A match made to be?

Wendy’s is searching for a new CEO who can bedazzle Wall Street, pull droves of consumers off Main Street, and convince franchisees they’re heading for Easy Street. Could it have the ideal candidate in Claire Babrowski?

Babrowski, if you’ve forgotten, was the up-and-comer at McDonald’s who was seemingly put through a special Hamburger U. prep course for a top job at the burger chain, if not the CEO’s post. But the board passed her over to choose Jim Skinner for that lofty perch instead.

Babrowski subsequently quit, parting with McDonald’s for the first time since her teens, when she worked at a unit franchised to a girlfriend’s father. The dad would often join the girls as they sat chatting in a booth, raising their embarrassment to a life-threatening level. For the sake of their reputations, the pair opted for a job in the parent-free zone behind the counter.

For the next 31 years, Babrowski would rise through McDonald’s ranks, eventually overseeing a region’s operations, then operations for the whole U.S. The company dispatched her to run its 7,500-unit Asian/Pacific, Middle East and Africa territory, presumably as a way of further seasoning her. She was serving as worldwide chief restaurants operations officer when Skinner, a longtime veteran of the chain's overseas operations, got the nod instead of her.

She took six months off, then surfaced last summer as chief operating officer of RadioShack, the chain of electronic-gizmo shops (curiously, working under another restaurant expatriate, executive chairman Len Roberts, formerly of Arby’s and Shoney’s). When “misstatements” were discovered early this year on the resume of CEO David Edmondson, he left the company, and Babrowski was tapped to serve as acting CEO. She inherited a mess. But her handling of the situation made her the hands-on favorite to get the job on a permanent basis.

But, as was the case at McDonald’s at the time of Babrowski’s departure, and now Wendy’s, the company had lost credibility on Wall Street. The board opted to bring in a turnaround specialist from Kmart and Sears, whose background might buoy RadioShack’s stock price more quickly. Julian Day was a prime figure in the miraculous turnaround of both Kmart and Sears (in part through their merger), and RadioShack desperately needed a similar touch of retailing magic.

That was five weeks ago. On Friday, RadioShack announced that Babrowski had resigned.

The official statement said she would pursue outside interests. But an unnamed RadioShack official was cited in some news reports as saying he didn’t know where Babrowski was going. That suggested she has a destination in her sights.

Which, perhaps, brings us back to Wendy’s. The company is being led on what it insists is an interim basis by Kerrii Anderson, its former CFO. She has the financial chops that please Wall Street, which all but lynched her predecessor as CEO, Jack Schussler. What she lacks is operational experience. Indeed, she’s the first chief in the company’s history to have worked her way to the top post through anything but operations.

And that’s Babrowski’s specialty, though she also has experience in overseeing marketing, menu-product development and the franchise operations of major geographic territories. As president of McDonald’s Asian, Middle Eastern and African turf, she was responsible for more units than Wendy’s has worldwide.

Her most notable achievement at McDonald’s—and what some might also call the blackest mark against her—was the development and rollout of Made For You, a high-tech prep system that took the chain out of a batch-cooking mode and squarely into the mass customization—a longtime signature of Wendy’s. By conservative estimates, the set-up cost the McDonald’s system a quarter of a billion dollars. And as was reported in this space a week ago, McDonald’s is currently leapfrogging away from that “platform” in a two-phase overhaul.

Now Wendy’s is in the midst of a prep-system re-do. It’s trading out its grills for high-speed two-sided versions, as executives never fail to stress in their confabs with financial analysts. They typically also note that the chain is adapting other high-tech systems for maximizing unit efficiency.

It may not be a rehab on the scale of Made For You, but Wendy’s is still Number Three in the burger-chain size rankings. How many CEO candidates out there have experience in a retrofit of that scope, using technology that advanced, specifically for a grill-based quick-service restaurant chain?

The bigger question about Babrowski is why she was passed over by both McDonald’s and RadioShack for the top job. If you’ve ever seen her address gatherings like the Women’s Foodservice Forum, or observed her in action at headquarters, you’ve likely witnessed her considerable leadership skills. She’s spent enough time in the trade to have ketchup in her veins, an intangible steeped-in-the-business sense that would no doubt have pleased the likes of Dave Thomas, Jim Near and Gordon Teeter.

McDonald’s and Radio Shack didn’t reveal any reasons for choosing someone over her. But in both instances, the winning candidate was more experienced, with a deeper background in finance, and just more time logged on earth. Babrowski is 49 years old. Skinner is 61. Day, the man who edged her out at RadioShack and said he’ll assume her duties there, is 54.

But Wendy’s would have the option of a more rounded, fire-hardened Babrowski, who’s actually worked as a CEO for a company out of favor with Wall Street. She was only at RadioShack’s control switches for six months, but during that time she was the one who signed off on the company’s dismal financial statements, and no doubt had to deal with irate shareholders. All of that street schooling would likely serve her well at Wendy’s.

And what of Anderson, who appears to be serving the Number Three chain well? Wendy’s has said she’s serving on a interim basis, but chairman Jim Picket has stated publicly that Anderson is in the running for the permanent posting. Would the company risk her loss to bring in Babrowski? Or might Anderson be willing to step back into her CFO role, shoring up what seems to be the least developed aspect of Babrowski’s management abilities?

Babrowski won’t leave RadioShack until the end of the month. And after that, time will tell.

Site for sore eyes

So much ho-hum is passed off as gee-whiz that we editors tend to filter claims of innovation through a Shaquille O’Neal-sized layer of cynicism. Then someone manages to yank your attention to something truly progressive, and there’s the same uplift you get from watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

That’s how it went when the folks from Johnson & Wales University came to our office recently to showcase a new website they’ve developed with the Multicultural Foodservice & Hospitality Alliance under a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The site, whatsnext4me.com, was conceived and painstakingly designed to illuminate a path into foodservice for high school students intrigued by the possibility of a career in that field.

The site intends to give the youngsters a taste of life in the business by telling the story of someone who’s actually doing the job that interests them. J&W is building a library of profiles, each keyed not only to a particular hospitality position but also to a company that could eventually offer employment of that sort to the interested teen. For instance, if a visitor thinks he might like to work as an executive chef, he’d be led to a bank of profiles, where various real-life executive chefs describe not only their lives, in and out of work, but also what it’s like to work in their capacity for their particular employer, be it Marriott International, Compass Group or Capital Grille.

If the visitor wanted more information on that company, he can click on a link that takes him to a landing page hosted by the concern. There he’ll find indications about benefits offered specifically for students, such as scholarships, or internships.

For that soft-sell opportunity, the employers pay the non-profit site a sponsorship fee, which has yet to be revealed by J&W.

The profiles include detailed information on the amount of education needed to land a position, as well as an indication of the pay.

Of course, few of the site’s target audience have realized at their tender age that they’d like to work in marketing, or that being a unit manager could be far more satisfying and lucrative than being a chef. The site leads them to the appropriate job or industry discipline by asking broad-based questions about the lifestyle they’d prefer—being financially secure, for instance, versus having more free time.

The site isn’t a pitch for Johnson & Wales; indeed, the school is prohibited by the terms of its Labor Department grant from wooing applicants. Rather, the objective is promoting foodservice as a career choice, so that all parties see their pool deepening.

It’s a worthy cause, and a notable, noteworthy attempt to deliver.

If you’d like more information about the site, just drop me a note at promeo@nrn.com, and I’d be glad to pass it along to J&W.

Love ya, Nelson

Whatever possessed me to suggest that Nelson Peltz may be a tad money-focused? The man is a veritable Mother Theresa in Armani, helping corporations find their way, giving hard-pressed lawyers a chance to step up a tax bracket, proudly watching while his Arby’s chain upgrades its bread. Instead of taunting him to grant an interview, or covering developments like Standard & Poor’s downgrade of a holding’s credit rating, I should be scouring film art houses to find a replay of “Ocean’s Twelve,” so I can jump up and cheer when he appears for a millisecond in a crowd scene. (His other film appearance was in Brian DePalma’s 1970 epic, “Hi, Mom!” If you ask me, he stole the flick from DeNiro.)

Why the change of heart, the regular readers among you might ask? It has absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt nothing to do with Peltz’s shift in investment focus from your world to mine. So what if he recently bought 2.8 million shares in The Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday and other places where I may someday work? Or that he may be hungry for other media acquisitions? And that I hope to stay in the media?

Even if he did end up buying a company where I was plinking away at the keyboard, why would I worry? He has to know I’ve only been kidding with all this commentary about his management abilities, and how his Triarc operation, the parent of Arby’s, is a Mini Cooper compared with Wendy’s, CBRL and the other companies whose directions he’s insisted on plotting. It’s all been just a lot of joshing. Diverting his attention away from restaurant or food chains may be great for you. But it’s not necessarily awful for me. Right?

Work with me here, people.

Well, just wanted to get that out there. Now I’m off to have an Arby’s sandwich, with some Heinz ketchup on it.

Chain mothers

Long before the industry appreciated the need to foster opportunity for women, Esther Johnson was finding plenty of it. In 1947, when many of her gendermates were resigning their wartime factory jobs to make room for homecoming soldiers, she managed the day shift of a restaurant in Seattle, where she’d landed after serving as a surgical nurse for the WAVES, the Navy’s female auxiliary. Among the 27-year-old’s vendors was a baked-goods salesman named Harry Snyder. In short order he switched from pushing breads and buns to pitching her on becoming his wife. He was a good salesman.

Within a year, they were married and living in southern California, planning to make a living by feeding the suburban-minded Americans who hoped to drive away memories of the war with the comforts of raising a family. They opened a restaurant in 1948 where Harry worked the counter and manned the grill while Esther chopped and prepped, hand-forming burger patties from fresh ground beef. They called it In-N-Out Burger, and its six-item, low-priced menu was a hit.

Before long, the Snyders were opening more restaurants. Esther managed the books and the paperwork while Harry functioned as the outside man, looking for sites, hiring the managers, cutting the deals. Along the way, they found time to raise two children, Guy and Richard, who were pressed into the business at an early age.

The family empire prospered and grew, expanding company unit by company unit until it stretched to several dozen drive-thrus, then more than 100. Around the time the Women’s Foodservice Forum set a goal of having at least three women in every restaurant-company executive suite by 2010, In-N-Out hit the 200-store mark. By that time, Harry, Guy and Richard had all passed away at early ages, but Esther was still tending to their brainchild, now as president and chairman.

