fast-casual environment, everyone is sensitive to the price, everyone’s sensitive to the experience, and so that’s gonna be a whole different thing where we see if all these great chef ideas are able to really translate into a business model.”

In late 2015, Foodable Network branched into the Canadian market and began to cover industry news and trends in major culinary destinations like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. This quarter, we officially kick off our expansion of original Canada-based content, including a Top 25 Restaurants ranking and a ton of original video content. In sync with this rollout, we are also excited to announce a new media partnership between Foodable and Restaurants Canada and the annual Restaurants Canada Show, a three-day event that recently gathered about 15,000 attendees this year.

In this “On Foodable Weekly” episode, host Paul Barron sits down with Donna Dooher, the president and CEO of Restaurants Canada, at the 2016 Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto, which featured more than 600 exhibitors this year.

Watch the full episode to learn more!

Business partnerships can be a strategic way to combine strengths by those with aligned objectives. In this “On Foodable Weekly” episode, host Paul Barron addresses the labor market as well as the recent partnership between PeopleMatter and HotSchedules. Joining us are Jay Nathan, vice president of customer success at PeopleMatter, a 7-year-old talent management platform company for the foodservice industry, and Anthony Lye, president and CEO at HotSchedules, a company that provides tech solutions for the industry including scheduling, inventory, shift management, and analytics.

For the past several years, the fast-casual segment has given the quick-service industry a run for its money, quite literally. Fast food operators have undoubtedly realized that their quick-serve restaurants (QSRs) would need to improve on quality and value from both a culinary and operational standpoint in order to stand up to the competition. And thus, a new, hybrid category — QSR-Plus — was born.

“What we’re seeing now with QSR-Plus and this elevation of quick-serve restaurant menus is clearly shifting the landscape,” says Paul Barron, founder and CEO at Foodable. “Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen a small but subtle shift in a key few brands that have started to explode.”

In this “On Foodable Weekly” episode, Barron is joined by a representative from one of those key QSR-Plus brands: Amanda Norris, senior director of menu development at Chick-fil-A, a brand that has been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in Foodable Labs’ “National Top 25 Restaurant Brands” since Q1 2015.

In this episode of “On Foodable Weekly,” host Paul Barron is joined by tech journalist Mike Elgan, founder of food and technology podcast The FATcast, to discuss tech trends and how technology is impacting the future of foodservice.

Though the restaurant industry itself is rooted in slow technology adoption, it has certainly accelerated more quickly in the past five years. “What’s driving that,” says Barron, “is everything from the on-demand economy logistics, with companies like Uber; mobile and smartphones, which have kind of transcended the whole POS industry; obviously the tablet business is really exploding; and we’re seeing wearables in social media really have an impact on restaurants that are making an amazing jump into the future.”

Food and technology. The two are more similar than you might think. “What I’ve found in talking to tech people is that technology-oriented people tend to also be foodies,” says Elgan. “And I think the reason for that is, a nerd — a technologist — is somebody who doesn’t accept things the way they are. They think there’s a better way to do things. And so those same kinds of people also tend to be of a similar mind when it comes to food — they don’t just accept the food that’s around them. They don’t just do the same things over and over in the kitchen or in restaurants, and so on. They try new things.”

So, what does the future hold for restaurant technology?

Once the darling of fast casual for its efficient format and Food With Integrity branding, Chipotle Mexican Grill has been in quite the firestorm as of late.

“Chipotle, of course, is taking some of the biggest hits they’ve taken in their history as a brand,” says Paul Barron, Foodable founder, CEO and author of “The Chipotle Effect.”

In this “On Foodable Weekly” episode, Barron is joined by Hunter Frederick, president at Frederick & Associates, a crisis management and public relations firm whose clients include non-profits, celebrities, and entertainment companies.

This year, we saw the words “female” and “women” in a lot of descriptors: “female chefs,” “women CEOs” — you get the idea. And while it does mark a great achievement in equalizing the business playing field, we still have a long way to go. Perhaps then, those two words won’t need to be specified.

Helping to close this gap is Hattie Hill, president and CEO at the Women’s Foodservice Forum (WFF), the largest women’s leadership development organization serving the foodservice industry. The WFF has been helping women achieve leadership roles in the industry — management positions and above — for nearly 30 years now, primarily through learning and development.

In this “On Foodable Weekly” episode, brought to you by the Foodable WebTV Network, Hill tells us more about the organization, its structure, and how it operates, and how it’s grown from 14 women. Also learn how WFF’s goals for the near future aim to catapult female leadership to the frontline, and why men have become an instrumental part in getting us to this point.

From apps to agriculture, the rise of new business in the food space has grown at a rapid pace within the past five years. According to CB Insights data, in 2013 alone, a total of $1.38 billion was invested in the U.S. for food & beverage funding. Vehicles supporting these early-stage food startups are typically found in food incubators, like Manhattan-based FOOD-X, reportedly the first international business accelerator program “focused on launching food-related ventures with a $250 million multi-stage fund.”

In this episode of “On Foodable Weekly,” brought to you by the Foodable WebTV Network, host Paul Barron is joined by FOOD-X Founder Shen Tong, whose business helps take new initiatives to market and brings out food entrepreneurs’ best potential. Watch the full episode to learn more about what types of startups FOOD-X represents, what criteria is required to join the highly acclaimed accelerator, and what trends Shen is seeing for our future food system.

An increase in awareness when it comes to sustainable practices has sped up the pace of the farm-to-table movement. Once an innovative concept, chefs all around the world — from fine-dine and independents to fast-casual concepts — have adopted this route, and it’s obvious that consumers demand nothing less. Farmers could very well become the new rockstars, and today, we’re diving in deeper to discuss vertical farming.

In this episode of “On Foodable Weekly,” brought to you by the Foodable WebTV Network, we are joined by Dr. Dickson Despommier, microbiologist and ecologist, who has been advocating for vertical farming for the past 10 years. Aside from the obvious, what are some lesser known advantages to indoor versus outdoor farming? What’s the biggest challenge — from a statistical standpoint — that we, as a planet, will face in the next 10-20 years? Will vertical farming catch on enough to become a new “norm” for restaurants? And will the rise of indoor vertical farms affect the flavor, not to mention nutritional value, of these crops?

Watch the full episode above as Dr. Despommier paints the realistic (and alarming) picture of the state of food production, and the steps we can take to prevent shortage.