Swallowing some strong medicine

The realization might not have sunk in yet, but the industry learned last week that it’s heading toward universal paid sick-leave, with the mandate likely to come from health officials rather than lawmakers. It’s my prediction that the grease on the skids will be the formation of new government-regulated funding pools, a la unemployment insurance, to pay for it. It’s an expense the industry shouldn’t oppose until it considers the alternatives, which could change the industry’s fortunes far more profoundly.

The catalyst is new research that redefines how long a restaurant employee may be able to pass along norovirus, the leading cause of food-borne illness, to co-workers and guests. The convention in the trade right now is to keep workers out of the dining room or kitchen if they’re vomiting or suffering from diarrhea, a short stretch when they’re virtually walking Petri dishes for the gastroenteritis-causing microbe. In keeping with model practices, the staffers are usually benched for an additional two days to ensure they’re past the infectious stage.

But a study from Emory University viral expert Christine Moe has determined that the workers actually pose a significant contamination risk for five weeks longer. The results were revealed at last week’ Viruses conference, the subject of an earlier posting here.

The day after Moe dropped jaws with her finding, the Food & Drug Administration’s Alan Tart showed the audience what that could mean for the industry. The employees are still a contamination risk because they “shed” the norovirus, or excrete it in their stool. One gram of that feces contains about 10 million norovirus particles. If an employee had that tiny amount of residue on his hands after using the bathroom, and scrubbed them like crazy, science has shown that 10,000 of the organism will still likely make it into the place’s food. With only 10 viruses needed to infect someone, 1,000 patrons could be sickened.

One thousand people spreading the word that they got sick in that establishment. One thousand potential lawsuits, perhaps suing not only for damages to themselves but their families, since they, too, would shed the norovirus and pose a contamination risk. One thousand chances of destroying a business.

The ironclad solution, of course, would be to keep employees out of work for the 20 to 35 additional days that they’d be shedding the pathogen. But even Moe, a person outside the industry, could spot the problem of that approach. “You can’t ask someone to forego work and pay for that stretch,” she commented. “I don’t see a way of getting around having someone with the virus come back into the kitchen.”

But if they could stay home and still get paid? A possible solution, or at least a possible one in the eyes of health officials and politicians hoping to look tough on public-safety matters. Lest you doubt it, restaurant-labor representatives in New York City have already used that safety argument to call for universal paid sick leave. It was also raised in San Francisco, where a paid sick-leave mandate has already been passed through a ballot referendum.

And, remember, we’re in the area of Law by Health Official Decree, which has given us the recent rash of trans-fat bans and menu-labeling mandates. If they can say, “No more trans fat because it’s a health issue,” why can’t they say, “Pay your employees to stay home because of the health risk it averts.”

Curiously, in some give and take with other speakers, Moe raised the possibility of cooperative solutions. She was speaking about the use of nurses to determine if workers who profess to be sick should actually be kept out of work that day. She raised the notion of a third-party service, to which restaurant operators could refer their employees, instead of having to play health professional and make the work-or-no-work decision themselves.

But her notion could be applicable to paid sick leave. If operators contributed on a per-paycheck basis into a pool, with the fund tapped to pay an employee who has to be out of work for a stretch because of a norovirus infection, the financial impact could be greatly lessened. Indeed, even with the added expense of paying into the fund, that approach would be much more practical than grappling with the problem alone. That’s especially true when you consider that 23 million Americans suffer norovirus-induced gastroenteritis every year, and about 9 million of them contract it from a restaurant. Clearly there’s a lot of norovirus in the industry.

But the industry has to find a way of eradicating it without making all of its members sick, including restaurant owners.

Reason to feel a little queasy

Sitting here at an industry conference on viruses, I need to dispense with the myths first. No, we’re not all wearing face masks and gloves, and, yes, people do shake hands. No one decides what to take from the breakfast buffet by watching what the germ experts eat, and I’ve not seen a single swab dragged across a surface. Indeed, a passer-by wouldn’t suspect the gathering was devoted to restaurant viruses if it weren’t for the obvious shivering and cold sweats of one participant. That, unfortunately, would be me.

Hey, I understand that viruses have their place in the biological world. I just wish that place wasn’t increasingly a restaurant. As one speaker put it during the first-of-its-kind conference, “last winter was an enormous winter” for the sub-microscopic bugs, and a variant called the norovirus in particular. Its success in contaminating restaurants at the tail end of 2006 is “probably why you’re having this meeting,” Jan Vinje of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remarked to the audience of restaurateurs, suppliers and regulators.

He noted that 18 states recorded increases in food-related norovirus outbreaks during 2006, many by factors of several hundred percent.

He and others noted that norovirus is already the leading cause of food-borne illness, with restaurants and delis figuring by far as the major source of the outbreaks. The industry has been implicated in 41 percent of the situations, far ahead of the home kitchen. Clearly viruses, and norovirus in particular, are emerging as a major threat to the nation’s eating places, if not the safety threat that trumps all others.

