Quaking icons

The earthquake in Los Angeles hit 5.4 on the Richter scale, but it was a shiver compared with the aftershock from yesterday’s collapse of a casual-dining icon. The public was reminded in story after story that the flat-liner was the company that built the venerable Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale chains. But the industry knew S&A Restaurant Corp. on a far more emotional level. For many of casual dining’s best and brightest, the company was the finishing school where they learned the business. The bankruptcy filing must’ve been like seeing your first home razed.

If the foodservice industry had the equivalent of a Cooperstown, the list of S&A alumni could serve as the roster of charter nominees: Chris Sullivan, Bob Basham, Tim Gannon (all of Outback fame), Doug Brooks (Brinker International), Dick Frank (Chuck E. Cheese’s), Dick Rivera, Hal Smith, Wally Doolin, Rick Berman, Lane Cardwell.

I used to joke that the MUFSO conference was just an S&A reunion in disguise. If an attendee was in a senior post at a casual-dining chain, chances were extremely high that he started at the operation that Norman Brinker conceived in the ‘60s as the obvious trade-up for baby boomers as they outgrew fast food. And for years it grew with their spending power and desire to dine out, becoming an industry force and prompting more imitation than the first reality-TV series.

But the company became part of a huge corporation and suffered the usual fate of losing its verve and agility. Upstarts roared past it, leaving the one-time innovator in a time warp.

More recent regimes did their best to revive the concepts, but the numbers suggest it was a pitched struggle. Systemwide sales for Bennigan’s, the spryer of the two concepts, slipped by about $13 million last year, and the chain contracted by about 10 stores, according to NRN research.

The times ultimately proved too daunting for the brands’ owner, prompting it to file for bankruptcy of the Chapter 7 variety. But franchisees believe they can make a go of it. The scuttlebutt is that they’ll try to provide the unification and support that once came from S&A. The model seems to be Ground Round, whose franchisees similarly found themselves orphaned when their franchisor suddenly threw in the napkin.

Now, of course, everyone is wondering what restaurant chain might be next. In media ranging from overseas newspapers to National Public Radio, the bankruptcy was cited as a weathervane for the economy, a milestone on the road to ruin. The surprise development is being portrayed as a leading indicator.

A fair-sized group of casual dining veterans probably knows better. They’re likely aware that many of S&A’s problems were a function of age and decisions made—or not made—decades ago.

For them, it was likely a seismic shift of another sort, and far more saddening than worrisome.

Why wait 'til March for madness?

My friends are a little worried because I like to kick off restaurant chains' earnings season with a tailgate party. And why not? We’re talking quarterly updates from the biggies, people. And then come the conference calls, where you can ease back with a hot dog and a beer while investors do some serious grilling of public-company execs. Who needs Six Flags or Vegas? Especially during a financial-reporting stretch like the current one, when the action’s been wilder at times than a Sweeps Week on Fox. Consider, for instance, the mysterious disappearances that have recently come to light.

Where, for example, was Chipotle’s copy of the memo that every other public restaurant company must’ve gotten? It’s the one about cutting expenses because of spiking food costs.

It was certainly right there in Chuck E. Cheese’s “In” box. The pizza and games chain countered high cheese and dough expenses by trimming the size of its large and medium pizzas by a half-inch.

P.F. Chang’s, another apparent recipient, is focusing its efficiency efforts in part on labor. The company told investors that it’s revising the responsibilities and recruitment processes for the unit-level managers at its Pei Wei Asian Diner concept in part to eliminate one supervisory position. It’s also simplifying and shrinking the fast-casual chain’s menu to cut prep space and kitchen labor, while also deleting some high-cost selections that don’t sell well.

Somehow, the mandate to take similar action never reached Chipotle. “It would be plausible to try to squeeze costs out of the food line or labor line or to aggressively raise prices,” said president Monty Moran. “We’re not going to do that.”

Instead, executives said, the chain is directing more units to use additive-free chicken, which costs 20 to 50 percent more than the standard version, and is buying more locally grown produce. So much for economizing on kitchen supplies.

Chipotle might also see some pressure on labor expenses because of the ongoing salmonella outbreak. Since the federal government now believes fresh jalapeno peppers could be the source of the contamination, the Mexican chain is grilling all of the peppers that it formerly served raw.

The same vanishing act must’ve been pulled with Chipotle’s copy of the Official Restaurant-Chain Handbook, or at least the page that deals with international expansion. Charging beyond the boundaries of the United States is as important to the success of many restaurant brands these days as selling soft drinks. But not, it seems, for the 778-unit burrito specialist. Founder and CEO Steve Ells revealed that the chain’s international strategy consists of opening a lone unit in Toronto. “I want to remind you that international expansion is not a key driver of our current growth strategy,” he observed after noting that Chipotle has never needed a passport before. Hopefully he spoke loud enough to override the gasps of investors who’ve grown accustomed to hearing chains project hundreds of overseas openings.

The disappearances involving Chipotle were parlor-room stunts compared with the Houdini feat that The Cheesecake Factory pulled off. One day, as he had for the prior eight years, Michael Dixon was serving as an executive of the casual-dining company. The next, he was gone. His resignation and departure as CFO came the same day.

Cheesecake founder and CEO David Overton said it was just a coincidence that Dixon vamoosed hours before the company disclosed that its profits dropped 19 percent during the second quarter. He also declined to put forward any other explanation.

Maybe he should’ve just uttered, “Abracadabra,” and been done with it.

Okay, time to throw another hot dog on the grill and see who else is reporting today.