It’s unclear if business or her extensive charitable activities led Esther Snyder to an acquaintance with the former Margaret Heinz, for whom the line between family and a restaurant company had also been erased, in her case by an impromptu act of capitalization. In 1941, her husband, Carl Karcher, had taken a $311 loan against his Plymouth to raise funds for a hotdog stand, but was still a few dollars short. Margaret took $15 from her purse, and the deal was consummated.

The cart would later be put in display in the lobby of what is now CKE Restaurants, the $1.2-billion-a-year parent of the Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, La Salsa and Green Burrito fast-food operations. Margaret Heinz Karcher saw it grow from that first hotdog venture, through a power struggle that pushed Carl out of operations, to his triumphant return, to its takeover by an associate. Along the way, the Karchers would have 12 children.

Esther Snyder died on August 4 at age 86. The company she’d been crucial in building has been left to her sole granddaughter, Lyndsi Martinez, age 23.

Margaret Heinz Karcher had passed away almost exactly a month earlier, at age 91. She left behind 51 grandchildren, some of whom have worked in the business.

Today, smart companies spend far more than $15 to steamroller whatever barriers tend to keep women from rising into leadership positions. But 40-odd years before that commitment became a veritable business commandment, women like Esther Snyder, Margaret Heinz Karcher and Allie Marriott were already proving that gender matters less in the restaurant trade than hard work, dedication and partnership. Their efforts may not have been widely known, but they were true trailblazers, before there were awards to recognize such a contribution, or publications to laud their achievement in a pants-centric business.

It’d be woeful to overlook the loss of such true pioneers, and the differences they quietly made in the lives of so many in foodservice.

Kitchen synching?

Less than a decade after retrofitting its kitchens in the costliest capital-improvement program ever undertaken in foodservice, McDonald’s is overhauling its back-of-the-counter set-up again. Twice, in fact.

Management told a handful of analysts last week that it plans to supplant its ballyhooed Made for You prep system with a more adaptable ordering and cooking “platform,” tech-ese for “design.” Until that new set of equipment and procedures is fully developed, the chain is outfitting units in troubled overseas markets with a temporary configuration known internally as the Bridge. It combines elements of Made for You with aspects of the chain’s traditional grill set-up, which dates from Ray Kroc’s days.

Executives say the two-phase update is necessary because the business varies so widely today on a global basis, with different sorts of restaurants serving far-different products to diverse groups following their own peculiar schedules. “We’ve learned that one size does not fit all,” said CEO Jim Skinner. “So we’re working on a next-generation operating system,” with “flexible components that can be plugged in, depending on the restaurant’s needs.”

Ironically, customization and flexibility were the two main rationales for the switch to Made for You, a highly computerized set-up that holds burgers in special heat-and-moisture-controlled cabinets. Introduced with considerable fanfare, the system was expected to end the chain’s reliance on batch-cooking, whereby a few dozen hamburger patties were grilled at one time. Because the sandwiches were wrapped and held until someone ordered them, they often cooled considerably before being consumed, leaving customers dissatisfied with the taste.

With Made for You, each sandwich would be prepared to the customer’s specifications at the time an order was placed. It was expected to improve perceptions of McDonald’s food without an increase in serving times.

Made for You was also seen as more versatile, in that it could be used for a broader array of menu choices than McDonald’s offered at the time.

But the system failed to meet the hopes of investors and franchisees, who, according to McDonald’s per-unit cost estimates, collectively paid several hundred million dollars to install Made for You.

McDonald’s didn’t offer a cost estimate for either the Bridge or the Phase Two platform, tentatively dubbed the Flexible Operating System. But Skinner did tout the payback, including a capability to handle new types of menu items. He also said the Flexible configuration would “enhance the work environment of the crew,” but did not provide an explanation.

The Bridge is already being tested in “countries that need help with their operations now,” said Skinner, citing the examples of the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He added that 1,500 more outlets, franchised and company-run, will be retrofitted with a Bridge system during the next year.

No timeframe was given for the development of the Flexible Operating System, nor how many units might be ultimately retrofitted. “This is not something that we’ll be doing in every market,” Skinner said.

What's gotten into Wendy's?

Floyd Landis pedals at the speed of a Toyota Camry and the world rightfully suspects performance-enhancers. Wendy’s vows to hire an executive who can deliver innovation on an everyday basis, and nary a blood sample is taken. Come to your senses, people. We’re just a grassy knoll short of a conspiracy here.

How else do you explain the lack of Rohrshachs in the wake of Wendy’s disclosure that it’s forming an executive group—a veritable small department—to foster innovation as a strategic point of difference? Remember, this is chain foodservice, the realm of the me-too. Wendy’s is bucking the sort of thinking that made casual-dining menus all but interchangeable. Your fried-onion appetizer may be Awesome instead of Bloomin’, or touted as Petals. But is it fundamentally any different? Any more so than the spinach dip, chicken fingers, wings, quesadillas, fajitas or pot stickers offered by virtually every player in that arena? The big casual chains could cut their costs by jointly printing a single menu, with a space left blank for each concept’s name.

It’s not much better in the quick-service sector, despite the prod for originality that fast-casual upstarts delivered a few years ago. By now, the best ideas from that cheeky lot have been co-opted. Look at ethnic breads. The die-cut sponges that once passed as sandwich buns have been panini’d out of acceptability. Today, you can get foreign-sounding designer breads at 7-Eleven.

It’s a situation that must be particularly difficult for Wendy’s, originator of the sector’s last true head-turner. When competitors were aiming no higher than serving their food hot, the Number Three chain boldly introduced premium salads, at proportionate prices. It rollicked in the green while almost every direct competitor merely pushed its interchangeable bargain items that much harder, typically in vain.

But it’s not been a cakewalk for Wendy’s since then. A fruit salad bombed. Its own upscale breads, finished in the units from dough spec’d by Los Angeles’ famed La Brea Bakery, has been a plus. But by the time of the rollout, plenty of other chains had already taught customers to pronounce foccaccia.

And what’s next on its roll-out schedule? Bigger, multi-patty burgers, a la Burger King, followed by breakfast sandwiches that are square instead of round, like the chain’s burger patties. Whoa.

That’s why the chain can’t move fast enough in hiring a “senior strategist,” a move it pledged to make two weeks ago. Reporting to this individual, the head of a new Innovation and Strategy braintrust, will be three execs promoted into new titles that underscore the forward spin of their expanded responsibilities. There’s a menu R&D person, who has the added task of developing tomorrow’s packaging and recipe tweaks. A second team member, the vice president of strategic insights and innovation, has the duty of strategic planning, with an eye toward business development. And, finally, in a nod to Wendy’s unique situation, there’s a person ostensibly devoted to evolving operations. They’ll report to the senior strategist, who in turn answers to Wendy’s longtime chief marketing officer, Ian Rowden.

It’s a bold undertaking, though not without some marketing spin. Yet even more ambitious is the goal of finding this innovation maven. Chances are strong that he or she will be taken from outside the industry, or certainly from outside a corporate foodservice office. Just between us, innovation has not been a strong point of the industry in recent years. Look at the new products that merited a second look from consumers this summer. Wendy’s added a vanilla version of its Frosty, a frozen dessert offered solely in a chocolate flavor until now. A few chains stole Starbucks gee-whiz technique of serving milkshakes and other chilled-and-garnished drinks in cups with a clear dome. And many of the major fast-food brands upgraded their coffee. Wow.

Clearly the industry has not been a hotbed of creative thinking in the near-past. Recruitment will be difficult if Wendy’s is determined to find a corporate-office vet with proven foresight and creativity. It’d best look outside chains’ headquarters, for some free-thinking franchisee or indie operator.

But, hey, I have the perfect candidate for them: Whoever runs the shoe-shine concession at MacArthur Airport, the flight center that serves the bedroom community of Long Island. Nestled in the heart of suburbia, the airport is used more by leisure travelers heading off to DisneyWorld than by the suited business travelers who predominate at places like LaGuardia or O’Hare. Passengers were more likely to be in Nikes or New Balances than in Florshiems or Prada. The guy with the Kiwi wax gets less play than the insurance vending machine.

Then, during a recent visit, I found the stand abuzz with activity. The reason was right there, on a sign that looked hand-fashioned: “We now clean sneakers!”

If Wendy’s hires him, I expect a free Frosty out of this. Chocolate and vanilla.

Time for your cameo, Mr. DiSpirito

Rocco, Rocco, Rocco. You’ve had your day as a TV idol. Now pack it in and head back to the kitchen.

But some people just can’t forego that 16th minute of fame, and Rocco DiSpirito is evidently one of them. The star of the much-maligned “The Restaurant” reality program is reportedly taking another stab at entertainment stardom, this time in something even less likely to land him on “Hollywood Squares.” Judging from the news leaks, he’d be lucky afterward to snag a gig in training videos. According to the trade mag Daily Variety, the chef has been booked for a new show called “Rocco,” where he serves as a culinary therapist, curing the emotionally distressed with food.

His website, www.roccodispirito.com, offers more detail about the aid he’ll dispense: “Worried about that engagement dinner with your picky mother-in-law? Trying to win back that ex-girlfriend who's still mad at you for cheating on her? Trying to bury the hatchet with that outcast uncle at your family reunion cookout? Rocco wants to help you solve that problem!”

Of course, it doesn’t say exactly how he’ll do it. But he could ease please one fan by going back to being a chef instead of a celebrity.

Not your daughter's McDonald's

Snack-sized chicken wraps may be the lure McDonald's is fly-casting into the U.S. market this summer. But elsewhere in the world, the burger giant is figuring it can turn heads with far more ambitious bait. Consider, for instance, the silver-dome-worthy dishes it started testing today in Australia.

The experimental My Dinner Now menu features four dishes marketed as upscale fusion fare. There’s a lemongrass chicken with penne pasta, obviously combining Thai and Italian staples; rendang beef and penne, for someone with more of an Indian yen; beef Bolognese penne; and orange, lime and ginger chicken.

Remember, this is McDonald’s, a concept that had to yank a chipotle-flavored chicken sandwich from its permanent menu here in the States because of acceptance issues.

And the prices range from $7.95 to $8.95.

The chain didn’t release many details to the Australian press about how the dishes are prepared. But it did note fresh vegetables are used.

Who’d have thought that Americans would be laggard adapters?

Foreign thinking

Imported from a place with its own business precepts, Aroma doesn’t always see the sense in American restaurant conventions, even as it chases such homegrown mega-successes as Starbucks. Consider, for instance, how the Israeli chain’s first U.S. outpost is using prices to manipulate customers’ behavior.