The march of the pathogen is scary, but what had me hyperventilating into a paper bag is the difficulty of beating the bug. Research presented at the conference, straightforwardly knighted Viruses, showed that a type of norovirus can survive on kitchens and baths for three to six weeks after a contamination.

Even worse, Christine Moe of Emory University revealed that restaurant employees infected with norovirus can stop showing symptoms long before they cease “shedding” the virus, or excreting large amounts of it in their feces. Typically a worker sickened by the virus is allowed to return to the job two or three days after the symptoms disappear, on the assumption they’re no longer infectious. In reality, Moe indicated, the danger to other employees or guests could persist for weeks. A person shedding the virus is just an inadvertent touch away from infecting others.

As she noted, that raises tough questions about restaurants’ sick-leave policies. You can’t keep an employee from earning a wage for several weeks at a stretch because they were sickened by a virus. But how do you protect guests and other employees from being infected if the carrier resumes the job?

The solution, Moe stressed, is aggressive handwashing and glove wear. But as another speaker pointed out, that’s easier said than done. A recent study looked at how often food handlers should be washing their hands to avert the safety risks they routinely encounter. It adjudged that average at 8.6 times per hour per employee, recounted Carol Selman of the CDC. “I tried it myself,” she explained, acknowledging that she had to stop because the eight-times-an-hour pace chapped her hands.

Day One provided plenty of bracing moments, but was light on solutions. Speakers noted that work on a norovirus vaccine is just beginning, and pointed out that laboratories had just recently discovered how to “culture” a version that could be used for research. Nor is there a simple, quick test to determine if a person suffering from flu-like symptoms is indeed infected with norovirus. Five states can’t even do the testing through more elaborate means.

So what’s the solution? Hopefully I’ll find out tomorrow, when the focus shifts to defense against viruses.

Another health breakthrough

Health enthusiasts can now munch a fried Twinkie at the Indiana State Fair without having to fret about what kind of oil was used to cook it. Organizers say the event, underway as of Wednesday, is the first state fair in the nation to outlaw the use of trans-fat fryer oil. Funnel cakes, zeppolis, corn fritters, corn dogs —all are being cooked in fats other than the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that infuse trans fats into fried food.

Of course, the requirement has yet to transform deep-fried Snickers into the equivalent of a side salad. As one local story noted, your average funnel cake packs 760 calories and 44 grams of fat.

Three days into the Indiana festival, organizers have yet to predict if they’ve started a trend with their ban. Or, for that matter, if anyone has really noticed as they wolf down a corn dog and fries.

Dolts at the drive-thru

This is what we get for letting boneheads drive. Carloads of them are rolling up to drive-thru windows across the country to pull off the latest breakthrough in jackass humor, which requires inflicting harm on the staffer who hands them their order. The driver takes a drink from the employee, yanks off the cover, and then hurls the cup’s contents back at the worker, yelling, “Fire in the hole!” And all while someone else in the car videotapes the antics on a cell phone for posting later on YouTube or a similar website.

There are more malicious variations, too, where you hurl a whole drink—cup, cover and all—as if it were a cannonball. News reports also cite instances where the jokesters in the car fling liquids they bring with them, like Bloody Mary mix, so it burns the staffer’s eyes.

There’s always that knucklehead who takes delight in harming any victim he can bully. But this not-so-harmless prank seems to be going mainstream. It also appears to be spreading from one region to another, fanned by the internet. A Google search not only turned up ample examples of videos available right now for viewing, but also some favorable discussion of the craze on message boards.

It’s not surprising that law-enforcement authorities in Pittsburgh are warning local drive-thru workers to be on the alert for fire-in-the-hole antics. News reports say the craze has just caught on there, prompting the police to crackdown on the pranksters.

Presumably it’d be easy to identify who they are. When you have a buddy tape your infraction and post it on a website visited by millions of people, chances are high that the authorities could generate a description or that someone might recognize you.

Criminal masterminds they’re not. But plenty of other intelligence-related descriptors come to mind.

Letter fly

This is a bad time to be a postman with an undervalued restaurant company on your route. Letter writing is supposedly a dying art, but activist shareholders apparently haven't followed the rest of the world in abandoning the quill for e-mail. As this week clearly showed, they're sticking with the pen-and-paper mode of communicating with the companies they badger. Monday and Tuesday brought the sort of missives you'd expect to consist of words cut from a newspaper and Scotched Taped together. It's amazing that the notes from Luby's and Wendy's frustrated investors didn't singe their envelopes.

The letter to Wendy's, of course, came from Nelson Peltz, who's emerging as one of the industry's most prolific correspondents. Just a few weeks ago, he sent Wendy's chairman Jim Pickett a mash note about how their respective restaurant companies were made for one another—a "natural," Peltz wrote. The company that operates his Arby's business is the logical suitor for a chain of Wendy's breeding, style and physical attributes. Why not foster a marriage by facilitating an acquisition by Peltz?