Compromising position?

Moving to higher ground is a sound strategy if you’re running for president or trying to escape a flood. But what if you’re a broad-market restaurant chain that wants to out-class the sector? Consider what the heads of Ruby Tuesday and Applebee’s have to say on the matter. Then climb a mountain and ponder how such similar assessments could prompt them to move in such opposite directions.

Both have acknowledged to investors that management pushed the concepts beyond the comfort zones of longtime customers when they drove the chains up-market. ““We often overshot the brand in the pursuit of a more upscale customer while frankly failing to deliver on the expectations of our core users,” said Julia Stewart, CEO of DineEquity and the proclaimed chief strategist for Applebee’s, which the IHOP parent acquired in November.

Sandy Beall, founder and CEO of Ruby Tuesday, had similar things to say when he addressed analysts last week in a conference call. The past year was a tough one for the casual-dining chain in part because of the environment—“as difficult as I’ve ever seen it,” remarked Beall, who started the company in 1972. But, he admitted, “We also probably hurt ourselves.”

The company remodeled 650 restaurants in less than a year, which may have distracted the team, Beall explained. And some patrons may have been driven off by the new look—“lower-end guests who maybe felt less comfortable in our reimaged restaurants,” he observed.

Stewart has indicated that Applebee’s will shed its highfalutin ways and refocus on the brand’s traditional strength of offering reasonably priced finger foods and a centerpiece bar. In short, it’ll shift back to the concept’s longstanding position as an everyday dining choice—a true neighborhood option.

Contrast that direction with Beall’s pronouncement on Ruby Tuesday’s upscale push. “We now have a completely integrated high quality brand with consistency among its key elements of food service and the restaurant’s look and feel,” he told investors. “This is very, very important.”

He didn’t reconcile that enthusiasm over the chain’s new positioning with his earlier comment about alienating some customers. But he did add, “The soundness of our strategy is also indicated by the fact that our customer base is changing…For example, it is becoming a little more affluent, which is what we wanted, with 44 percent of our customers having income greater than $75,000 compared with 38 percent three years ago.”

Clearly he wants the brand to be more of an Acura, while Applebee’s is betting that a Honda is really what the market appreciates.

Both, of course, could be correct. Meanwhile, the industry as a whole seems to favor the third option of claiming the middle ground, whether that means sliding up or down the spectrum. Fast-feeders ranging from Burger King (with its Whopper Bar, a high-end diversification featuring cocktails) and Subway (with its Subway Café) are nudging their brands further up the pricing scale. At the other extreme are fine-dining chefs like Bobby Flay and their launch of burger concepts, like his just-opened fast-casual concept, Bobby’s Burger Palace. Like many a presidential candidate, restaurant operators seem prone at the moment to drifting toward the center.

Unless, that is, they’re already there, like the family dining specialists. Denny’s, for instance, is edging into quick-service turf with its scaled-down Express concept and B-FST 2GO program. And IHOP has aired intentions to diversify into the fast-service arena of airports.

It sounds like a mess, but it’s really a much-needed shake-up of the status quo. Brands are reconsidering what they are and what they want to be. Unfortunately, many are likely to discover that those are two extremely different things.

Bugging out

Salmonella is haunting my social life. Lately, while dining with wife and friends, I’ll look up to find the whole table staring. Then the Simon Says starts. Peter spears a tomato wedge; everyone spears a tomato wedge. A bite of lettuce, and soon the whole party’s crunching. It’s like having dinner with a newly discovered aboriginal tribe that’s not sure what to do with a fork.

Finally, the ah-ha moment: “Peter writes about food safety,” my wife whispered across the table to a couple whose acquaintance we were just making. “He’s been covering this whole salmonella thing and what they think may be causing it.”

Suddenly, I’d become the arbiter of what’s safe to eat.

So, of course, I started messing with them.

A forkful of salad, then a loud, showy gulp of wine. “Kills the germs,” I whispered conspiratorially to my fellow diners. Soon they were knocking back the red and white like pirates on leave.

I’ve been tempted to stare at my full plate for a second, yell “oh, no,” then bolt from the table. But the situation is already too much like a Will Ferrell movie.

But dim-witted clowning might still be better from a restaurateur’s standpoint than the speculation my friends have demonstrated. Like the one who drinks warm soda because she saw a Sweeps-week news story about high bacteria counts in some restaurants’ ice. Or the college professor who hesitated, his fork in mid-air, after being served. “Tomatoes are okay now?” he asked. The only type on his plate were cherry tomatoes, which had been cleared as safe to eat virtually from Day One of the outbreak. And this was six weeks into it, when the spotlight had shifted to peppers. “And how about spinach? Wasn’t there a problem with that?” he asked.

My wife, meanwhile, piped up with her theory that the culprit is probably onions. Not once have onions been cited by authorities as a suspect. But I’m sure she also blames onions for the housing crisis, reality TV and fallen arches. It’s a longstanding antipathy.

And the confusion is equally as persistent. Someday, hopefully before the list of casualties climbs any higher, federal health officials will figure out what has sickened almost 1,100 people. But until they do, customers are going to order in accordance with their preconceptions, regardless of how off the mark they may be. And they might keep doing so even after the mystery is solved.

