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  • How to Open a Restaurant During a Pandemic

    Opening a new restaurant is extremely stressful at any time but the COVID-19 pandemic has made nearly everything exponentially more difficult.

  • The Future is Now

    While much of the discussion surrounding COVID-19 has focused on how dining room shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the virus also slowed the restaurant businesses, the pandemic also accelerated a variety of trends that were already in play.

  • 5 Best Practices to Strengthen Restaurant Branding

    Your brand is what your restaurant is all about. It’s the sum and substance of who you are, what you stand for, your reason for being, and your restaurant’s moral compass.

  • Five Best Practices for Designing a Restaurant’s Bar

    Restaurant bars should always stand out. They’re social by nature and therefore play an important role in the social aspect of going out.

  • One Problem | Three Solutions: A Restaurateur’s Guide to Selection and Procurement

    As product options and providers increase across the globe, narrowing down restaurant furniture can be difficult. Procurement can be even more difficult, particularly as globalization continues to open doors to new opportunities and to new challenges.

  • Best Practices for Safe Take-out and Delivery

    Restaurants are doing all they can to reassure customers that they’re clean and sanitary.

  • One Problem | Three Solutions: What are the Best Materials to use in Kitchen Flooring?

    There are three main types of floors and each have pros and cons. 

  • Mind Over Budget: Tricks and Tips for Keeping Costs Under Control

    When it comes to keeping costs under control, there are several measures restaurant operators can take to ensure projects stay on task and on budget.

  • How to Get Ahead of Permitting

    Ask anyone who has opened a restaurant to describe their experience with the permitting process, and responses will vary from “piece of cake” to “nightmarish.”

  • How to Catch the Mixed-Use Development Wave

    True Food Kitchen, the healthy-food brand founded by Sam Fox of Fox Restaurant Concepts and integrative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil, is looking at all types of locations as it ramps up expansion to around 10 new units a year. High on its list of targets are plum spots in the burgeoning mixed-use development arena.

  • How to: Target Underserved Markets

    Expert advice on targeting underserved markets from executives at Wayback Burgers, Stoner's Pizza, and Denny's. 

  • How to Use Feasibility Reports

    Every time you open a new restaurant, you’re taking a risk. Is the site good for business? Will there be sufficient customers? Will sales be high enough? There are two ways to find out: Open your doors and see what business brings, or run a feasibility study (or two) and look at the hard data.

  • How to Capitalize on Legacy Brand Elements

    Drive through any city in America and what will you see? You’ll likely spot McDonald’s golden arches, Starbucks’ green mermaid and numerous other well-known restaurant chains’ iconic visual elements.

  • How to Go Global

    The call comes in. On the other end of the line is a deep-pocketed businessperson from Dubai — or Istanbul, Mexico City or     Shanghai — who experienced your brand on a recent trip to the U.S. and would love to bring it to his or her country. Flattery sets in, excitement mounts and visions of global expansion begin dancing in your head.

  • How to Connect the Digital and Analog Brand Experience

    When was the last time a new customer walked into a restaurant without having checked it out online? 

  • One Problem | Three Solutions: How Can I Tell One Cohesive Brand Story?

    There are a few key ways operators can pull together their product, service and environment.

  • How to: Use 3-D Modeling and Virtual Reality

    Customers aren’t the only ones embracing game-changing new technologies in restaurant spaces. 

  • How to: Design for Scalability

    Visit Tropical Smoothie Café in Tallahassee, Fla., and you’ll enter a 600-square-foot restaurant. But travel up to Columbus, Ind., and you’ll be in a location measuring 3,000 square feet.

  • How to: Determine the Right Remodel Timeline

    There’s a rule of thumb in the restaurant industry that remodels should happen every seven years, but that’s not always best. This raises the question, when is the right time for a remodel?

  • How to Move Into Nontraditional Locations

    Opening new locations is a common occurrence for restaurant chains, but sometimes branching out can bring significant changes. As brands expand into nontraditional locations, or even just a new geographic area, challenges and exciting opportunities abound. Here we spotlight three brands and how they moved into nontraditional locations.

  • How to Beat Flat Traffic Estimates in 2017

    A new year will bring little to no traffic growth for the total U.S. foodservice market, according to market research firm The NPD Group.

  • How to Create a Facility Maintenance Program

    To keep a restaurant humming, every aspect of operations needs to run smoothly and efficiently. Just one detail gone awry — the refrigeration, HVAC or hood system going out, for example — could force a shutdown and affect the bottom line. Even a broken grill could upset customers and keep them from returning. Whether you handle it in-house or work with an outside facilities maintenance contractor, setting up a facility maintenance program to

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  • How to Specify and Install Flooring

    In restaurant design, every detail matters, from the ceiling to the floor and everything in between. While many bits and pieces come together in one harmonious design, those design elements that take up the most space visually and spatially, such as flooring, not only need to look good, but they also have to perform well.

  • Connors Steak & Seafood Offers Polished-Casual Excitement

    Connors Steak & Seafood recently opened its fourth location, this one in Franklin, Tenn.

  • How to Conserve Water

    Restaurants leverage technology and their passion to do right by the environment to adopt best practices for water conservation.

  • Starbucks Enters Panama Market

    New location celebrates coffee's journey from field to cup.

  • How to Reduce Change Orders

    Time is money. This is precisely the essence — and headache — of change orders, especially in the deadline-driven restaurant construction world. Anyone who has ever built a restaurant will tell you that change orders are unavoidable. But they can be manageable as well.

  • How to Ensure Construction Standards Compliance in Franchise Chains

    To date, Which Wich CEO Jeff Sinelli has founded three franchised restaurant chains. At first, he strictly followed his lawyer’s advice for enforcing construction and design standards. Then, as he learned more about selling franchises, he began to customize compliance standards to better satisfy franchisee expectations.

  • How to Hire a Designer

    Hiring an outside designer for a new restaurant or renovation project is like a job interview and a date rolled into one. Past experience and expertise are paramount, but so are vision and overall chemistry between the hiring restaurant and the designer.

  • 7 Tips on Hiring Designers, from Designers

    Hiring a designer for a new build or renovation is a big decision, and while the onus is on the candidates to deliver great ideas that fit the concept and the budget, restaurateurs need to do their part, as well. Here are a few tips from designers on how clients can make the hiring process go more smoothly and help lay the foundation for successful projects.
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