Most U.S. restaurateurs set their fees with the simple objective of maximizing revenues and traffic. It’s all about pulling volume through the door.

But Aroma wants to shoo customers out as much as it wants to woo them in. The beachhead sandwich and espresso shop, just south of New York University in New York City, offers a 10 percent discount on all to-go orders. The tactic allows the concept to minimize seating without antagonizing patrons who want a place to sit but can’t find one. And that plays into the larger goals of lowering costs and fostering traffic.

The practice is common in Israel, where it’s helped the chain maximize the profits of its 73 other Aromas, some of which reportedly take in the equivalent of $1.2 million annually. But over here, it’s a virtually unknown tactic, and one likely to be treated by U.S. restaurateurs as heresy, if not lunacy. Indeed, some brands here charge extra for takeout, since it involves additional packaging, just as others levy a delivery fee.

And what’s the sense of extending a discount on such a huge part of the business? How can you forgo such a big portion of a price that’s been calculated to realize a certain profit margin?

Maybe they’re just looking at the matter with an American bias. They see the take-out price as a discount, instead of viewing the eat-in charge as carrying a premium. If you want a sandwich and latte to go, you can get it at this price. If you want to stay and eat, you’ll have to pay one-ninth more for that added service.

And then there’s the effect on building costs, of leading customers to make you truly a take-out place, so you need fewer seats. It could mean a whole new calculus for projecting prices and profits.

It’s all about building on what you know, with what you wouldn’t have thought.

Pop-quiz time

This might seem like just another Friday to you. But any Catholic-school survivor from around here knows July 21 was the day Sister Doberman Intolerata logged her 13,412th career knuckle whack--fittingly, during summer school. It’s a record that will last long after humans are running three-minute miles and Joe DiMaggio is remembered more for marrying Marilyn Monroe than for hitting in 56 consecutive games.

It’s only fitting the day be commemorated in a fashion that would have pleased the lion-scaring sister, or at least put some extra zip in her ruler technique. What better way than with a pop quiz, guaranteed to catch you off-guard?

So grab a No. 2 pencil and choose the answer that best defines these recent additions to the foodservice vocabulary:

Food desert:
a) A common misspelling of an after-dinner treat.
b) What France would become after a really bad drought.
c) Social pundits’ new buzz-phrase for how fast food is supposedly undercutting the health of the disadvantaged. Gaining use in Chicago to denote poor inner-city areas where quick-service restaurants abound but grocery stores are rarer than J.Crew outlets. Typically not used in a favorable sense, as in “Our neighborhood is a food desert where children are getting fat because all they can eat is junk!”

Crispy
a) A new rap artist affiliated with Buckethead, the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist who wears an actual KFC bucket over his head to maintain anonymity. .
b) The new PC term for “fried,” as in “Bonzo Burger’s new Crispy Chicken Sandwich.”
c) The cereal mascot originally matched with Snap and Crackle until Pop aced the audition.

Brisket
a) A shortened version of the rite for male Jewish infants.
b) A low-cost knock-off of the Jet Ski.
c) The chain Menu Item of the Moment, added this summer to the bills of fare for T.G.I. Friday’s, Quiznos and others. Indeed, barbecue of all types is being avidly adopted this season, greasing the way for it to join Cajun and Buffalo as a home-grown staple flavor for chains. New converts may be able to pick up excess inventory at a discount from Darden’s Smokey Bones chain, which is running counter-trend with a push to downplay its barbecue DNA.

Chiberko
a) A term invented by a brilliant foodservice blogger to designate the decidedly Berkeley-like tendencies of Chicago in recent weeks. The California city may still be a haven of activism, prone to using legislation to right social wrongs seldom addressed outside of a commune. But it’s been laissez-faire in comparison with the recent hyperactivity of the Midwestern metropolis. The City of Big Shoulders could be renamed Burg of the Heavy Handed, outlawing the sale of foie gras, eying restrictions on trans-fats, and looking at the canine rights of restaurant patrons, vis-à-vis a movement to allow dogs in outdoor dining areas.
b) Starbucks’ new offering, a particularly zany chai blend.
c) Bucket Head’s porn name.

Okay, pencils down! Please grade yourself on the honor system. And don’t worry. For those who failed, KFC buckets will be provided.

A burning idea

The idea hit Louis Osteen, the James Beard Award-winning chef from Pawleys Island, S.C., while he was visiting an organic-foods producer in California. He was toque-deep in “tree huggers,” as he put it, and not a few were extolling the benefits of draining restaurant fryers--not for any health benefits, but to offset the high price of gasoline. The proponents were collecting the used oil, otherwise destined for disposal, and turning it into bio-diesel for their tractors and trucks, right “in their garages,” Osteen said. “It seems to be a not-too-difficult process.”

And that got him thinking, as he wrote in an e-mail to me late last week. “Who’s the largest user of fryers in the country? I’ll bet it’s McDonald’s,” he wrote, undoubtedly pegging that answer. “They could install converters in each of their stores, make the fuel, pump it to where a diesel generator resided, and co-generate their electricity. I’ll bet their consolidated eletric bill is in the billions. If they could save 15 to 20 percent, it would flow directly to their bottom line and increase shareholder value.” The government might even pay for the effort, since the switch would appreciably lessen demand for overseas oil.

“Then some entrepreneurs will start making smaller units for independents like me, and I’ll save a few bucks,” he noted. “Lots of good things will happen,” including a reconsideration of the knock against fried foods.

Louis wanted my feedback on the idea, and I noted that a newspaper in his part of the country had just run a story that lent credence to his notion. The town of Summerville, S.C., is in the process of adapting selected trucks from its service fleet to burn used fryer oil. French Fry One, a converted 1995 Chevrolet Suburban, is already on the road, and a dump truck might be the next piece of equipment to be retrofitted, according to the article in The Post and Courier.

And stranger ideas have become accepted business options. Co-generation, for instance, was once regarded as a crackpot suggestion from do-gooders who’d hugged one too many spotted owls. Then, after the energy crunch of the late ‘70s, disparagers started re-thinking the idea of allowing businesses to burn their garbage as a way of generating heat and electricity. By the mid-1980s, hotels were considering, and hospitals were trying it. The harebrained suddenly looked creative and feasible.

But that’s my opinion, not Jim Skinner’s. And getting the CEO of McDonald’s on the phone could prove as difficult for Louis as getting Dick Cheney to return a voice-mail message. If Osteen’s idea ever generates action, it will likely be the result of widespread discussion within the trade.

Which leads to the real purpose of this: What do you think of his notion? Is the oil in your fryers an overlooked way of easing your utility or gas costs?

Peltz catches some mud

Duck behind this rock, put this sauce pot over your head, and watch the bullets fly. Neither combatant is a restaurant chain, but what happens in this firefight could influence what happens to any number of big-name foodservice companies—or possibly their suppliers—in the months ahead.

On one side of No Man’s Land is H.J. Heinz Co., the ketchup king. And dug in across the barbed wire is Nelson Peltz, corporate raider extraordinaire. He’s once again boasting that he can deliver far more growth in a company’s stock by directing its management, as he did with Wendy’s. In the instance of Heinz, he’s demanding the right to fill more board seats than Yankees typically do in their bleacher section. Peltz wants five chairs in all, out of a total of 12.

He’ll likely prevail, but not without catching a few hurled bricks in the process. Heinz’s management, not surprisingly, has rebuffed Peltz’s demands. Last week it sent a letter to shareholders, imploring them to cast their proxy votes against the corporate raider’s candidates. Why, it argued, should shareholders elect directors who wouldn’t meet the company’s governance standards?

As the letter noted, the candidates include not only Peltz himself, but also his son-in-law, Edward Gardiner; his friend, the former pro golfer Greg Norman; his longtime business partner, Peter May; and a former employee, Michael Weinstein. Although Heinz stops short of saying the set-up would reek of cronyism, it asserts that votes would be cast in a block for the what’s in the best interest of Peltz and his partners, not necessarily the company’s body of shareholders.

The letter also asks why 42 percent of the board’s seats should be controlled by someone who holds 5.5 percent of Heinz’s stock.

Tucked here and there are a few subtler putdowns of Peltz and his colleagues, like the observation that their Trian Group is an off-shore operation, technically headquartered in the Cayman Islands. It also asserts that Peltz and May were censured by the London Stock Exchange in 1991 in connection with an overseas investment, and made payments to settle claims of securities fraud.

Peltz hasn’t sat idly in his foxhole while the mortar shells fell. His Trian Group investment group has countered with a letter to shareholders, urging them to opt for more riches than they’ll get under Heinz’s current management. As the communication notes, someone who bought $100 worth of Heinz stock in 1998, when current CEO William R. Johnson ascended to that post, would had a stake worth $62 as of February of this year.

It also asserts that the Trian-nominated board candidates are “independent” and “highly qualified.”

The matter will be settled by a vote of shareholders that concludes at Heinz’s annual meeting on Aug. 16.

The novelty of choice

Could it be? After decades of nudging their menus closer and closer to one another's, burger giants have finally found it in their buns to offer an unmistakeable difference.

Or at least two of them have. As we reported online today, Wendy’s is putting more fire into a chicken sandwich already marketed as a scorcher. And as we reported yesterday, McDonald’s is putting its sizzler of a chicken sandwich back in the fridge. A franchisee might pull it out from time to time for a quick sales pop. But it's there for menu cameos, not for a starring role.

You’re no doubt as stunned as I am by the sheer coincidence of the developments. What are the odds that Wendy’s would lift the silver dome off its new 4-Alarm Spicy Chicken Sandwich less than a day after stories broke (on www.nrn.com and elsewhere) that McDonald’s was downgrading its Spicy Premium Chicken Sandwich to a menu option?To think otherwise would mean Wendy’s exploited the situation, and that’s not often been said about the chain in recent years.

Regardless, this is a monumental development. If a fast-food fan wants spice—specifically a chipotle heat—he knows Wendy’s has a chicken item that delivers it, and that McDonald’s doesn’t.

If this keeps up, think of what could happen. Chains might carve out distinct niches again. Consumers might base their fast-food choice on something other than price or volume. Loyalty could be cultivated again. Brand personality could be revived.

Oh, my.

