Patricia Cobe
Senior Editor
Articles by
Patricia Cobe
Page 164The quest for the perfect lobster roll
The only way I got through the long, icy winter we recently endured was by dreaming about sunny summer beach days. The beaches in the Northeast are some of the most beautiful in the world. And for sunbathers looking for great eats, close to the sand and waves are shacks, stands and restaurants serving up the best lobster rolls in the world.
How to attract locals to a hotel restaurant
When Christopher Cramer took over as executive chef at the Sonesta Bayfront in the Coconut Grove area of Miami, the restaurant was a cookie-cutter dining venue geared to hotel guests. A menu of standard-issue steaks, burgers and salads didn’t do much to excite local residents and workers.
Dairy prices seem to be going up faster than cream rises to the top of a vat of milk. While relative bargains were available when cheese prices crashed in January 2009, there's been a surge upward since then. To ease the pain, some operators can cut down on the number of cheesy appetizers and entrees they serve, but concepts that focus on pizza, cheeseburgers, enchiladas and quesadillas simply can't do without it.
I always approach the aisles of the National Restaurant Show with a plan: hit my favorite coffee places first for a cup of extra-bold java or a latte, then snack on samples of bacon, cheese and bread so I can have “breakfast” before the big graze begins. This year started out the same, as I walked the floor at Chicago’s massive McCormick Place, but I soon got caught up in a feeding frenzy, elbowed by the thousands of attendees all vying to taste the latest and greatest of 2011.
You can’t learn everything in culinary school. Or business school. Some lessons you’ve just got to learn on the job. With that in mind we set out to gather a little collected wisdom from the industry on how to do some of the more obscure tasks an operator might face. Challenges abound out there. Hopefully this will help get you through a few of them.
Commodity prices are on the rise. And animal proteins—always one of a restaurant’s more expensive buys—are getting hit hard. But there are ways you can purchase and plate beef, pork and lamb to ease the pain—without shortchanging your customers or your profits. Listen to what these chefs, suppliers, economists and other experts have to say.
Culver’s, famous for its Butter Burgers and frozen custard, is heavily franchised—only nine of its 427 stores are company-owned. But to keep messaging consistent and response time short, Culver’s centralizes its social media efforts, monitoring Twitter and Facebook from its home base 24/7. Tweets and posts fall on the agile fingers of the internal marketing team with help from an outside agency.