Suddenly, everyone wants to be in onsite

If Danny Meyer utters, “Nice day,” weathermen probably adjust their forecasts accordingly. He’s regarded with such respect and admiration that world leaders likely buzz him from time to time at Gramercy Tavern or Union Square Cafe, eager to check their world view against his. And what’s he likely to say if the Pope makes small talk about where the restaurant sage is planning to open restaurants during times like these? The Pontiff must grab his hat when he hears “onsite,” a segment once typified by cafeterias and scaled-down outposts of the big fast-food chains.

Yet that’s the bold expansion initiative that Meyer detailed late last week to the onsite specialist of Nation’s Restaurant News, Elissa Elan. Meyer has created a new division within his Union Square Hospitality Group, an operator largely of fine-dining restaurants, expressly to develop the group’s concepts in pro-sports facilities from coast to coast.

Meyer is hardly alone among celebrity restaurateurs and fine-dining specialists in diversifying during these challenging times into so-called captive markets. A few years ago, Wolfgang Puck and Todd English snagged a sea of ink by lending their menus and reputations to airport locations. Once a footpath, that alternate route is quickly being trampled into a major thoroughfare as operators seize the opportunities of opening in department stores, sports and concert arenas, bus and train stations, casinos, hotels, ski resorts, even spas. It may be just a matter of time until a hospital patient can call down and have a meal brought up from the Gordon Ramsay outpost on the main floor.

Meanwhile, a whole new wave of chains, full and limited service, are right there with the folks in chef’s whites, vying for their piece of the onsite scene as well. As Elan also reported last week, you can now add IHOP to a list that already includes nearly all of the big casual-dining brands.

The deals are as diverse as the concepts involved. But you can readily assume some common advantages. For one thing, there’s the attraction during a time of softening streetside traffic of having a built-in market of sorts. The business can come in peaks and valleys, depending on events and the season of the year. But those peaks can be pretty high.

Operators also cite the sweetheart deals that some places will extend to put a big-name brand on the premises. And even without significant build-out assistance or a dream rent, the situation carries certain incremental advantages that can add up to a big plus. Several years ago I had dinner with a casual-chain operator who’d just landed his first casino location. The volumes he expected were astronomical, based on the host facility’s traffic. But, he noted with glee, his costs would be cut by piggybacking on the place’s purchasing, maintenance, inventory-control and credit card processing functions. It amounted in his case to a point or two of margin.

Of course, the risk is also sky-high. Screw up in a streetside location and you damage your reputation in the local market. Botch things in a site where half the world can be turned off and you have quite a comeback to engineer, on virtually a nationwide scale.

Which brings us back to Danny Meyer. He’s revered as the Jimmy Stewart of the restaurant industry in part because he foregoes gimmicks and bandwagon jumping. As he told Elan, USHG’s new Hudson Yards Sports & Entertainment division will try to learn next year from its initial at-bat, at the New York Mets’ new homefield, before swinging for the fences. It also plans to work with an experienced concessionaire, starting with Aramark at the Mets’ new Citi Field.

But his decision to move into onsite will likely be taken as a sanction. Meyer has yet to close a restaurant, or even backtrack from one of his initiatives.

Indeed, one of his most successful endeavors, the Shake Shack retro-styled burger concept, was actually a good deed that turned great, like cutting the elderly neighbor’s lawn and discovering oil in the process. It started as a cart in Madison Park, across from his Tabla and Eleven Madison fine-dining restaurants. Meyer’s staff sold hotdogs in the park as a public service, a payback to the community. The dogs became so popular that the city gave Meyer a nifty 1960s-style building in the park, where the lines were soon dozens of people deep.

Now Shake Shack generates volumes that rival some of Meyer’s white-tablecloth places, according to members of his organization. No wonder it will be one of the anchor concepts of Hudson Yards, with each new stadium or arena likely to sport one, according to Meyer.

Is there green in green?

The green movement has been a boon for puffins and wombats, but what’s it done for participating restaurants’ P&L’s? Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca used a rare public appearance earlier this week to divulge a few dollars-and-cents results for his brand.

The chain has snagged a fair amount of ink for what franchisees are doing with eco-friendly restaurants. The first wave—one unit in Florida, two in Oregon—did enough environmentally to earn a LEEDS (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certificate from the U.S. Green Building Council. It's the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for ecological effort, earned in this instance by the use of ceiling tiles made of recycled material and reliance on sunlight for much of the interior illumination, among other steps.

The first green Subway, in Florida, cost $10,000 to $15,000 more to build than a conventional unit, DeLuca said during the Food and Restaurant Industry Forum, an event co-hosted Monday on Wall Street by the National Restaurant Association and NASDAQ.

The “jury is still out” about what return the franchisee might see on that added investment, DeLuca said. But he voiced doubts that the payback will offset the cost differential.

The wildcard, he said, is the value of public appreciation. “Some customers do choose that store over others—customer appreciation could pay off in the long term,” he explained.

Headquarters has described the green Subways as labs, and not necessarily prototypes. Officials say the stores will be used to develop and refine eco-friendly processes and features that could become part of the chain’s specs. They’ve also indicated that the first three units will be monitored for at least a year to determine how Subway’s operations mesh with the green backdrop. They’ve described the tests in part as an attempt to realize new efficiencies

The Florida unit opened in November, and the first foot long was served up in the Oregon stores in December.

July fireworks

Can I pour you another cup of coffee? How about another plate of carbs, or maybe something sugary to keep you going? You’ll definitely need more than the usual oomph and sustenance to get through July, which should have been specially named for restaurateurs. National Eye Poke Appreciation Month, perhaps.

This, after all, is a stretch when the industry will experience more firsts than the freshman class at Party U. If only it were to be as much fun. Or even in the same range as a wolverine attack. Instead, the industry can look forward to unprecedented bans, mandates, cost hikes and marketing experiments.