But before we get too light-headed here, I’m obliged to cite the other quick-service story we've covered online: Burger King also tweaked its menu. In its case, it added a line of mega-sandwiches dubbed Stackers, so called because they consist of burger patties stacked atop one another, with cheese and bacon layered in between. The objective is turning heads with heft, or exactly what Carl’s Jr. has done with its Six Dollar Burger, and Hardee’s is striving to do with its Thickburgers. And the approach is exactly what Wendy’s has used from its very beginning; its Classic Double and Triple are made by stacking burger patties into belly fillers you have to lift with two hands.

BK has shown through its advertising—even the spots for the new Stackers—that it’s willing to take the risk of doing something distinctive. But it doesn’t seem to be doing it this time with its menu.

Say what, Pa.?

Some onlookers might wonder what they’re smoking in Pennsylvania these days. But if the state’s restaurant industry has its way, you can bet it won’t be tobacco.

The Pennsylvania Restaurant Association delivered a real jaw-dropper last week when it sent letters to state lawmakers, urging them to ban smoking in all public places, eateries included. There was no proposal before the legislature. No referendum was about to be put to voters. Indeed, there seemed to be no harebrained measure afoot that the trade was hoping to pre-empt with a more reasonable proposal. From all appearances and known circumstances, it seemed the association was taking the initiative on a no-smoking law. And the association didn’t say otherwise.

It asserted publicly that it was moved by a report from the U.S. surgeon general that found second-hand smoke to be a significant health risk to non-smokers. Yet association officials told deputy managing editor Paul Frumkin that they decided to call for the ban a day before the surgeon general’s findings were released.

We wondered aloud in our New York office about the possibility of liability lawsuits based on the surgeon general’s study, and if the PRA was trying to shield its members from litigation down the road. But that notion was put forth by us, not the association.

However, tea leaves and other indicators suggest the PRA may have a motive other than merely protecting servers and bartenders from second-hand smoke. Association chief Patrick Conway told Frumkin that the industry staked out “the high ground” because “we might be better positioned to guide the debate at the state level.” And if that’s the case, the PRA’s actions may be well-conceived.

Its about-face in calling for the prohibition, after steadfastly resisting a ban for years, came to notice almost in the same hour news reports surfaced in Louisiana about the restaurant industry suing the state over a recently-passed smoking law. Operators there are furious because a new ban exempts casinos, just as New Jersey’s law does. In both states, the trade has argued that the exemption gives casinos an unfair advantage in the battle for consumers’ disposable income.

And there’s absolutely, positively no doubt they’re right; the exemption is patently fair. The casinos argued that they’d lose money if smoking was banned on their premises, just as restaurants have. But casinos spent more money to make that argument heard, and they have the added weapon of generating hundreds of millions in tax revenues for their host states. In short, restaurants couldn’t control the conversation in those locales. They were over-shouted by a more powerful and persuasive voice.

Pennsylvania has no casinos as of right now, but the state has been empowered to license 14 gaming halls. By stressing the need to put health considerations above business concerns, the PRA may be able to frame the discussion of any bill that emerges from the legislature. It may have acted shrewdly to prevent a repeat on the unfairness against restaurants that prevails in New Jersey and Louisiana.

What looks like insanity could prove a brilliant move, a true flash of fire behind the smoke.

So long, Tom

My job abounds in good aspects, but I’ll be damned if I could think of one this afternoon. Maybe I should be grateful I only had to edit the obit on my friend Tom Crawford, instead of having to write it.

Those of you who’ve attended a Restaurant Leadership Conference, or supported it as a sponsor, will readily understand. The annual conference, a sort of class trip/think tank/celeb fest for restaurant franchisees and franchisors, was Tom’s charge, and it reflected a personality that both admirers and detractors termed “unique." The three-day retreat had started as a perk for the customers and would-be clients of Franchise Financial Corp. of America, a lend-lease giant that has since been absorbed into GE Capital. It was subsequently reorganized into a independent event operated by a freestanding entity called the Leadership Network Corp., which Tom was tapped to head.

He could have had an easy time of it, booking some high-ticket resort and marching a parade of the usual retired sports stars or inspirational presenters to the podium. Throw in a barbecue, luau or pig roast, or bring in some past-prime talent for a grand banquet, and you'd have had a perfectly acceptable boondoggle.

Instead, Tom decided to rethink what an industry meeting should be, using the famous Sun Valley conference as his inspiration. That gathering, in Sun Valley, Idaho, drew the gods of the technology industry by providing a chance for true interaction and mind-melding.

At the time, most foodservice events consisted of talking heads standing at a podium or sitting on a panel, broadcasting their wisdom to a passive (or sometimes napping) audience. Two days of lectures, with maybe a half-day golf outing where the real mental and social connecting took place. If the recreational and social activities are where attendees gain the most, Crawford reasoned, why not make those components the major part of the conference? And if they want to learn from savants, why not get people who really fit the bill, regardless of what’s required to bring them there?

It probably wasn’t the first time a conference producer had been filled with that religion. But, bless him, Crawford made it happen, and it was magical. You could go horseback riding in the Arizona desert, or book a Hummer and tear around off-road. One year, he arranged to have dozens of hot-air balloons take us all up for a ride. Another time, he brought in a rodeo. One of my favorite recollections was watching a spring-training game with Dave Winfield, a New York Yankee before he became a Burger King franchisee and fast-food service provider. The Giants were playing the Cubs, and when Barry Bonds homered, Winfield yelled his praise. Bonds saluted in recognition, and might have even smiled. And I sat there with a cold beer, part of the scene, as were the attendees with whom I had become friends.

And then there were the speakers. Jack Kemp, around the time he ran as Bob Dole’s vice-presidential candidate. And Dan Quayle, the year he ran for president. George Will, the noted political and baseball writer, was a regular. Last year, Tom somehow lured former Disney CEO Michael Eisner to speak. On the same program was John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted,” and one day started with a self-defense expert who taught the Walter Mitty's in attendance how to fend off an attacker.

Another year, he not only secured Jerry Colangelo, owner of the Phoenix Suns and Diamondbacks, but booked him to speak in the Diamondbacks’ spectacular retractable-dome stadium. The conference opened with all of us sitting there in an otherwise empty stadium, and the dome suddenly opening to let the sunlight brighten the infield grass to the color of pool-table felt. Tom, our emcee, stood just in front of the pitcher's mound, beaming.

His conferences were so unusual, so anything-goes, as long as the anything fit his goals of stimulating thought or fostering interaction. You never knew who he’d schedule, or what type of recreation he’d add.

Which is why it was chilling to learn this morning that Crawford died from a mountain-biking accident. I was just beginning to mountain-bike when I started attending the Leadership Conference. I used to joke with Tom that he should add off-road riding as an activity at the meeting. He’d nod, then threaten to leave me behind in the desert if we ever hit the trails on our bikes. And then he’d suggest that I come out to Phoenix early for the next conference, so we really could go out and ride together.

And that was him. He could throw his jabs, but it was always in fun. And he was absolutely graceful when a few barbs caught him. One year, before the conference had officially begun, I saw him hobbling about in a foot cast. “What happened?” I asked. “Get your foot caught on a molar?” He flushed, then retold the joke at his expense a few dozen times. I like that mental image, of how he’d laugh each time, usually more heartily than his audience.

You were a class act, Tom, with a big heart and an inquisitive mind. And among all of us who were lucky enough to make your acquaintance, you will be sorely, sorely missed.

Chicago chefs celebrate foie gras while they can

Those kooks in white. Chicago is about to outlaw the sale of foie gras. So what are some of the city’s big-name chefs doing? Convening a Festival of Foie Gras, of course.

In a nose-thumbing the Chicago Seven would have loved (the political pranksters who disrupted the city’s 1968 Democratic Convention, for the sake of persons not of a certain vintage), 13 culinarians are holding a $150-a-plate event on July 11, roughly two weeks before the ban takes effect.

The baker’s dozen of cooks are all members of Chefs for Choice, a group that has already commenced a petition drive to thwart the ban. Proceeds from the Festival will be used to fund Choice’s opposition efforts.

“Many consider this food a delicacy,” the group said in its widely broadcast invitation to the July 11 bash, “but animal-rights advocates decry it as a product of inhumane treatment.

The chefs who have agreed to cook at the event include such local stars as Paul Kahan of Blackbird and Avec, and Dean Zanella of 312 Chicago. They’ll be joined by such out-of-towners as Jean-Francois Suteau of the Adophus Hotel in Dallas, and Hubert Seifert of Spagio in Columbus, Ohio. The dinner will be held at Allen’s – The New American Café.

Chicago is believed to be the first city in the nation to outlaw foie gras.

Nelson Peltz's glass house

While Nelson Peltz has been badgering other corporate chiefs to put their companies into buff financial shape, the activist shareholder has apparently let his own company lapse into Homer Simpson. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s gave Peltz’s Arby’s Restaurant Group a B+ credit rating, “with negative implications.”

Translation: The fast-food franchisor isn’t doing nearly as well as it was a year ago, but it’s not doing terribly, either. Best keep an eye on it, creditors and note holders.

The rating “is based on operating performance and credit measures that are well below expectations,” S&P anayst Robert Lichtenstein commented in a release. The rating service said it had expected the franchisor’s performance to improve, given the efficiencies it would likely realize from the acquisition of RTM Restaurant Group, a major franchisee, during the prior 12 months.

I would’ve called Peltz for a comment, but I’m more likely to secure a racquetball date with the Pope.

S&P said it expects to meet with Arby’s new management team to review a plan for improving operations. Golf-industry veteran Roland Smith was named the new president of Arby’s earlier this month by Peltz’s Triarc Cos.

Having your plan reviewed must be quite a switch for Peltz, who has pressed for significant strategic changes during the past year from Wendy’s International and the parent of Cracker Barrel, among other big-name concerns. The day before S&P issued its rating, Peltz’s Trian Group filed the necessary government documents to mount a proxy fight for five seats on the board of industry supplier H.J. Heinz, in which Trian holds a 5.5-percent stake.

A tale of two cities

Two towns in northern California, less than 42 miles apart, yet a solar system distant in terms of what happened in each last week. Sorry to sound like Rod Serling, but whoever holds the rights to “The Twilight Zone” could have a good case against whomever—or whatever—was responsible for the creepy differences in how the burgs’ City Councils flexed their authority Wednesday. Consider the facts (best recited to yourself in a Vincent Price voice):

In Oakley, Calif., reported the nearby Contra Costa Times, local officials worked on a plan “to attract and retain
new businesses, sales tax revenue and job-producing industries.” Specifically, said the Thursday news story, the City Council is drafting measures to attract “desirable businesses”; among the operations mentioned in the story as welcomed imminent arrivals were a Straw Hat Pizza, the area’s first Starbucks, and a Wendy’s.