Oh, and by the way, he added: Deal with us or we might consider alternative means of adding you to the family. A hostile takeover, perhaps?

Peltz dipped his pen into the inkwell again this week to let Pickett know he's ready to push matters forward. Peltz said he had a purchase price in mind that should fall between $3.2 billion and $3.5 billion. If, that is, Wendy's would stop trying to hush-hush Peltz's Triarc Cos. with confidentiality agreements. Peltz is a man who apparently likes to have his intentions known. Small wonder that his letter to Pickett was included in a securities filing, where it could be seen by every major business medium in the country. And, indeed, most of them gave it prime coverage.

That might make Jeffrey C. Smith feel like a kid whose birthday falls on Christmas. On Monday, he sent a letter to Luby's CEO Chris Pappas that should have had Peltz shouting, "Bravo!" Smith, a partner with the New York investment concern Ramius Capital Group, told Pappas that Luby's should consider selling itself, or at least peddling its real estate and passing some of the proceeds along to shareholders.

Smith also let Luby's know that Ramius didn't appreciate the second jobs Pappas and his brother hold at their privately owned company, Pappas Restaurants. Chris serves the 70-plus-retaurant operation as COO, while his brother Harris holds the CEO's post. How can they focus on running Luby's when they're moonlighting?

What's more, Smith wrote, several of Luby's executives and directors also work a second job at Pappas Restaurants. Sounds like a conflict of interest to us, snipped Smith.

It was the sort of aggressive, pointed communication that Peltz probably fires off all the time to noisy neighbors or businesses that leave him displeased. And, like Peltz's missive, the Ramius letter complemented a securities filing. It was also touted in a press release. On any other day, it would have been a M-80 of an attention-getter. But, coming on the same day as the more prominent gadfly's scolding, it seemed more like a cap pistol.

Of course, the correspondence between invest-ee and investor isn't over for either letter writer. We can also expect more noteworthy pen work from activists like Sadar Biglari, whose letter to shareholders earlier this year is a classic.

Which makes you wonder if postmen communicate amongst themselves about what they're lugging to the CEO's office.

"Another Peltz special?" one might ask a colleague holding a smoking letter.

"Yep."

"Wanna borrow the asbestos pouch again?"

Stuck in neutral on idling?

This is what I get for buying Harry Potter gear from Taiwan. The damned crystal ball keeps flashing “Danger!” as it hazily depicts a gas pump. Even the Skipper and Gilligan must know by now that rising fuel prices have doubly cursed restaurants, leaving customers with less money to spend in the dining room while driving up the price of supplies at the back door. So clearly the ball's foresight function must need an adjustment. But the gas-related problem it’s predicting for restaurants—a dire one indeed—seems vividly real. Sort of like a car wreck.

Indeed, the possibility seems to glow a little brighter with every war report from the Middle East or each scary prognostication from Al Gore. It’s showing what I could swear are people laying across a restaurant drive-thru lane, stopping business as they yell at patrons to stop polluting the environment and maintaining our dependence on foreign oil. Waiting in a car, they’re screaming, is no way to be served at a restaurant. They obviously don’t appreciate that fast feeders generate more than half their business through a pick-up window.

It’d be easy to dismiss the critics as crazies, or at least zealots, if it weren’t for all the information that’s flowing on the internet right now about car idling, the new bugaboo for a nation wincing at the prospect of global warming as it simultaneously yelps about paying $60 to tank up the Camry. Message boards, blogs and sites are filled with calls for curbing car idling, an echo of the successful efforts in recent years to keep trucks from sitting stationary with the engine running. Many expressly cite restaurant drive-thrus as a fuel-conservation opportunity waiting to be realized.

And those advocates are hardly fringe elements. Consider this advisory: “Try parking your car and going into restaurants, banks, and the like instead of idling in drive-up lanes.” It comes from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, though you’ll find it echoed in the recommendations of New Hampshire regulatory groups and plenty of other parties.

One posting indicated that 11 Canadian cities have already considered legislation that would prohibit cars from idling for more than three minutes.

The proposals would not outlaw drive-thrus outright, since patrons could conceivably shut down and start their cars and then restart them as they moved up in line. But certainly the convenience of that service mode would be tempered. Ditto for parking and going inside a restaurant instead of waiting in a queue of cars. Without the convenience of the drive-thru, might some time-harried patrons skip a quick-service place altogether?

Santa Cruz, Calif., reportedly banned restaurant drive-thrus years ago. But the present chatter on the internet does not cite a town, city or county that is currently considering car-idling limits.

Yet the momentum is clearly building, as the yakking about the prospect continues to grow louder on the internet.

Which brings me back to my crystal ball, as flawed as it is. I’m hoping it can show me that magical moment when the restaurant industry will start talking about the matter, or at least about how it plans to cope.