Start with the first-ever ban of trans fats in restaurant baked goods, which takes effect as of 12:01 a.m. tomorrow in New York City, or, as the local board of health is determined to rechristen it, San Francisco-East. Folks in that famous West Coast pit of activism now look at the Big Apple and mutter, “Whoa, those folks are crazy. Where’d they come up with these laws?”

New York actually banned trans fat some time ago, but provided a grace period for baked goods because of the logistical problems. Some chefs say it’s hard to deliver the light, flakey quality you want in pie crusts or pastries without using trans-fat-rich shortening. If they haven’t figured out how to do it by now, they’ll hear about it from the health department starting tomorrow, though fines won’t be levied until October. It’s the city’s version of double-secret probation.

By that time, getting fined could have lost its novelty for New York’s chain restaurants. About 2,000 of them will be subject to financial penalties as of July 19 for failing to comply with the city’s calorie-disclosure requirement, another first-in-the-nation distinction. Early assessments of compliance levels suggest a lot of restaurants will be writing checks.

Of course, restaurants everywhere will be punching up the checks they cut on payday. On July 24, the federal minimum wage rises to $6.55 an hour, from the current $5.85.

That may be the most universal of the changes. Perhaps the most limited is the virtually overlooked menu-labeling requirement that takes effect tomorrow in Mississippi, which is to catfish what Iowa is to corn. Starting at midnight, restaurants with catfish on their menus will be required to let patrons know the origin of the fish. If it comes from Mississippi, the place can meet the requirement by erecting a sign or placard on the premises. But if it’s imported, that fact has to be pointed out on the menu, in the same font and type size as everything else.

Feature Mississippi catfish, and you have to post a sign. Feature another nation’s, and you have to reprint your menu. The impression of the state’s school system may be about to change.

Carbon footprints on restaurateurs’ backs

This just in from the Wile E. Coyote Falling Anvil Alert Service: Stay inside. The well-intentioned forces that hope to make the world a better place for chipmunks and koala bears are about to drop some serious (and no doubt recycled) iron on the restaurant industry.

You might even spot some casual-dining operators atop the cliff with them, though they could end up victims as much as supporters. Their curbside takeaway business would no doubt benefit if the ecologically-minded put the brakes on quick-service drive-thrus, as a number of activists are already vowing because of pollution concerns. The proponents of bans on drive-thrus or car idling could probably live with casual dining’s system of running an order out to patrons’ SUVs or hybrids as soon as they pull into designated parking spots.

It’s the drive-thru that has the Dark Greens stomping their Birkenstocks. Isn’t wasteful idling as much a part of that experience as yelling into a microphone? And isn’t that both contributing to global warming and wasting precious gas? Why not ban it?

And that’s exactly what Minneapolis did a little over two weeks ago. Cars that sit still outside of traffic for more than three minutes have to shut down their engines or risk getting ticketed.

Other areas, like Madison, Wis., are weighing the possibility of banning new drive-thrus. And interest in that method of cutting auto emissions is approaching a national crusade in Canada, with at least nine major cities considering a prohibition on the drive-up.

But the casual restaurant operators may soon have their own sustainable fish to fry. Conservationists hoping to stigmatize bottled water on ecological grounds succeeded last week in recruiting the Klingon Empire to their cause. After hearing that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom had outlawed his city’s purchase of bottled water, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution that obliges the 250 members to look into a similar rule within their respective jurisdictions. Already, the tribal leaders of Ann Arbor, Mich., have agreed not to allow bottled water to be served at city events.

So far, restaurants have only been pressured by the pro-tap forces to stop selling bottled water, instead of being forced by law. But certainly that insistence they forego the high-margin item is going to grow much, much stronger. Indeed, the industry is even hearing it from its own members. At the trade’s big convention last month in Chicago, some attendees groused that the panel of speakers at one event was provided with single-serving bottles of water, instead of a pitcher and glasses. It probably didn’t help that the green movement was going to be one of the topics discussed.

So what’s an industry to do? For one thing, catch up with Road Runner of public opinion. When I mention the possibility of a drive-thru or idling ban, restaurateurs always shoot me that same look they’d direct at a deranged street person. It reminds me of the bemused look they used to get when the topic of menu labeling came up at the beginning of the decade.

Secondly, the debates have largely been waged thus far on the basis of emotion, not fact. How much pollution do cars in a drive-thru actually contribute, and how does that compare with the emissions generated by parking, or stopping and starting the engine?

And what is the carbon glass print, so to speak, for water that comes from a bottle rather than a tap? How much energy is needed to wash pitchers or glasses for the stuff that comes out of a pipe in the kitchen? And how much of an impact did that pipe have? What about the effect on reservoirs that have already dwindled below the high-water mark?

Some hardcore research is clearly needed. Just try to avoid a provider that goes by the name of Acme. Its products have proven time and again to be ineffective, especially if they have a fuse.

Daydream believers

I was trading air-guitar licks the other day with Bluto Pilkbean, the imaginary childhood friend who helped me invent the flying car and a way of extracting super-human strength from Twizzlers. He’s recently made a name for himself in the fanciful field that’s filled many a restaurateur’s daydreams of late, the silver bullet.

“Pilkbean,” I said after we’d decided not to take the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models to dinner, “do you really buy this malarkey? So many things are stacked against the industry that all the experts are calling this a perfect storm. An operation is going to soar out of hell just by adding sliders or upgrading its coffee?”