"We are getting on national retailers' radar screen," assistant city manager Karen Majors was quoted as saying, with inferred enthusiasm.

At the very time Oakley was borrowing the Bat Sign to flash “Welcome, Businesses!” across the clouds, nearby Oakland, Calif., was working itself into a froth over foam. It’s bad enough that some people were tossing their polystyrene fast-food containers in the streets of Jack London’s hometown. But kids were wolfing down burgers and pork fried rice that could conceivably have picked up chemicals leached from the Styrofoam by the food’s heat. And what about the threat to fish that feed in the Bay? You can see shreds of the takeout boxes floating everywhere.

Civic fathers decided something had to be done to protect residents. So they simultaneously banned polystyrene and mandated that ready-to-eat food sellers exclusively use biodegradable wraps and containers as of January. And this came after the city voted a few months ago to levy a tax on fast-food places, to pay for litter pick-up.

To their credit, the City Council specified that a switch to compostable materials would be required of restaurants only if the changeover would not cost establishments any more money. For that provision, the members should get a free weekend in Oakley.

While there, perhaps they could do some thinking. If you’re a business looking to extend your territory by opening new branches, where would you go? A place that welcomes you as part of a larger effort to increase tax revenues, spur the local economy, and put more people to work? Or one that hits you with a special tax because some of your customers don’t obey the law? And then follow up with, “No-go on that container, good neighbor. Hereabouts, you use a type we’ve decided is better for your customers.”

Which town is going to get your next site?

Then again, that’s assuming Oakland wants chain outlets in the first place, as Oakley has eagerly attested. Plenty of areas have enacted measures to fend off the big national brands, usually by banning businesses that follow a format. Those measures are championed as sure-fire ways of maintaining a locale’s unique character. But, for some strange reason, they tend to be championed by the local businesspeople who would compete with the incoming chains.

But let’s give Oakland the benefit of the doubt and assume its City Council truly wants the best quality of life for residents. If that’s really the case, I think it should also do what’s right for the restaurant operators and employees who live and work there.

Instead of banning polystyrene and mandating biodegradable packaging, why not lead restaurants to do so, by waiving the trash tax for any establishment that voluntarily makes the switch? The foam faulters would be happy, the restaurants would be happy, even the fishes would swim with a jauntier flip to their fins.

The real difference between the two towns is not their attitudes toward businesses, but the willingness of one to rely on incentives, while the other is focused on censure.

Which is the better place for business, from the standpoint of the resident as well as the entrepreneur?

Say it ain't so, Joe

Maybe I’m just a late bloomer, or perhaps it’s a function of not living near Houston or a satellite Enron office. But until yesterday, I’d never known an acknowledged white-collar criminal. Joe Micatrotto is the first acquaintance of mine to be facing jail time.

It’s all a little weird, even with the lead-up. It must have been two years ago that reports first surfaced of a glaring impropriety. Joe was accused of listing himself on the deed to a house in Italy that had actually been purchased and maintained by his employer at the time, Buca Inc., parent of the Buca di Beppo family-style Italian chain. That facility—ostensibly a training center for Buca’s chefs, but actually a prop intended to give the peasant-themed Buca a dash of authenticity—was something that Joe seemed to view with great pride. When he spoke about the house, you had to hold back the obvious comment that he was merely copy-catting what Olive Garden had done years earlier to make its Florida-developed menu seem more Florentine.

But you make concessions for good guys, and Joe certainly was one. He volunteered readily for industry events, and would pick up the phone when a reporter called. I’d met his wife, and she and he had even cooperated on a difficult story we’d run at Restaurant Business, the magazine where I served as chief editor before rejoining Nation’s Restaurant News. The article aired the unpleasant truth that being married to a restaurant executive isn’t easy, given the long hours, incessant travel, and intense pressures that are inflected on most foodservice higher-ups. Joe’s wife had spoken freely about how she’d sharply felt those negatives early in their relationship, and how she’d felt somewhat trapped by the life.

To illustrate that point, we photographed her in a jail setting, behind bars.

And now, of course, it’s Joe who’s likely heading toward incarceration. He pleaded guilty on Tuesday to fraud charges, stemming from shenanigans that make me ashamed. He was accused of working in cahoots with a supplier to bill Buca for $65,000, which offset what the vendor had given Micatrotto to repay debts on a restaurant he owned. Technically, he’d also violated stringent new financial disclosure requirements, which makes him the first executive in the country to be convicted under the much-cursed Sarbanes-Oxley statutes.

I know this is very politically incorrect, but I feel sorry for Joe. He was once honored with industry awards, and stood on stages with some of the industry’s greats. Many of the trade’s big names called him friend and colleague, and he was featured in the pages of Nation’s Restaurant News just weeks before his guilty plea was entered. And now he’ll likely never know that industry esteem again.

But, lest you think I’m about to bake a file into a Buca meatball for delivery on visiting day, I can’t shake the memory of what happened when accusations of serious wrong-doing were first leveled against Joe. I wrote an editorial for Restaurant Business at the time, noting that the industry shouldn’t righteously smirk at Enron or Tyco when it had its own steamy scandals. I mentioned Joe by name in the column.

Not long after the editorial appeared, I was working late one night at Restaurant Business. Coming back from a soda-machine run, I found a voice-mail message, angrily blasting me for suggesting Micatrotto was involved in a scandal, and chastising me for not speaking with him before putting something like that in print. If I had tracked Micatrotto down, the caller said, I’d have learned that he was a victim of circumstances. And how could he have ever regarded me as a friend? It was Joe, and he left his number, challenging me to give him a call.

So I did. I think he figured I’d left the office long ago and wouldn’t find the message until the next morning; he seemed a bit nervous when he answered his home phone and found me on the line. I told him I had to report what the authorities were saying, but I’d welcome his side, if he’d give it. He demurred, strongly suggesting he really couldn’t say a word because of legal complications. But he never backed away from his assertion that the problem lay in the circumstances, not in his behavior.

And now he’s pleaded guilty to actions that were worse than the accusations I’d reported.

Regardless of what he actually did, or how truthful he was that night he called, I wish him well. If there’s a positive aspect to this, it’s that this might be the vigorous body shake that convinces Joe to change whatever landed him in this mess, and to move on, positively.

Apple juice

If theater, David Letterman and cheap knock-offs of expensive watches aren’t enough to pull you to New York City this summer, consider the draw that came into focus last week for restaurateurs. In a single day, three local grab-and-go brands—all small, all relatively inexpensive, and all growth-minded—simultaneously revealed they’re about to see if a concept that makes it here can indeed make it anywhere. All three snagged news coverage with revelatons they’re about to expand, maybe big-time.

New York has hardly been a crucible for mass-market restaurant chains, T.G.I. Friday’s notwithstanding. But what makes last week’s developments truly interesting is what they say about the state of the industry west of the Hudson. Once upon a time, chain concepts were hatched and refined in places like Columbus, Peoria and Plano, where the population was far more mainstream and consistent with national norms. If you had a restaurant that generated lines in Bloomington, chances are it’d do well in Springfield, Lakeland and probably Bakersfield. By virtue of satisfying locals, the concept would be more attuned to that big hump in the bell curve of American tastes.

Then, if you were lucky, you could eventually push the brand into high-volume but notoriously snooty enclaves like New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

But last week’s events suggest that the heartland's growing sophistication is reversing the process. Now style, or at least upscale refinement, is what plays well to the broad market, vis-à-vis Panera, Starbucks and Chipotle. And that means importing the sort of places where pinky-benders along the coast might park their Pradas for lunch.

Of course, the flurry of announcements signaled more push by entrepreneurs here in New York than pull from would-be beret wearers in middle America. But the aspiring exporters must believe the qualities that made their upstarts popular in New York—freshness, quality and a perceived point of difference—will play well in Peoria.

And, certainly, the fledgling chains have been embraced locally. Mention Chop’t to anyone who works near the two existing units, like the one a few blocks from Nation’s Restaurant News’ headquarters, and you’ll get the reflexive response, “Oh, the place with the lines out the door?” My wife eats at the downtown outlet every day, and you’re talking about a person who should be used by mystery-shopping services to calibrate merciless criticism.

The concept features tossed-to-order salads served in a bowl or as a wrap, as do any number of competitors near the two existing stores. But fans (read: wife) insist the point of difference is the quality, for which they acknowledge paying a significant premium over what they’d fork over in the other places.

Blockheads describes itself as a purveyor of San Francisco-style Mexican food, but most aficionados know it as that burrito place with the puppets (the chains associates itself with a group of monkey-like stuffed mascots, who look like something Grandma might have knit just as she was going 'round the bend). Margaritas are also a big part of the draw.

Blockheads recently hired John Haywood, the Carrols and Metromedia veteran, to help the concept grow beyond its current six locations.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported last week that a stock offering could be imminent for Starwich, the brainchild of two local entrepreneurs who worked for B.R. Guest, a collection of well-known independents in the city and elsewhere. Starwich’s specialty is high-quality lunch fare, including a pomegranate-juniper glazed-chicken sandwich, and a citrus-duck salad. It currently has nine outlets, including two in airports, two in Boston, and five in New York. The brand’s website suggests that Starwiches will soon be opening in Philadelphia and downtown Washington.

What about parking meters?

Service sensibilities will likely collide with business imperatives again this summer as scenic restaurants contend once more with lingerers—customers who don’t understand they rent a table rather than buy it.

For restaurateurs, it’s a no-win situation. Parties settle into their seats to soak up the view or dig into the conversation long after they’ve stopped actually eating and drinking. Hospitality is almost a reflex for operators, so they’re loath to mar an otherwise memorable guest experience by hustling lingerers out the door. Yet as long as un-buying butts are nestled in the cushions, the cash register isn’t clanging. Proprietor, server and waiting guests all lose, big time.

So what are operators to do? Are they within their rights if they ask a slowpoke party to mosey along after everyone’s finished their meal?

We posed that question to the industry via this week’s Nation’s Restaurant NewsWeekly Newsletter, which was broadcast on Monday. It was also posted on our website, www.nrn.com, about one screen down.

There wasn’t a consensus, but a sizeable majority agreed the table squatters could be asked to grab a mint and move on—under certain conditions. If other customers are waiting, and if the bill wasn’t an exceptionally large one, or if you’d be closing otherwise, then, sure, give ‘em a nudge—as long as you do it with a tact that would make Chip and Dale break into golf claps.