Take note, Bob Evans Farms

Relations between a diner and its accountant may not be sweetened by the old timer who parks himself on a counter stool all day, nursing a bottomless cup of coffee. But the experience is doing wonders for the customer's social wellbeing, according to a report from the clipboard-and-white-coat set. The scientific study found that seniors who lose a loved one or otherwise suffer a social disconnection often get the tea and sympathy they need from a local diner's staff and clientele.

In effect, concluded researchers from Northern Illinois and Arizona State Universities, the corner joint becomes the elderly person's social network. The researchers calculated that a regularly frequented diner provides 30 percent of the companionship needed by someone who retires or sees his or her children move away. If the person should be lose a spouse, the percentage jumps to 58 percent. "Clearly, your body doesn't care whether it obtains companionship from co-workers or from diner cronies," said Mark Rosenbaum, who wrote the study.

The information was gathered during observations of the regulators who frequented an unidentified diner in Chicago.

A pothole on the information superhighway

Life as you know it may be coming to an end, a result of the fallout from a new employment website that's certain to be copycatted. Tablesetter.com intends to do for waiters and waitresses what the internet has already done for car shoppers: Negate the come-ons and promises by revealing what kind of deals they can really expect from various places in the market, based on the real-life experiences of those who've preceded them.

The site compiles what servers say they've made in salary and tips at restaurants in their cities, with the information arrayed by experience level. Someone looking for a waitstaff job in New York will learn that rookie servers reported pocketing $845 a week at Spice Market, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Asian restaurant in the Meatpacking District, while newcomers said they pulled down more than $1,000 a week at not-so-far-away Perry Street.

The information will undoubtedly steer job hunters to one place versus another, and that may cost you some applicants. But even worse is the chance that one of your veteran servers may learn he or she could make a bundle more by just popping down to that place a few blocks over. Veteran waiters and waitresses said they made $876 per seven-day cycle at the venerable Keane's Steakhouse. Their counterparts at Angelo & Maxie's, a steakhouse within walking distance, collected $951 in the same timeframe, or about $4,000 more per year.

The underlying concept is the same as the notion behind any number of car-buying websites, where shoppers can learn what earlier seekers of the same models ended up actually paying, or what rates are being offered by dealerships across the nation, as posted by the retailers themselves.

Tablesetter.com offers the info for bartenders as well as servers. Job holders in eight cities are invited to reveal what they made in those various locations, though the listing for New York places is by far the most robust.

If the site catches on and competitors follow its lead, the industry can expect to see the same sort of empowerment that is enjoyed by online shoppers for any number of goods or services, from insurance to mortgages. And that's not likely to be a good development for restaurants trying to keep a full employment roster.

When Canadian maniacs go trans-fat-free

The tactic might’ve been shrugged off as an oddity of the international market, like serving squid burgers or charging Morton’s prices for fast-food staples, if it wasn’t for the asterisk. But KFC’s Priszm franchisee operates in Canada, the United States’ fraternal twin in terms of culture. And the blunder is hardly alien to the Kentucky-based chain’s domestic operations, which made a similar move about three months ago. Now the U.S. home office can only hope for better long-term results in the motherland.

Because Priszm’s, as the operator acknowledged on Thursday, were discouraging indeed. The company posted a net loss of $1.9 million on a 4.2 percent sales decline. The results reflected the performance of the company’s 484 restaurants, including its Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Long John Silver’s franchises. Yet the analysis centered on Priszm’s KFC holdings and the marketing tactic that president and chief operating officer Jeff O’Neil admitted pursuing “maniacally.”

For most of the second quarter, he and his team had trumpeted the chicken restaurants’ switch to trans-fat-free Canola oil, “to the detriment of everything else,” O’Neil reportedly said in a conference call with investors. “Our promotion did not gain the traction we hoped it would.”

No doubt those hopes are shared by KFC’s domestic operation. Like Priszm, it, too, decided to crow about changing the oil in its deep fryers to a variation with zero grams of trans fat. Around May 1, it started advertising the switch via television commercials and print spots, using the tagline, “The Bucket’s Back.” The ads were apparently intended to draw patrons who may have been put off by an unhealthy impression of the chain’s signature fried chicken.

“This gives us the ability to break through the clutter,” James O’Reilly, KFC’s chief marketing officer, told Nation’s Restaurant News marketing editor and fellow blogger Gregg Cebrzynski. “We have a very powerful message for consumers. When they see that message, they’ll think positively about the brand.”

He made no indication about pursuing the tactic maniacally, however.

KFC’s parent, Yum! Brands, has already posted results for the quarter in which the ads began, though the reporting period ended only six weeks after the campaign started. The company didn’t specify how KFC stores fared, but it noted that the comp sales for all its brands, considered as one operation, were flat.

KFC is the only one of Yum’s five North American brands that has advertised a change in its oil.