“This from the person who believed he could obliterate all homework by electrifying Silly Putty,” he retorted. “Besides, you’re forgetting that most adapters combine the magic pills. McDonald’s is focusing on breakfast and beverages. Taco Bell is embracing cheap-o deals and new drinks and breakfast. Applebee’s is not only touting sliders and bargain-rate lunches, but also inviting customers to submit videos for a new campaign. It’s a matter of mucho mojo, mi compadre.” Pilkbean had never been quite the same since the trip to Tijuana.

“Who cares if you offer five or 50?,” I responded. “What does it get you other than one turn of consumers’ heads?”

“A point of differentiation.”

“For how long? If these killer plays do anything, everyone and their cousin copycats ‘em. It’ll be curbside takeaway or the Bloomin’ Onion all over again.” I looked to see if he was reaching for his combination death ray pistol/Pez dispenser, because I had him now.

“There’s always something new,” he noted calmly.

“Such as?”

“Well, right now some fast-casual chains are adding table service. All kinds of concepts are giving away food to bolster traffic. Eat ‘n Park and Chipotle are supposedly looking to use more local ingredients. Red Lobster just announced that it’ll give space on the menu to a dish created during one of those cooking-contest shows.”

“Isn’t that exactly what Friday’s did?”

“Well…maybe. But there’s talk of going even farther afield. Some concepts are talking about radical steps like upgrading service, renovating dining rooms, or”—he actually shivered at this point—“trying to hire and retain the best employees. Gives you goose bumps, doesn’t it?”

“You’re an idiot,” I assured. “Now let’s get back to work on our Red Sox immobilization spray.”

(Jolly old) BK sliders

Even with the U.K.’s love of all things royal, the Burger King may never have enjoyed a reception quite like he’s getting these days across the pond. The blogosphere is rippling with British-accented talk of the wooden-faced icon’s latest European menu addition, a product that seems likely to jump back home at some point. After all, what do Brits know about sliders?

Yet that’s what BK added to the menu of its British operations in late May. Not that this is your conventional mini-burger, a la what you’d get at White Castle, Krystal or any number of chains or fine-dining restaurants these days in the States. Indeed, BK’s new Angus 6 Pack is actually an oversized, scallop-edged burger that’s served with what could best be described as a modular bun. The patty is actually meant to be six small, interconnected burgers. The top and bottom of the bun are similarly styled. Patrons are urged to pull the item apart to form six minis—two topped just with catsup, two with catsup and cheese, and two with bacon added to those garnishes.

If the Angus 6 Pack is indeed added to the menus of stores in the U.S., it wouldn’t be the first time that Burger King featured sliders. In the 1980s, the chain added a multi-pack of minis called Burger Buddies. The product was indeed to be purchased as a snack. But franchisees yelped about the item because the little patties would slide through the grill of the concept’s signature chain broiler.

The use of a bigger, six-in-one patty would alleviate that problem.

Applebee's to try a chill pill?

Consumers may soon be spying a stockpile of thermometers behind the bar of their nearest Applebee’s. The new parent of the troubled casual-dining brand is looking to put more fizz into alcoholic beverage sales, and one of the means it’s considering is the schtick used by a franchisee in Ohio. The operator touts his beer as the coldest beer in town, and proves it by putting a thermometer into each glass when he serves it.

Julia Stewart, chairman and chief executive of DineEquity Inc., the clunky new moniker of IHOP Corp., told investors last week that Applebee’s new executive team will likely check out the gimmick for possibly wider adoption. “Don’t laugh—there’s probably a notion there that I want to exemplify [sic] and test,” she said at the Goldman Sachs Investor Conference.

During the Q&A session following her presentation, Stewart noted that Applebee’s is already one of the nation’s highest-volume beer sellers, but observed that wine could represent an opportunity.

She also repeated an earlier avowal to avoid the prior administration’s mistake of trying to make Applebee’s menu more sophisticated than patrons would like. She indicated that the brand should stay within its niche with she characterized as finger-food-type items. But she also noted that the bill of fare needed an update. Deep-fried mozzarella sticks were cited in particular as a tired nod to yesteryear.

'There goes the free Starbucks'

The worst part about getting fired from the CEO’s job at Starbucks is having to tell your mother, according to Jim Donald, who found that out for himself in January. Four months later, he was willing to talk about that day with a Fortune magazine editor, who convinced him to join two other victims of high-profile sackings for a joint soul baring of what they’d learned.

But it was far from a pity party. “This is what happens in the big leagues,” Donald remarked during the four-party Q&A with Fortune’s Patricia Sellers. He and his fellow boardroom casualties—JetBlue founder David Neeleman and former Motorola CEO Ed Zander—offered a dry-eyed assessment of why they were deposed.

Donald, for instance, said he should’ve pushed for faster international development. “The international markets don’t have as quick returns as the U.S.,” h said. “But if I’d known the U.S. economy was going to crash, I would have invested earlier.” His replacement as CEO, board chairman and former head bean Howard Schultz, has pledged to accelerate Starbucks’ development overseas while shutting weak U.S. outlets.

It was Schultz, Donald said, who actually wielded the axe, and he did it after giving his one-time protégé a hug. “It was on a Sunday evening, at Howard’s house,” Donald told Sellers and his fellow topple-ees. A greeting was followed by an embrace, then the news that Starbucks’ board had decided to make a change. Donald made it sound as if he didn’t have time to put his latte down.