As one respondent put it, “This is a tough question because the answer is, It depends.”

And, even with all that deliberation and care, you may still lose a guest.

“If I were having a pleasant time after a meal, enjoying lengthy conversation, and I was asked to leave, you can be sure I wouldn’t return to that place,” commented another anonymous responder.

“A restaurant has the right to ask anyone to leave,” Anonymous concluded. “Whether it’s good business practice is another question.”

The safest option, two respondents suggested, was drawing the party away from their over-used table, but still keeping them in house and happy. “This is the reason lounges were invented,” said Jill Vose of the Quincy Marriott. “I invite them to join us in the lounge.”

“I don’t think you can ask customers to leave,” wrote Gus Gregory, who gave his business affiliation as GGA. “[But] you can invite them to have coffee, dessert and conversation in the dessert room, garden patio, etc.”

And then there’s the counterpoint, perhaps best expressed by yet another anonymous responder. Here’s his/her advise, presented here in full: “No.”

Does BK think you have the right stuff?

Burger King apparently doesn’t like the restaurant industry, or at least not its bench of would-be leaders. Why else would the fast-food giant reach outside the trade one more time to fill a nosebleed-level corporate perch?

Yesterday the Home of the Whopper announced it’d hired a rental-car vet to tend its core market, the continent of North America. Hire-ee Chuck Fallon, who starts as North American president on June 19, presumably thinks of a grill as that piece of chrome on the front of Budget and Avis vehicles, which he flogged as executive VP of revenue generation for Cendant Car Rental Group. He may not know his kitchen equipment, but he does know John Chidsey, BK’s chief executive and Fallon’s new boss. Same as the old boss, actually; before being hired by Burger King, Chidsey was chairman and chief executive of Cendant’s $5.9-billion rental operations, overseeing Fallon.

Chidsey, in turn, had been brought into the chain to run Fallon’s designated Burger King-dom (called The Americas at the time) by then-CEO Greg Brenneman, an industry newcomer who hailed from the airline business. Brenneman had been given the BK crown by the trade novices who bought the chain from Diageo, a British distiller denounced by franchisees for its doh! approach to the U.S. restaurant business.

Given how poorly the chain had fared under Diageo, you’d have thought the new owners would pack BK’s C-level floor with ketchup-blooded industry lifers. Instead, with few exceptions, the ownership consortium opted for up-and-comers from other fields, apparently betting that fresh perspective would more readily yield a fresh start for a fortysomething brand.

The indications thus far suggest they wagered astutely. BK’s marketing is so intensely focused on young males—the prime market for the chain and many of its competitors—that the ads leave not-so-young males like me in the same state of bafflement I saw in my parents when they heard my Dylan records. We old timers would say the brand has cut through the clutter, even if we don’t understand how bucking rodeo chickens induce more 19-year-olds to buy chicken sandwiches.

By looking beyond industry-steeped recruitment candidates, BK has been able to find candidates with expertise in standard restaurant disciplines, like marketing, but decidedly different perspectives. In announcing the addition of Fallon, for instance, BK noted that he has deep experience in franchising, the basic set-up of the rental-car business. But the endeavor is practiced much differently in that realm. For instance, it’s hardly a mom-and-pop endeavor, just as restaurant franchising is no longer a matter of granting rights to a unit or two.

The travel trade also deals with a far more varied clientele, serving consumers from around the world. Would anyone dispute that BK’s customer base, even just in the U.S., is diversifying at a dizzying clip?

There’s a temptation to slag the inductees from other fields. After all, this is our industry; how could it not abound in the best candidates for our own trade’s jobs?

But attitudes forged outside the usual trade upbringing can provide a freshness that translates readily into innovation and nonconformance. It’s worked for BK.

The question is, will other restaurant companies be tempted to peek beyond the industry’s boundaries as well?

End of the line

I tried the future for lunch today, but found it to be a lukewarm burrito.

Yet I’m still lauding Chipotle Grill for making appreciable progress toward that Holy Grail of web-minded restaurant chains, online ordering. From the very moment Al Gore invented the internet, lunch-heavy concepts have eyed the medium as a way of churning more orders through their packed restaurants during the midday crunch. Yet only the last season of “The Sopranos” has generated as many so-what’s. The outlets learned the bottleneck wasn’t taking more orders, but fulfilling them, and online placement did nothing more than increase the backlog. Without a payback in saved time, web-surfing customers saw little benefit other than being able to order lunch while monitoring their eBay bids. They still had to contend with the throngs at the restaurant, which meant either waiting in line or drawing murderous stares from traditional customers gathering cobwebs in the queue.

Undaunted, Chipotle decided to take its stab at simultaneously boosting production and cutting wait times through online ordering. Even its online introduction of the service is unusual. When you’re visiting the website, as I was last night, looking to verify a fact about the chain, a foil-wrapped burrito floats zeppelin-like across the screen, emblazoned with the enticement, “DON’T STAND IN LINE/click here.”

Click on the flying burrito and you’re zapped to a screen introducing Chipotle DSL, defined as Don’t Stand in Line. The explanation of DSL amounts to nine words: “Now you can order online from your favorite Chipotle.” Truthfully, that wasn’t enough of an orientation for me; it wasn’t clear that I’d stumbled onto a page where I could enter an order by word of mouse. If I didn’t work for a restaurant publication, I doubt I would have gone any further.

But as a lapsed Chipotle customer who no longer goes there for lunch because of the time-zone-crossing line snaking up to the counter, I’m glad I did. After working my way through a fairly standard online registration form, I was invited to input my zip code, which gave me a list of nearby Chipotle units, or at least ones some wizard applet adjudged to be close. In reality, some of the cited stores were miles away, too far to hit even if I fired up a jet pack outside my building. But I did have a choice, so I found the outlet that is truly closest to me, and clicked on its street address. I could also specify the exact time I wanted to pick up my meal.

Finally, I got down to placing my order, first by selecting a bol (Chipotle-ese for “bowl”), and then transporting to a screen that depicted the chain’s behind-the-counter assembly line. By clicking on ingredients, I built my burrito-in-a-bowl, then perused other options, like sides and beverages. I also had the opportunity to compose any custom instructions or special requests.

At the end of that stage, I was given a number to call 10 minutes after placing the order online. An on-screen message warned that the order wouldn’t be prepared if I didn’t call.

So I did. The person who answered gave me the impression I was calling a general number for the store, not one reserved for cyber-patrons. She also instructed me to walk to an inside window when I visited the restaurant at my requested pick-up time.

Convinced the system wouldn’t work, I’d specified a time of 11:50, when the line presumably wouldn’t be too lengthy. If my online order had disappeared into the ether, or I had to wait in a queue to pay for it, at least I wouldn’t waste a half-century. The situation wouldn’t be a total disaster.

I got to the store exactly at my pick-up time, and found it already packed. Eighteen people were in the License Renewal-caliber line, and there seemed every certainty I’d be Number 19.

But then I spied it: A walk-up station far in the back, under a sign that read “Faxed-In Orders.” With only one customers waiting in front of it.

I headed back, teary-eyed with relief and joy. A minute and $7.38 later, I was out of there, though not without snagging a few die-a-painful-death stares from the people on line.

The burrito, which was taken already bagged from a holding cabinet, could have been much, much hotter. The paper sack that held it had been stapled shut, so I didn’t know to pick up disposable utensils on the way out.

But the experience was a good one, and that unit will get business from me specifically because of the online ordering option.

It’s not perfect. But Chipotle did squeeze at least one more order out of its lunch rush, with far more likely to follow.

Roll the highlights

The past week didn’t bring a dynamite single story about the restaurant business, but seldom has a seven-day stretch yielded as many news cherry bombs. Though subtle, they’re a collective nod the trade is changing monumentally, an inch at a time rather than in head-turning bounds.

Consider the turn signals that were flicked for menus, for instance. A scan of the headlines in the Breaking News section of our website shows that Panera Bread is courting Mom with new kids’ meals that incorporate organic and so-called natural components. The disclosure by the fast-casual darling is a follow up to the news a few weeks ago that it plans to add a pizza-like dinner item made with organically grown tomatoes.

In and of itself, that’s an interesting but hardly pulse-quickening development, given that Panera has yet to reach the market-making status of a McDonald’s or a Taco Bell, which can fundamentally change a product’s supply and demand macro-dynamics with a mere recipe tweak. (Before Claire Babrowski left McDonald’s upper ranks for the fast track to the chief executive’s job at Radio Shack, she bemoaned having the power to create a global sesame-seed shortage merely by changing the specs for Big Mac buns.)

But the week also brought an announcement from Chipotle Grill that it was switching to the use of natural chicken in more of its markets. Judging from what chain officials have indicated in the past, the move signals a step up in the availability of additive-free chicken. And the more that production increases, the more likely consumers are to embrace the product, the more likely producers are to accommodate the burgeoning demand, the more readily Chipotle and other chains can put the unadulterated protein on their menus. Each convert minutely tips the sale to that critical point where production takes off, and the price puts the option within reach of low-priced mass marketers.

Meanwhile, a farmers’ cooperative from North Dakota has begun to open restaurants where members’ meats and produce will be showcased alongside organic greens and other farm-to-fork proteins. They chose Washington, D.C., as the site of their first Agraria, but say they’re apparently already considering a duplication of the high-end eatery.

And that’s not the end of the push toward more wholesome, unprocessed, organic or sourced-by-growing-region foodstuffs. Local newspapers reported in recent days that McDonald’s supplier Paul Newman, who apparently also makes movies, is opening a restaurant this summer in a Westport, Conn., theater in collaboration with Michel Nischan, a chef and cookbook author known for his support of sustainable agriculture. Called The Dressing Room—Newman’s Own, A Homegrown Restaurant, the establishment will feature naturally grown and artisanal foods from local farmers. It’s one restaurant, in a town considerably off the beaten trail. But attach Newman’s name to it, and you can count on publicity, of the restaurant and its cause. You can already find coverage in newspapers thousands of miles away.

Those developments would seem to me like mere one-offs—just a series of coincidences—if it weren’t for a chain menu makers’ roundtable I recently moderated on health and nutrition. To a person, the participants attested that “health” is being equated more and more by consumers to “natural.” And nearly every one of the menu-writing participants, as you’ll read in the full coverage in an upcoming issue of Nation’s Restaurant News, believes they’ll soon have organic items on their menus. Indeed, one already does, and others readily cited peers who are already testing non-adulterated and additive-free items on mass-market menus.