Turnng the tables on pesky customers

A newspaper’s recount of a bad restaurant experience is news of the dog-bites-man variety. But a critique of restaurant patrons’ behavior? That’s Britney Spears gnawing on the leg of Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, with Michael Jackson holding the leash. Clearly The Scoop would be remiss if it didn’t note the 2,000-word roundup this week in The Dallas Morning News of restaurant employees’ pet peeves about customers.

The report was a counterpoint to a March Herald story on the little things about restaurants that irk consumers. Then, as with Wednesday’s article, the report was based on first-hand experiences of the aggrieved parties.

Joyce Saenz Harris, the author of the Wednesday’s article, noted that the March story drew 500 responses from readers. The run-down of server and manager’s gripes will probably draw more objections, even though many of the complaints were the same as the ones voiced by patrons. Server and serve-ee both loath parents who let their wolf pups tear through the dining room like a starved pack in a clearing filled with gazelles.

Ironically, patrons were just as likely as restaurant personnel to complain about boorish patrons; the ones who spend the meal on a cell phone were particularly likely to be regarded as snakes by both camps.

But restaurant professionals did cite some curses that are peculiar to their side of the table. Like getting stiffed routinely by customers who either don’t know how to tip—they leave a flat rate like $5, regardless of the bill—or are quick to rescind it for the slightest infraction, like forgetting the third refill of an iced tea for one person in a party of 12.

Ramon Infante, a former waiter at Dallas’ Old Warsaw restaurant, recounted how he’d lost take-home money several times to wives who held back after a family vacated a table and then took a few of the dollars their husbands had left as tips.

In particular, Harris noted, servers are “unhappy with campers,” as her article put it. Several noted how parties would camp out at a table for the equivalent of several table turns, and then tip as if they’d eaten expeditiously. “Customers should realize that each table is only as valuable as the amount of time a server turns it over,” noted Monica Newbury, a manager at Sali’s Pizza.

Reservation no-shows were also blasted.

You can check out Harris’ article at the Morning News and consider the solution she puts forth, for aggrieved patron and restaurant employee alike: “Treat other people the way you would like to be treated,” she writes.

'Oh, yeah? Well, we proved it.'

Eskimos supposedly have twelve gazillion words for snow, but that's nothing compared with the industry's arsenal of ways to say "NO!" to governmental meddling. The list of Defenses Against the Dark Political Arts starts with an uh-uh, and progresses to the neutron bomb of counter attacks, "It'll cost jobs."

It's not that the restaurant industry is incorrect or unjust in trying to stop legislative or regulatory measures that hurt the business. But, as has been suggested here in recent postings, the impact of the protests may have been weakened by overuse. That's why the Washington Restaurant Association deserves the Albus Dumbledore Award for its hex against a county’s effort to mandate menu labeling by chain restaurants.

Without saying a thing to adversary or ally, the association ran an online ad for someone willing to eat three meals a day in a restaurant for a month. Definitely good work if you can get it, since the offer came with a per-diem of $40 and a stipend of $700. It's as close as real life comes to Li'l Abner's job of testing mattresses.

Not surprisingly, the WRA found a taker, a 25-year-old grad student named Jarred Lathrop, who, in keeping with the times, blogged his experiences of eating in a restaurant three times a day. The WRA hoped to prove that posting nutritional information isn't a necessity for eating healthfully in chain restaurants. All that's needed to avert weight gain, it seemed to suggest, is common sense, a reasonable amount of will power, and a willingness to ask for clarification on nutritional matters.

And it looks as if the association made its point. When the month- long experiment ended last week, Jarred had shed five pounds, a half-inch of waistline, and a number of points off his blood-pressure reading.

In fairness, it should be noted that Jarred did put some effort into eating right. As his blog explains, he asked for dressing on the side, and sometimes requested that half his meal be packaged for take-home, which cut his consumption at the table in half.

It was a creative way of proving to skeptics that consumers with anything but a flatline EEG should be able to plot a healthful diet with the amount of information that’s usually posted on menus. With menu-labeling mandates proliferating like campaign promises, the WRA’s lobbying tactic may be worthy of emulation.

Greetings from the Seventh Circle

Other patrons seem disturbed by the camouflage face paint, but it's life during wartime here on the East Coast, people. They're patiently waiting to order their fries and burgers in total oblivion to the industry's pitched struggle against disaster and ruin. But I'm outfitted accordingly. This, after all, is Week One of the unimaginable, the insufferable, the Worst Case Scenario on a Barry Bonds vitamin regimen. We're talking the post-apocalyptic era of the trans-fat ban, coupled with the Armageddon of mandated health care.

In case you didn't feel the earth tremble, both went into effect at the start of the week—the ban in New York City on July 1, the health care mandate in Massachusetts a day later. It'd be like Mothra and Godzilla dropping their differences to terrorize in tandem. Two of the industry's most-feared developments, actually becoming a reality. The bogeyman has crawled out from under the bed and taken a seat at the dinner table.