The 54-year old said he headed home, where his wife expressed surprise that he’d was back already. “Laura said, ‘Wow, that was a quick meeting. Did you lose your job?’ I said, ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’”

The one-time head of Wal-Mart’s grocery operations said the most painful part of the experience was calling his mother the next day. Indeed, he said, that experience “probably” made it “the toughest day I’d ever faced, ever. Ever, ever, ever!” But, he indicated, she took it well.

Donald expressed no resentment about what happened to him. Nor did he speak of Schultz in anything but a neutral tone. Sellers asked Donald if he’d ever work again for a company’s founder, as he did at Schultz (a nit-picking point: Schultz founded Starbucks Corp., but not the Starbucks brand).

“Founders have a way of being engaged in the business, being emotionally connected to that brand or to that product,” he responded. “So would I work for a founder? Yes, absolutely.”

Web watchdogs can definitely bite

The Wall Street Journal outed several chains this weekend for switching to smaller beer glasses without adjusting prices or otherwise letting on. You’d think that’d trigger a fit of spin-doctoring from the likes of Hooters, GameWorks, Damon’s and Romano’s Macaroni Grill, but they wisely offered nothing more than the few qualifiers and no-comment that were included in the article. Even then, they came within a maraschino cherry stem of being sentenced to eternal avoidance by the modern-day equivalent of vigilantes: Web habitués who share a fanatical cause. In the era of the keyboard-empowered consumer, reckless indeed is the consumer brand that tries to pull one over on patrons, especially when it comes to value.

The situation is nearly a perfect homily as to why. The Journal, after all, was merely a messenger, relaying the lynch-mob talk that the chains and other beer-serving establishments had frothed up by switching from true pint glasses, capable of holding roughly 16 ounces of brew, to variations with a thicker glass bottom that leaves room for only 14 ounces. The motivation is obvious: With grain prices driving up the cost of beer, cagy operators are holding the price of their standard tap serving while slyly providing less beer.

As the article noted, consumers are catching on, and fast. Seven months months ago, a college researcher with a blog called Beervana started what he dubbed The Honest Pint Project, whereby he’d push for a full 16-ounce tap beer by publishing the names of drinking establishments in his native Portland, Ore., that offer a serving of at least that volume.

The parent of the Honest Pint Project, identified in the Journal article as Jeff Alworth, has raised his ambitions since then. “I will support a statutory change if it comes to that—and maybe it should,” he wrote in a blog installment posted today.

Yet Alworth sounds like an aggravated PTA member compared with the hops panthers who offered their comments, suggestions and assessments on beeradvocate.com. “So if there’s a beer bar on this site that has recently adopted this practice, can we call them out?,” asks a poster identified as guzzle211, who joked that he was already lighting a torch.

“What would it take to get legislation passed with regard to this? How did they do it in other countries?,” asks Josquin.

It goes without saying that establishments switching to what a Journal source dubbed “falsies” shouldn’t try to deceive patrons about the change (for the record: GameWorks said a mistake in glassware was made at a single unit, only franchised Hooters units offered the smaller glasses, Damon’s does not deny the change, and Romano’s had no comment). Risking the alienation of longstanding customers over two ounces of tap beer is crazy enough. Amplify that by the speed of gripe on the internet and there’s no doubt about the glass being half-empty.

A turn for the worse on menu labeling

One of the industry’s key defenses against menu labeling has been rendered useless by a recent court filing that could also break up the trade’s Hail Mary play for softening the impact of nutrition-disclosure mandates. The actions, little-noticed outside of the regulatory and legal worlds, came not from the restaurant business’ usual adversaries on diet-related matters, but from the hoped-for ally known as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

The development was the latest in the prolonged legal effort by the New York State Restaurant Association to overturn a New York City requirement that local chain units post calorie counts on menu boards, regular bills of fare and drink menus. The association filed a lawsuit in federal court that asserts the city does not have the authority to regulate nutrition disclosure, since that power resides exclusively with the FDA.

Not so, the FDA itself said in a friend-of-the-court brief that was filed on May 29. The agency, which has been expressly granted the right to specify and police what nutritional information is printed on grocery-store items, told the court that it doesn’t have a hammerlock on menu disclosure. Only if a restaurant makes a health-related claim—such as pronouncing an item life-prolonging or cholesterol-reducing—do FDA rules pre-empt state or local regulations, the agency said.

The take-away for state and local jurisdictions that want to require restaurants on their turf to divulge nutrition information for all menu items: Knock yourself out.

The filing by the FDA, which had been requested by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in effect scuttles the pre-emption challenge that a number of restaurant groups have either eyed or actually tried in their efforts to fend off labeling mandates. But the damage to the industry’s defense strategies could go farther than that.

As I’ve mentioned in a column, there’s a growing sensibility within the restaurant industry that menu-labeling requirements are going to be a new reality, no matter how unpleasant the trade might find them. It’s a tide that the business may simply not be able to hold back. Some broad-minded thinkers are proposing behind closed doors that the industry temper the effects by suggesting the federal government take the lead on menu disclosure.

That way, the proponents argue, chains would have to meet only one set of disclosure standards from coast to coast, instead of a hodgepodge of obligations that could vary from town to town. Chains that operate in both Seattle and New York, for instance, will be required to provide one set of info on the West Coast, and another type on the East. Branches in the two cities will almost certainly end up with different types of menus and menu boards, which may be still different from the ones required for Santa Clara or San Francisco Counties in California.