They declared with assurance that issues of availability and price are about to be overcome, and that organics would soon become a staple on the menus of even the largest restaurant chains.

The tipping point, they said, was Wal-Mart’s directive to its food suppliers that they begin cultivating organic foodstuffs now, on a scale that could feed the giant retailer. That demand, the menu makers said, will justify the investment on the part of growers and processors in the wide-scale farming and ranching of organics. Factory food will be out, and natural or organic fare will be in, with its origins spelled out to an extensive degree.

But that trend is only one of the shifts that was nudged further along in the last week by individual developments. In the days ahead, maybe there’ll be time and space to look at some of those other currents, including the notion that honesty is making a comeback, be it in the way corporations are run, or in a resurging interest on the part of chefs in the simplest of fares, like burgers and hot dogs.

Catch their drift

Get a whiff of the next consumer-liability issue that could put restaurant noses out of joint: Workplace scents and odors.

A group in Canada is already pushing for a ban on perfumes, air fresheners and other scents in restaurants and other public places, with some success. Asserting that the smells could trigger asthmatic attacks, advocates convinced the health committee of Ottawa’s civic council to vote yesterday on a prohibition. The panel balked at an outright ban, but did approve an initiative that would require municipal facilities to adopt a no-scent policy. The proposal, which now moves to the full council, also calls for the city to mount a publicity campaign that discourages people from using perfumes, colognes or other scents in public.

Opponents have said the awareness program could cost $100,000, to address a possible occurrence among the 2% or so of the population that is allergic or sensitive to the chemicals used to create fragrances or scents.

If this sounds like a quarterback-sneak of a victory by a group of whackos, keep in mind that Canada has lately been an early adopter of concerns that have since emerged as major issues for American restaurateurs. Food allergies, for instance, were a top-of-mind issue to the north back in the 1980s and ‘90s. And trans fats are far more pointed of a concern there, and have been for at least the last year.

This is a matter that could be coming south. And, from your standpoint, it could really stink.

Holy macro

Handicapping a restaurant stock involves far more these days than merely understanding unit economics, if a recent analysis of Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. is any indication. In the widely reported assessment, Keystone Capital Markets stockpicker Conrad Lyon noted that the chicken-wing chain’s share price had slipped about 10% during May because of investors’ concerns about avian flu and gas prices. But Lyon is more than a little bullish on the stock, in large degree because of LeBron James and his winning teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers. The NBA squad played 13 post-season games before it was eliminated by the Detroit Pistons in the playoffs, as opposed to none last year, and almost a fourth of Buffalo Wild Wings’ units are located in Ohio, where the concept was founded. Ergo, more time spent eating the chain’s chicken wings during games, and perhaps more celebrating in the outlets afterward, yielding what Lyon forecasts as a 1 to 2-cent earnings increase for the company’s second quarter.

Don't play Peltz for your company

Regardless of how you feel about Nelson Peltz and his attempts to armchair-quarterback companies, you have to respect the foursome he could put together for a golf outing. The activist shareholder alerted the investment community this morning that he’s proceeding with efforts to put five associates on the board of foodservice supplier H.J. Heinz Co., including longtime partner Peter May and son-in-law Edward Gardner. In the process, Peltz revealed that there’s a new member of his posse: pro golfer Greg Norman, known during his competitive days as The Great White Shark. Reports of Peltz trying to buy rights to that title are totally unfounded.

Ditto for the suggestions that Peltz’s team plans to challenge executives on the links for control of their restaurant companies.

The final member of the nominee slate put forth by Peltz’s Trian Group would also be a welcome addition to any golfing party. He’s Michael F. Weinstein, the one-time CEO of Snapple, Royal Crown and Mistic. Who better to have in your outing than someone who appreciates having a beverage or two?

Balance of trade

Foodservice know-how has long been a prized export, with most nations viewing the United States as the Hogwarts where ketchup-blooded whizzes learned how to conjure fortunes from the need to eat. After all, the chain restaurant industry was forged and refined here. What better source for the how-to’s on turning burgers and fries into silver and gold?

But recent innovations abroad suggest the flow of breakthrough ideas may be reversing. Perhaps it’s because overseas markets are younger, or inhibitions are generally lower, or decades-old thinking is less revered when a country’s history extends back a thousand years. Whatever the reasons, overseas outposts of American brands have lately been flashing considerably more daring in what they put on a menu or how they attempt to solve major problems of the business.

Consider the outposts of McDonald’s alone. Units in Britain, as we noted online several weeks ago, are testing a larger version of the chain’s signature Big Mac as a limited-time offer. It seems highly unlikely the home office would risk tinkering with such an icon on this side of the Atlantic. But over there, boldness reigns, perhaps because it’s so direly needed. The chain has acknowledged that the U.K. has been a difficult market for the brand.

Turning the Big Mac into more of a whopper seems tame compared with the new recruitment technique McDonald’s is trying in the U.K. As we report in the May 30 edition of Nation’s Restaurant News’ electronic newsletter (accessible from our website), stores there are in effect offering jobs to whole families instead of individual members, with the household allowed to decide who’ll be working on what days. It reminds me of the days when an elder child ostensibly had a paper route, but actually the entire family pitched in to fulfill the responsibility. As our story reports, McDonald’s U.S.A. is keeping an eye on the experiment, to see if it makes sense to import here.

And then there’s McDonald’s Japanese operation and the marketing dares it takes. If you doubt that a braver mindset prevails, consider this take-off on Ronald McDonald, used to promote a burger available there called the Tomato McGrand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6jQlzr6Gjg&search=Japanese%20McDonald%27s%20

There’s also a version of the commercial that features a male model, similarly done up in Queer Eye-approved Ronald McDonald threads.

It’s only fair to note that McDonald’s did try to put some spice in Ronald’s image back in the mid-1990s, when commercials showed the mascot engaging in adult activities like shooting pool. But in a matter of months the world’s best-known clown was back in his old guise, hanging out with the Grimace and the other lovable McDonald’s characters in the usual heart-warming situations.

Perhaps those overseas markets suffered earlier from the issues currently afflicting homeland operations, like the relevance of consistency, speed and bargain prices to a clientele decidedly more appreciative of adventure, freshness and quality. Or the underside of being such an entrenched symbol of the American establishment. Come to think of it, sky-high fuel prices have been known there for decades, though it’s tough to see how that reality translates into greater marketing.bravo.

The question is whether that overseas audacity will convince home operations to loosen up a bit and take more risks on their own. It’s hard for someone of my vintage to appreciate Burger King’s bizarre new Gen X marketing programs, but you have to acknowledge that the chain's effort is original and unorthodox.

Will more players take similar risks, or will safe and steady translate into stolid and slow? And will that make Europe and Asia the new crucibles for killer chain ideas?

Our balance of trade is bad enough already.

Peltz communicates

Nelson Peltz still hasn’t called me, as I’ve lamented here a time or two. But he has written!

Well, not actually to me. And the letter had nothing to do with my requests or any of the columns in which I’ve mentioned him. He wrote a letter to Nation’s Restaurant News, taking issue with a recent page one story about the changing of the guard at Arby’s, the sandwich chain owned by his Triarc Cos. (You’ll be able to read it in the May 29 issue).

It wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped to get. But at least I know that he has our address.

'And the winners were...'

Now that sensation is returning to my legs after four days of zipping around the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention, it’s time to commemorate the 2006 confab with the first-ever The Scoop Post-Show Awards.

Biggest-name attendees you didn’t know were there: Everyone was aware of President Bush’s surprise appearance, which was shoehorned into the packed schedule just three days before he took the stage. The NRA didn’t even have a venue available for the Commander in Chief, and had to borrow a hall from another convention, a retail-technology show that was being held concurrently, in another continent of McCormick Place.
Little noticed were the other A-list politicos who were also in the borrowed arena: Dennis Hastert, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; Major Richard J. Daley; U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert; and Rep. Ray LaHood.
Honorable mentions: Former Yankee coach and Red Sox baiter Don Zimmer; and the Black Crows, who played at one of the after-show parties.

Scariest pronouncement of the show: A tie between two head-turners, both related to avian flu.

Bill Anton, acting as chairman of the NRA’s Government Affairs and Public Policy Committee: "It is expected that the U.S. will see its first instance of avian flu sometime this summer.”

President Bush, when asked about the nation’s state of preparedness for an outbreak outbreak: “…The fundamental question is, if there's an event big enough, should the federal government be able to prevent state authority -- should there be an automatic declaration of a state of emergency that will enable me to rally federal troops to keep the law?”

Most appreciated exhibitor-floor amenity: A chair. Any chair.

Best food consumed off the show floor: Rabbit wrapped in Serrano ham, served in lavender tea, at Butter, one of Chicago’s hotter new restaurants.

Worst food consumed off the show floor: Bacon ice cream, at Butter. The accompanying condiment, a maple reduction, didn’t improve the experience.

Show person most strongly suspected of having been cloned: Mary Pat Heftman, the NRA official who set up and oversaw operations of the show, yet could be seen casually walking through the booth areas for a look-see, or checking the processes drafted in a flash to distribute 4,000 tickets in a few hours for Bush’s appearance. (She used the interest from attendees to generate exhibit-floor traffic, positioning the ticket-distribution centers at the far ends of the halls so that attendees had to walk by booths).

It’s just not natural for someone to be in so many places at one time, and seem outwardly cool throughout. The mere responsibility of overseeing the show would turn any single human into a Don Knotts. I’d have suspected cyborgs, but the Mary Pats I saw also kept their sense of humor.

The NRA should lend that cloning technology to the city, to create more taxi drivers at show-closing time.

My day in lockdown

I was officially part of the White House press pool yesterday, with the achy joints and overstretched bladder to prove it. As Nation’s Restaurant News’ designee to cover President Bush’s speech at the association’s annual convention in Chicago, I expected a journalistic thrill, if not a sniff of glamour. Instead, I came away with considerable sympathy for witnesses placed under government protection.

For one thing, you’d think they’d have let the national correspondents get close to the President, given their mission of capturing every word and nuance of the presentation. But during my day of hanging fire with that illustrious crew, we were seated in another zip code—the equivalent of the rooftop across the street from Wrigley Field. And this was after one-time members like me had been “credentialed,” which meant supplying information for a security clearance. No wonder the regular correspondents shout out questions to Bush every time he gets in a car or skips up the ramp of Air Force One. Those may be the only times he’s within earshot.