So what does Hell look like? To be honest with you, not a lot different from what it looked like before near-annihilation. Walk past the various restaurants here in New York and you hear nary a peep, from inside or out. Just a lot of people pointing to the guy in camouflage paint, wondering if it’s a new fashion.

It's such a non-event that my wife looked blankly at me when I anxiously observed that Doom had sauntered into town. "Didn't that happen a few months ago?" she asked. The philistine. And this from someone who prides herself on keeping up on current events.

Then again, D-Day seemed little noticed by restaurateurs, either, judging from recent peeks inside all kinds of places. Most seemed to have used the long lead time—more than six months, from regulation to enactment—to be ready for the switch-over. It might have been tough at first, as many operators attested as they searched out alternative frying oils that wouldn't be a financial heart-stopper. But that pain seems to have been felt long ago. Now, if anything, it looks like business as usual.

I can't say from personal observation if that's the situation in Massachusetts, but the media coverage suggests it is. If, that is, you manage to google-hit one of the few stories on the situation there. As a newsmaker, it's right up there with a cat encounter for Paris Hilton's dog, or rumors of a Wham! reunion.

Perhaps that's because much of the state, including its restaurant industry, seemed in favor of the measure. It was seen by many as the least of all evils, probably because it's actually a mandate on everyone in the state to secure health insurance, rather than a flat-out requirement that restaurants and other employers supply it. Indeed, businesses with more than 11 employees can either provide up to 33 percent of a worker's insurance premiums, or contribute $295 per staffer to a fund that defrays the cost of coverage for the uninsured. In short, the burden is spread across much of society, rather than being concentrated on businesses. And that, apparently, made all the difference.

Sometimes the industry is so braced for catastrophe that it comes off a little as crying wolf. The situations in New York City and Massachusetts shouldn't be pooh-poohed, but the industry appears to be adjusting. Its critics should give it credit for adapting without much of a yelp. And the trade itself should appreciate the ameliorating factors of a long-lead time and spreading the financial burden of a socially oriented mandate across all social stakeholders.

And it'd get a personal nod of thanks if it figured out how to remove camouflage paint.

The Always Slammed Grille, perhaps?

The intervention should have come after the Halloween night when a kid in a red chili-pepper costume rang my door bell. “Ah, the Chili’s logo! Great choice of outfit,” I remarked to a bashful 7-year-old whose sister, dressed as a strawberry, was holding the hand of a toddler painted like a pea pod. “They’re posting some kind of same-store sales these days, huh?” His father whisked them away, and we didn’t get another trick-or-treater all night. Word had spread up and down the street: Beware the restaurant geek in No. 18.

Though, given a little-noticed thread in restaurant-naming these days, perhaps I should have been hailed as a marketing consultant waiting to be hired. Because there are definite signs of industry jargon becoming the sign fodder of choice.

Consider, for instance, a pair of intriguing concepts from two of the most-respected chain operators in the business. What did Legal Sea Foods, the New England seafood powerhouse, christen its newest venture? Legal’s Test Kitchen—shortened, in typically industry fashion, to LTK in one iteration. Those of us in the trade might know that a test kitchen is a place of experimentation, as LTK is for the upscale-restaurant company (the Test Kitchen is a fast-casual take-off that promises to get customers in and out in 15 minutes; the LTK variation features such high-tech amenities as iPod docking stations at the table). But will consumers embrace it?

Hillstone Restaurant Group, parent of the much-salaamed Houston’s chain, would probably bet so. Its restaurant in a high-end Newport Beach shopping mall is called Café R&D, as in research and development, or the department that usually runs a restaurant company’s test kitchen. Already three years old, the indoor/outdoor hybrid features such out-of-the-ordinary fare as the Vegetarian Nut Burger and the Silver Service Hot Dog.

Which brings me back to my new flirtation with restaurant consulting—have I got names for you! How about Comp Sales Booster Grille? Or Morning Daypart Diner? The Awesome AUV Inn? At the very least, Many Covers Café?

McD's Hong Kong units to get worms

McDonald's regularly features products in one sector of the globe that probably wouldn't fly anywhere else. Seldom have they been as noteworthy as what the fast-food giant is about to start peddling in Hong Kong. Indeed, the latest McItem has the unique distinction of being both one of the most outlandish ever showcased by the chain, and perhaps the most widely adaptable. And then there's the matter of the production process. How many restaurants crow about having worms on the premises?

Earthworms are crucial to generating the compost that McDonald's will start selling in Hong Kong in a few weeks, according to local media reports. The soil enricher will be generated by feeding food scraps, napkins and certain types of packaging to the worms, which break it down in a process known as vermicomposting. The adoption of the program at eight McDonald's units in Hong Kong will be the largest-ever use of vermicomposting, a U.S. college professor told the international publication The Standard.

A story in the paper said the process is expected to cut the restaurants' output of carbon waste by 80 percent. But that pay-off can only be realized if patrons dispose of their biodegradable materials in a separate container, which, the story said, will require some customer training on McD's part.