But now the FDA has said that Congress didn’t want it to regulate restaurants, so states, counties and municipalities are the ones to fill the void. I’m certainly no lobbyist, but it seems that the industry would have to push legislation through Congress that would call for menu regulation by the agency. It could be one of the smartest things the industry has ever done. But a firefight will almost certainly erupt as rank-and-file operators balk at the notion of asking for government regulation. In the minds of those who are still thinking in yesterday’s terms, it’d be like pushing for a tax increase.

And then there’s the wild card that was dealt to the industry just this past week. A group of consumers has sued Applebee’s and Brinker International for allegedly misstating the nutritional information they voluntarily post on their menus. The class action suits allege that Applebee’s understated the fat content of its Weight Watchers-branded selections, and that Brinker similarly bent the truth the same on Chili’s Guiltless Grill section.

Those brands voluntarily disclosed information and ended up getting sued. When chain after chain after chain is posting analytical data to meet disclosure requirements, won’t the industry become the barrel where litigation-minded lawyers and consumers can draw a bead on the next fat tuna they’d like to fillet in court?

If the industry does proceed with its efforts to legislate federal labeling regulation, it would be well served to also incorporate some defenses against bounty-hunting of that nature.

Politics as unusual

The public’s interest in politics has been honed to a keen edge by the uncertainty over who’ll be sitting in the Oval Office next February. But the restaurant industry has been doing less handicapping than hedging. Indeed, the trade’s main lobbying forces have been quietly seeking insurance of sorts to protect the trade’s political interests regardless of who prevails in the November election.

That was evident during last month’s board meeting of the National Restaurant Association. As we reported at the time, the group voted to pursue an initiative whereby restaurateurs would be solicited to work in the campaigns of whichever candidate drew their support. The objective was to have a member of the business inside the tents of what were then the three main candidates. “When they win, we want friends who were friends [to them] before they won,” explained Bob Leonard, the IHOP franchisee who heads the NRA’s Political Action Committee.

That effort to curry favor with Democrats as well as Republicans has been seen in other actions by the group, large and small. For instance, as was noted earlier in this space, the association lined up John McCain to deliver a keynote address at its annual mega-convention in Chicago. I and apparently others chided the NRA for always selecting a speaker from the more sympathetic side of the aisle instead of taking a nonpartisan approach to booking presenters. In press releases issued after McCain appeared, the association noted that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had been invited to appear as well but had declined. It didn’t sound like the same NRA that had once boasted about its insider status with the Republican White House. It was as if it quietly removed that elephant pin from its lapel.

Fast forward to earlier this week, when the association and its longtime ally, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, formally praised a new law that aims to protect restaurants from being sued for printing credit card expiration dates on charge receipts. Obviously the two groups had pushed for the measure. They succeeded in part by working with Rep. Barney Frank, the liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, a party standard-bearer from New York. These are not the industry’s usual allies.

The NRA and its usual cohorts haven’t switched allegiances, to be sure. The group reportedly spent $200,000 last week alone to help one of its own, former chairman Ed Tinsley, win the Republican nomination for a U.S. House of Representatives seat from New Mexico. The association has very expressly indicated that it wants a member of the industry inside the Capitol, watching out for the business and presumably working closely with it to promote favorable measures. It’s hardly standing on the sidelines in that contest, and the party it favors is no secret, at least in that Congressional race.

But clearly its striving to work with the party that’s quite possibly going to control both the White House and the Capitol next year.

Every time restaurateurs are surveyed about what they regard as their biggest concerns, burdensome politics and regulation rank high on the list. If the industry slipped into a partisan mode in the current environment, that concern may move even higher.

Instead the NRA and the NCCR are taking a more pragmatic course. And it could prove a smart one indeed.

Goody's no gum drop

Here, completely free of charge, is my suggestion for how McDonald’s should advertise the under-sung health move that it made today: As a camera pulls back, viewers see shadows starkly playing against a wall. It’s clear what the two people out of range are doing to make the images dance across the backdrop, even if they can’t be seen. Elbows are swung, holds are attempted and broken, a body is lifted and slammed to the ground. Grunts and outcries of pain are interrupted by taunts of “No trans fat to slow me down now, huh?,” “What, not enough niacin?” and “Oh, too few calories to keep going, Buttercup?” The frame pulls back to reveal Cindy Goody, the quick-service chain’s new U.S. director of nutrition, sitting atop a prone Marion Nestle, the famed nutrition gadfly, her arms firmly pinned to the ground. “Well,” says Goody, “I guess we know who’s going to be doing the talking about McDonald’s nutritional values from here on in.” Cue the “I’m lovin’ it” theme music.

A tad extreme, admittedly, but it does get across the point that McDonald’s USA has fortified itself with a well-known, highly respected new authority on family nutrition. Indeed, it’ll be harder for the diet activists to throw mud at the chain with Goody lending her reputation to Big Mac. This, after all, is the Ph.D holder who once crafted an article called “Snack Attack! Over 150 Guilt-free Treats for Healthy Munching.” And we’re not talking about a story in “Family Circle.” She wrote it for a professional journal called “The Diabetes Educator.” It’s just one of what appears to be a number of instances where Goody melded a scholarly and a popular approach to nutrition. If she manages to similarly synthesize those sensibilities for McDonald’s, she could be a formidable addition indeed: Nutritional science in a wrapper of plainspoken, sensible language.

Skeptics will no doubt disparage the hiring as a sop to the nutritional whiners. Nestle and her ilk carping again about too much fat or way too many calories? Quick, trot out Goody and a plate of Apple Dippers.

