The restaurant industry is expanding at a strong pace again, but there's a difference to the growth and the strategies driving it. Chains are creating opportunities by peering further into the future and anticipating the trends in consumer preferences, restaurant recruitment, financing, politics and restaurant operations. They're hungering for ideas, innovation and insight.
Restaurant leaders’ growing reliance on interactive technology catapulted the topic onto the main stage of the RLC for the first time this year.
Here’s what other RLC attendees took away from the 2014 Restaurant Leadership Conference.
Reviewing our notes after the show, the editors of Restaurant Business spotted 10 ideas that any non-attendee of the RLC shouldn't miss. We suspect that some would've been lost to attendees, too, because of the sheer volume of innovations that were aired during the event. Consider this your Cliff Notes for the keepers:
Many, many weight loss diets come and go, but the sad fact is Americans have gotten fatter every year since 1990. While restaurants have been the easy-to-blame scapegoats for this obesity epidemic, they’re not the only ones at fault, said Dr. Jim Painter at the innovation session entitled “Your Brain on Food: Why Consumers Eat As They Do” held on Monday, March 26 during the 2012 Restaurant Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.