Restaurants in the United States are still awakening to ways of making their operation a little greener. Clearly the adoption of environmentally sounder practices has galloped far ahead overseas.

The question is, will we ever see worms being used by McDonald's domestic operations?

Who's afraid of mice?

Humans may be unmoved by the health implications of eating poorly, but your average New York rodent could apparently pen its own fad-diet book. After being filmed early this year inside a Taco Bell-KFC unit, acting like starved pensioners on a Martha Stewart cruise, Big Apple vermin were back on the airwaves this morning, cavorting this time within one of the city's Pinkberry frozen-yogurt outlets.

If you don't know Pinkberry, you haven't been to Los Angeles lately. The concept is the hottest craze since Krispy Kreme's flicker as a haute brand in the 1990s. Just to put it in perspective: Paris Hilton requested it by name during one of her jail stays.

Pinkberry features a tart, South Korean style of yogurt in just two flavors, regular and green tea. But if that sounds just a tofu wafer short of bark-flavored Jello, consider that the mix-in choices include Fruity Pebbles, along with fresh berries or other fruits. You can presumably bring in your own Count Chocula.

Even with those nods to indulgence, a perception of healthfulness is a big part of Pinkberry's draw. Call me finicky, but news footage of mice scampering around a unit kind of undercuts that image. Yet there were the clips on the local ABC affiliate, showing at least two of the pests inside a store on the tony Upper East Side.

Yet I'm apparently a veritable germ-a-phobe, given the coverage that followed on the internet during the day. As The New York Post reported, the incident didn't dissuade customers from lining up at the very store where the vermin had been spotted. The tabloid quoted one fan as saying, "As long as there's no rats in the ice cream, I'm OK."

In fairness, it should be noted that Pinkberry has already declared its New York stores "re-sanitized." It also told ABC that it was "chocked and puzzled" by the footage of mice running amock, an assertion supported by Health Department indications that no complaints had been leveled against the site of the videos.

In all, the incident amounted to 15 minutes of intense attention, followed by a mass shrug. It could be a reflection that the public is growing accustomed to rodent events. For that matter, small four-legged creatures may be in vogue with the Lohan-loving set. Look at how Paris clutches that varmint she calls a Chihuahua.

Oh, let it be

Starbucks logged its highest single-day sales of a music album when it moved 23,000 copies of Sir Paul McCartney's new "Memory Almost Full" on June 5. At a price of $15.95, the CD put about $360,000 into the chain's coffers on the first day of its availability—before the promotional tour, before a highly publicized "secret" show in a small New York venue, before airings of the disk's music video, before its considerable radio play, before the promo machine had kicked into high gear. The recording is now Number 3 on the Billboard sales chart, with more than 160,000 units sold.

Is that "Money" playing in the background? The Beatles' version, of course.

The chain presumably sold a few cups of coffee to the McCartney fans as they tramped through stores to the record display area by the sales counter. Some might've even popped for the chain's new high-priced sandwiches. But even without the lattes, that's a lot of cash to collect, especially since Starbucks is getting more than just the usual commission.

The ex-Beatle's release is the first on Hear Music, a new label launched earlier this year by the coffee giant and Concord Music Group. Other works are presumably in the pipeline. The venture presumably has entered the charts with a bullet.

Feeding a green monster

The public is convinced the restaurant industry could do more to protect the environment, starting with the type of disposables it uses. But what if it's wrong? What if Tiffany and Brad Public are pushing for actions that might be more detrimental to the environment than the status quo? Does a restaurant do what's ecologically sound, or does it cede to mistaken impressions and accommodate the foot-stompers? Sadly, more and more are caving to the public clamor.

As those reluctant converts point out, they really have no choice. Even if they're willing to risk the ill will of customers, local lawmakers are taking away the option. San Francisco and Oakland have already mandated that restaurants switch from foam-type cups and disposables to paper carriers. Other areas are showing interest in propelling the movement into a trend.

Yet, as a Google search will demonstrate, even some environmentalists are unconvinced that paper is ecologically better. But input the search terms "paper," "versus" and "Styrofoam" and you'll also pull up a slew of rock-hard assertions that plastic is the worst hazard since DDT. Significantly, many of those contentions are made on college-related websites by students at the institutions—sometimes in direct conflict with what their professors are attesting.

Is it any wonder that the Jamba Juice drinks chain has organized a whole committee to address what management has slugged The Cup Challenge? Nine-five percent of the chain's intake is generated by the sales of smoothies, which means it uses more cups than a bra factory. Polystyrene works best from a customer-satisfaction standpoint, and yet the chain is concentrated in California, ground zero of the foam-ban movement. It's already had to switch to paper in San Francisco.

CEO Paul Clayton says that being green is part of the chain's culture, and that it wants to do what's right. But the evidence doesn't prove paper is better, notes he and other senior members of management. And long experience has shown it's decidedly worse from a customer-satisfaction standpoint. So what's a customer-centric brand to do?

