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Peter Romeo

Editor at Large

Articles by
Peter Romeo

Page 387

Restaurant week gets hyper-local

Now that every nook and cranny has its own restaurant week, a growing number of locations are tweaking the formula to create a second promotional opportunity for local eateries.

The week in ideas, August 26, 2011

Normally the industry needs a few days to digest an important notion originating outside its ranks. But restaurant leaders wasted no time in warning that a ground-shaker aired this week will be a crack to the industry’s head.

Random spotting: Restaurant boycotts

A controversy involving a McDonald’s in Logan, W.Va., led locals there to embrace social media as a means of punishing the restaurant for a perceived slight. That prompted us to look closer at what many restaurants regard as a Level 5 catastrophe: Outraged consumers using Twitter and Facebook to mount a boycott.

The week in ideas, August 12, 2011

It’s probably just a coincidence that the Noid, Domino’s mischief-making mascot, would return to active duty on the very week Wall Street trips into a freefall.

Food

What customers are saying about the BK Minis

The introduction a few weeks ago of Burger King’s mini-sandwiches was relatively low-key, perhaps a reflection of the limited-time options not being completely new.

A kick to fast food’s buns: Bread as more than an afterthought

The quest for better burgers isn’t leaving the bun behind.The sandwich upgrades underway at several quick-service chains focus as much on the bread as...

Random spottings: Customer complaints on Facebook

No aspect of social media seems to unnerve restaurant chains more than the prospect of a public complaint. Because anyone can post anything, brands fear they’ll be slammed in full view of customers by whiners whose gripes might not even be reality-based.

Franchise group to mayors: We'll show you some stimulus

A case for using restaurants and other franchises as a grassroots stimulus package was presented to the nation’s mayors last week at their annual convention in Baltimore.

Summer Camp challenges preconceptions - in many ways

Peanut butter and banana sandwiches? A marshmallow-cramming contest? A dress code of shorts and flip-flops? This is an industry conference?

Wendy's uses Facebook to solicit menu ideas

Wendy’s, one of the industry’s more active users of Facebook, has just begun a new social media campaign that plays off its just-introduced berry-topped salad.

Some new-concept buzz from the show

If discussions at the NRA show are any indication, concept development is revving up again.

Saluting a save

Several hundred of us watched a life being changed tonight. The change-ee will never forget an evening that started with dire concerns about her family’s financial situation and ended with a fresh start, courtesy of two restaurant luminaries who presumably didn’t know her before today. But I’m pretty sure the rest of us will never let it slip from memory, either.

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