But the biggest surprise was how little freedom we had. We were encouraged to be there early, so most of us were on the scene before 8 a.m. for what was then supposed to be a 9 o’clock appearance by the Commander in Chief. I learned en route to the event that Bush would actually take the stage at 10:30.

So there I was at 7:45, sitting in what amounted to a cattle pen. We’d been escorted to our seats by a delegate of the White House press office, which had enough of a posse there to monitor us on roughly a one-to-one, tender-to-aisle ratio. If we tried to move to better seats, someone scrambled over to goad us back. If we wanted to use the bathroom, we had to be escorted. When a case of bottled water was somehow smuggled in, the containers were as prized as food packets in a famine area..

Mercifully, the NRA had supplied members of its crackerjack communications staff as “volunteers” for the press office (apparently no other body can officially do the press office’s work, so any assistance from affiliated parties has to come from “volunteers.”) They were friendly despite having shown up hours earlier than we had, and once even allowed us to violate the rules by—oh, the scandal!—taking a cup of coffee to our seats (no food or beverage was allowed in the theater, apparently lest it be hurled stage-ward).

So we sat there for three hours, unequipped for anything but transcendental meditation and sleep. Most of the time you couldn’t even get a cell-phone signal. A colleague had brought the book-review section of the prior day’s paper. There was more than brief talking of mugging her.

A lucky few had their laptops with them. The rest of us dreamt of a world where a deck of cards could be readily procured, or you could head to the bathroom without a guardian at age 49.

But even that privilege was revoked during the final hour of the wait. We couldn’t eat, drink, stand up, or even use the bathroom. It was a total lockdown.

Even worse was the post-speech holding time, when we had to sit there until the President had left the premises. We, the ones with the deadlines, were kept in our seats by a police line of volunteer handlers while the rest of the 4,000 attendees blithely skipped up the stairs and into freedom, where they no doubt enjoyed coffee with abandon. We sat and sloshed for a good 15 or 20 additional minutes, trying to remember what porcelain looked like.

You can read what the experience yielded in the Breaking News section of our website, www.nrn.com.

'No, Tim McGraw isn't a pitcher'

Judging from the first 36 hours, Ed Tinsley’s year as chairman of the National Restaurant Association will likely feel “a little bit country,” to borrow the tag he used at the inaugural party to characterize his family and himself. The fete was more West Texas than Chicago Hilton ballroom, where waiters and a reporter who failed to read the invitation were seemingly the only ones in city duds. Most guests sported denim and cowboy garb, and loaner cowboy hats were provided on each table for yankees eager to get in touch with their inner cowpoke.

But Tinsley, a Texas expatriate who runs the franchising operations of New Mexico-based K-BOB’s Steakhouses as his day job, might need to give his fellow NRA-ers a quick orientation on country, or at least its music. Many seemed to know the party would feature performances by country-western stars, but clearly had no familiarity with the singers’ names. One said ahead of time that it was LeeAnn Rhimes who’d be taking the stage. Another said casually in preview that it would be Sheryl Crow. And plenty just shrugged and offered, “Some country singer.”

For the record: It was Crystal Gayle and Lee Greenwood.

Dateline: NRA Show

Two days into the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention here, two themes have clearly emerged—one very positive, the other as scary as an urgent call from the doctor after some routine tests.

The good news first: The industry is clearly shifting away from the notion that it can mold matter into something edible and call it food. During one of my first NRA shows, the hot product was an abomination called ketchup crystals, a form of the condiment that looked like sugar and could be shaken onto burgers like salt. It fit the prevailing imperative (circa 1980) to cut a restaurateur’s effort and costs, regardless of how distantly the end result might have resembled anything found in nature. Flavors were the result of manipulation in a lab, not in a kitchen.

Contrast that with some of the notable items from this year’s exposition. Usually you’d only find natural products in the small booths in the outer zip codes of the exhibit hall, near the inventor demonstrating his new neck-tie guard or the entrepreneur hawking musical salt shakers. They were garage operations, relegated by their budgets and scale to marginal status.

But this year, minimally processed choices were showcased by a number of the industry’s major processors. Few nudist colonies offer more au natural. Clearly suppliers are being pushed by restaurateurs—undoubtedly shoved themselves by customers—to provide simpler, less-chemically enhanced food choices. As a result, restaurateurs dependent on so called value-added items can now spec such halo-bearing products as proteins flavored with natural marinades, or naturally preserved cold cuts. The 45-item list of ingredients, chockfull of –ites, -ates, acids and gums, is being supplanted by a short roster of recognizable foods, like chicken, salt, or spices.

And that’s a decidedly good thing, judging from a roundtable discussion I moderated on health and nutrition during the show. The degree of interest in simpler, more natural preparations, even by huge mass-market chains, was stunning. Meeting just as the show was opening, the participants all but clamored for the very things they could find later on the show floor. A good thing indeed, for all concerned.

Not so for another frequent topic of discussion during the show. Avian flu has loomed as an industry threat for some time. Now it may be close to arriving. During the NRA’s board meeting, directors quoted experts as saying an instance of the disease will likely be detected within the United States this summer. One cited a Harvard University study that showed 46 percent of consumers would stop eating poultry if the virus is found in U.S. farm stock.

/There’s widespread agreement that patrons have little to fear, barring a pandemic. But there was a near-consensus that the public won’t follow reason.

“We’re just going to have to manage the hysteria, because we know it’s coming,” Todd Graves, founder and CEO of the Raising Cane’s chicken-finger chain, said during an interview at the show.

The chain is already putting together a website to provide fans of the brands with facts about the disease, and how much risk it really poses. Should the disease be detected domestically, Cane’s merely has to post a link on its home page.

The company will also “manage our money so we can absorb a 35-40% sales hit,” Graves said.

Meanwhile, the NRA is spearheading a campaign to educate the industry and the public about the malady, and how little danger it poses if proper food handling and cooking procedures are observed—provided there’s no pandemic.

And if that happens? What if the disease does morph into a deadly illness that can be passed from person to person?

An NRN colleague mentioned how a source of hers in the airport management business already has facilities earmarked as quarantine space for travelers who might have been contaminated.

Scary stuff indeed.

Heard at the show

I'm not sure how to file these tidbits that came to light during the first two days of the show, so consider this a folder marked Miscellaneous:

Joe Micatrotto has signed on as a franchisee of the Raising Cane’s chicken-finger chain. Micatrotto, a longtime industry veteran, was CEO of the Buca di Beppo casual-dining operation until regulators raised questions about his connection to a Buca training villa in Italy.

The National Restaurant Association is eyeing two new membership benefits: A $50,000 life-insurance policy that members could offer free to their employees; and a prescription drug plan, currently being tested in Louisiana.

The Association is also working with the Ted Turner Foundation to promote the principle of sustainability within the restaurant industry. No details were offered at the group’s board meeting, but director Niki Leondakis noted that it looks as if a program to make the industry more protective of the environment will be adopted, sometime after June.

Satisfying scores

Great news! Fast-food restaurants are more pleasing to the American public than the post office, domestic airlines or most utility companies. But the industry sector still lags considerably behind that epitome of customer service, the overnight delivery trade, which finished first among the 18 business categories rated on the basis of patron satisfaction by the University of Michigan.

It wasn’t always that way. Quick-service restaurants were less appreciated than the last kid picked in dodge ball when the American Customer Satisfaction Index was first drafted in 1995. At the time, consumers preferred the delights of staying in a hospital, watching the news or dealing with their telephone company. Only the U.S. Postal Service, newspapers and airlines scored lower in their ahhh quotient.

But now the limited-service sector is right up there, one of the few measured trades to raise its satisfaction index. It soared from a rating of 70 points, on a basis of 100, to the current grade of 77.

The scary finding: The post office scored the largest increase of any trade with a 16.4% lift, to a score of 71.

To see what types and specific brands of quick-service restaurants rated the highest in satisfaction, check out our story in the Breaking News section of our website.

Church and state

When a group represents the entirety of foodservice, a patchwork as varied as the nation itself, should it risk even a half-step into the divisive territory of religion? That’s the question that comes to mind after a glance at the schedule for the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention in Chicago later this week.

I attended my first NRA show 26 years ago, and I’ve seen the conference change a lot during that time. In the mid-1980s, for instance, one of the touted attractions was an appearance by Heloise, a then-popular newspaper columnist who offered home-cleaning advice. She was booked to share her secrets with wives who wanted to excel in their work.

This was just a few years before foodservice executives would meet in Chicago to form what is now the Women’s Foodservice Forum, with the express purpose of helping women clean up in their careers, not in their homes. A highlight of this year’s conference will be the presentation of a new award from the WFF to the foodservice company that’s done the most outstanding job of putting women behind desks they’ll never have to polish.

Clearly we’ve come a long way, or so it seemed until I spotted an item on this year’s agenda: A morning prayer breakfast, convened as one of the NRA’s special events. Listed under the same designation are an executive’s briefing on issues of the moment; an awards program for U.S. Air Force foodservice facilities; and one-on-one advice sessions with restaurant designers.

The National Hospitality Prayer Breakfast is billed as “an incredible opportunity to network,” with the added draws of appearances by Spencer Tillman, a CBS sports commentator, and Truett Cathy, the founder of the Chick-fil-A chicken chain. It’s being held at 6:30 a.m., on a Sunday, when many convention attendees would presumably be heading to church anyways.

But they’d be doing that on their own, outside the boundaries of the show itself. This is something that, by virtue of being included on the program, is sanctioned by the NRA, and that raises some qualms. The group should be fastidiously non-denominational, just as it shouldn’t declare itself an organization for Republicans instead of Democrats, or vice-versa. In short, it shouldn’t show favoritism to one faction of its constituency, since that could imply disregard for the beliefs of other members.

In this specific instance, the association is veering from that policy with the inclusion of a Christian event in its roster of special activities. The prayer breakfast is being presented by an entity called Hospitality Industry Ministries, Inc., a group formed in Atlanta with a goal of instilling prayer into industry events. But that’s just a means to a larger end, as the organization explains on its website:

“The purpose of the Hospitality Industry Ministries is to lead people in the hospitality community into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ by creating business environments where God can be discovered.”

That sort of mission shouldn’t have a place in the major convention of foodservice, a trade that includes plenty of persons from other faiths. Why should they be excluded, or made to feel uncomfortable, as if they’re outsiders?

I’ve always been a loyal champion of the National Restaurant Association; the industry is fortunate to be represented by such a vibrant, professional and powerful organization. But the NRA made a mistake by including the event in this year’s program. It should correct the problem quickly, and forever more leave religion on the sidelines.