The company is currently looking at such foam alternatives as paper coated with a corn-based shell, hopefully to enhance performance.

Where's a cat when you need it?

At any other time, it might have been sloughed off as one of the unfortunate occurrences that can embarrass even the most careful of restaurateurs. But Pizza Hut is a Yum! Brands concept, so when it's mentioned in the same breath as a rodent infestation, the world takes notice. Because, sadly for Yum, the world hasn't forgotten that its Taco Bell chain was the scene of a veritable rat cotillion earlier this year, still visible in videos posted on YouTube and other highly trafficked clip websites.

This time, according to internet and news reports, the overrun store was a Pizza Hut in Raleigh, N.C. Health authorities closed the outlet last week after a shift manager reportedly found six mice stuck to a glue trap. For up to two weeks prior, she said, relatives of the nabbed six could be seen scampering through the place.

"I saw about 10 mice," Venice Spivey was quoted as telling local station WRAL. "Everybody saw them. Customers saw them. We had customers calling us to the dining room, saying, 'Look, we've got friends.'"

According to a story on the station's website, Spivey was fired for alerting health officials.

After rats were videotaped inside a Taco Bell/KFC combo franchise in New York, Yum hired Bobby Corrigan, a noted scourge of the rodents, to help the company avert another vermin scandal. Corrigan is to rats what the late Steve Irwin was to crocodiles. "We have been working around the clock to prevent this from happening again," Emil Brolick, president of Yum's domestic division, said at the time.

The company may want to can Corrigan and just hire a bunch of cats.

At least it has the comfort of knowing it's not the only restaurant giant having pest problems. The Toronto Star reported that a local family has sued McDonald's of Canada after allegedly finding a rat's head, complete with whiskers, in a burger. Meanwhile, mainland China's state press agency reported that a student collected $290 from the fast-food chain after being bitten in one of its units by a rat.

Now they're chasing human assets

Grab a rifle and head for the ramparts because we're being raided. After picking off restaurant companies one by one, private-equity firms are coming after the industry's executives.

They got Robb Chase last week. The president of Papa John's international operations was hired away from the pizza chain after just nine months on the job by a private-equity concern in Toronto.

A chain executive told me during the big restaurant show in Chicago that he'd been approached by another of the thick-walleted firms. It wanted his assistance in identifying and assessing acquisition candidates, and possibly to help in righting any handyman's specials they could pick up for a bargain price.

Meanwhile, consultants say they're fielding calls from private-equity companies that either want a download on trends that can affect a prospective acquisition's price, or advice on how to repair something they've already purchased and thereby raise its value.

It's easy to see why the companies are trying to tap the trade's brainpower. Private-equity firms have a lot of dollars, but sense sometimes eludes them, as a few of their foodservice deals have suggested. They're realizing that the restaurant business can be a peculiar one, best understood by a veteran steeped in the trade's puzzling ways.

And then there's the matter of timing. Many observers say the best acquisition candidates have already been scooped up by the equity firms, leaving what amount to berries on the bottom of a basket. They still might be good, but you have to pick more carefully.

Many of the companies are also hitting the point where they have to deliver a return on their purchase, either by cranking cash from it, or shining it up for a sale. They need experienced renovators and turnaround specialists to hasten the process.

The last thing the restaurant industry needs is a rival vying for its leaders and thinkers. It's just one more not-so-pleasant reminder that the private-equity pack is a part of the business right now, and a big one at that.

Where there's smoke, will there be fire?

Smoke is emerging as a key flavoring in this spring’s crop of new chain menu items. Consider, for instance, the products that were unveiled today alone. The barbecue fumes were enough to make your eyes water.

El Pollo Loco added two variations on its flame-grilled Chipotle Barbecue Chicken—one featuring barbecued beans, the other a dash of barbecue sauce, for added smokiness in items that started with the flavor of a smoked habanero.

Jack in the Box’s hyperactive R&D center cranked out an item also featuring grilled chicken, a shot of barbecue sauce, and some barbecue redundancy—in this case, barbecue-flavored tortilla strips, all mixed into a new entrée salad called the BBQ Ranch Chicken.

And Quiznos, an LTO machine in its own right, took its new Baja Chicken sub out of the bag. It’s hepped up with two sauces—a chipotle (read: smoky-tasting) mayo, and a proprietary sauce called Smoky Baja.

Another common trait of the bunch: Most were premium-priced, ranging as high as $7.99 for a large version of Quiznos’ new sub, to no lower than $4.99 for the Jack in the Box salad (though El Pollo Loco didn’t tell us what it’s charging).

Of course, those weren’t the only products introduced today by chains of scale. Taco Bell also fly-cast one into the market—without a hint of smoke, or a premium price, for that matter. Its new Extreme Cheese and Beef Quesadilla is aimed at the young men who want heft, but don’t have the pocket money to buy in volume and still put something toward the next body piercing. It’s priced at $1.29.