McDonald’s would deserve a skewering if that proves to be the case. But if it actually does tap Goody’s expertise to develop more healthful choices and teach the public some fundamentals about eating right, the development will be a goodie indeed.

Surgical scars from cutting costs?

The only thing that could make commodity costs any scarier is having your distributor sales rep show up in a hockey mask. No wonder restaurateurs are going to extremes to bring down their expenses. It should be even less of a surprise that some are now realizing they’ve gone too far.

The Le Madeleine bakery-café chain found that barrier last week, as it acknowledged to its hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News. As officials explained, local customers let the chain know loud and clear that they weren’t going to pay for bread they formerly got for free. The charge came to only 50 cents for two slices of the sourdough bread, and that was levied only if the patron didn’t buy an entrée, soup or salad. What’s more, the shift had been tested in other locations, reportedly with no fallout.

Not so in Dallas, where the chain has been a favorite for two decades. After receiving hundreds of e-mailed complaints, the chain discontinued the cost-cutting measure. “We made a mistake and we adjusted," CEO Mike Shumsky told the News.

A similar public admittance came Sunday from Eric Kozlowski, a co-owner of the Primanti’s restaurants in south Florida. When a moonshot in cheese and flour prices cost the Italian eateries an extra $2,400 a week in food purchases, the company switched to lower-quality flour for its pizzas, Kozlowski told The Miami Herald. Patrons couldn’t discern the change from the menu, but they could certainly taste it, according to Kozlowski. “I was saving money, but I was potentially chasing away some of my customers who are really pizza connoisseurs,” he told the Herald.

He and his partners reportedly switched back to the higher-grade flour and then raised the price of a large pie by $2.

According to the article, sales jumped 10 percent.

Judging the elasticity of consumer tastes may not be that easy. Recent days also brought an acknowledgement from Miller Brewing that consumers are trading down from premium brews to bargain-priced beers, which presumably would also cost restaurants less.

Who wants a CEO's job? Not some CEOs

This has been a day of eerie coincidences. Bombshell developments required us to change the top story on our website three times in roughly eight hours. In each instance, a big-name restaurant chief was leaving a sizable multi-chain company, to the gape-mouthed surprise of everyone else in the business. Russ Bendel from Cheesecake Factory, Ken Keymer from the parent company of Village Inn and Bakers Square, Clay Dover from Bennigan’s operator Metromedia Restaurant Group—each seemed firmly entrenched in the job, if for no other reason than the ink on his business cards had barely dried. The longest-serving among them (Keymer) had logged a mere 13 months in the job; the most recent to stake out the corner office (Dover) had been there just six months. (Bendel, for the record, had only nine months’ of wear on his office chair).

All persevered for far less than the three to four years that studies have pegged as the average time of service for a corporate top executive. It’d be easy to attribute the simultaneous changeovers at three radically different companies to sunspots, global warming or the behind-the-scenes meddling of mutant Steinbrenner offspring, were it not for another trend emerging in restaurant-executive employment.

Last week, we reported that Phil Hickey, the former CEO of LongHorn and Capital Grille parent Rare Hospitality, had bought the four-unit Jocks and Jills sports bar chain. Phil has the sort of resume that would make every headhunter in the country want to have him on speed-dial, regardless of the industry they served. And when Rare was sold to Darden last year, securities filings indicated that Hickey recieved enough of a payout to make work an option, not a requirement. Yet what does he do? He opts for something entrepreneurial.

Similarly, David Goronkin resigned last December as CEO of the Famous Dave’s barbecue chain to take the top day-to-day management job at Redstone American Grill, a start-up from the same concept creator who hatched Champps.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bendel told Nation’s Restaurant News that he resigned as president and COO of Cheesecake’s restaurant division to pursue “an entrepreneurial opportunity.” He wouldn’t say what it was, but noted that he’ll be switching to the new undertaking in a matter of weeks.

Against that backdrop, it’s easy to understand why executives might stay in a top restaurant job for a shorter stretch than they did in the past. Metromedia’s Dover, for instance, readily acknowledged that he opted to leave because of disagreements with the company’s owners. The times are grueling, investor patience seems to have shortened, stakeholders insist on an active management role, and we’ve reached the age of the plug-in executive, where a chief may be brought in for a very specific task. Vicorp stressed that it chose Harem Ouf to succeed Keymer because of the newcomer’s experience in bringing companies out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, where it slid during Keymer’s watch. (Keymer, for the record, said he would retire at the end of the week).

Restaurant executives can be ground up and spat out in no time in an environment like the present one. The job is so grueling that it's hard not to be dissatisfied--with the individual who's trying to fulfill it, or with the situation itself. No wonder so many seasoned pros are assessing the task of running a big public restaurant company and deciding it’s not for them. They’ve decided to forego the pressure, lessen the hassles, and get back to doing what they enjoyed. Why waste your fruitful years dodging bullets?

Regardless of which party opts for a CEO or president’s exit, there’s little doubt that the foodservice revolving door is going to spin a little faster in the months to come. We were actually investigating reports today that a top executive had left a fourth well-known restaurant company, but couldn’t get a confirmation from the concern itself. But stay tuned. He's likely to be one in a parade of executives who find themselves arising from a hot seat in the near future. By their employer's choice, or theirs.

'No-match'? How about 'no-sense'?

In another sign the donkey from “Shrek” is really running the country, a much-respected restaurant operator in Minneapolis is reportedly being picketed, petitioned, denied business, flayed on the internet and possibly left short-staffed, all because it followed the White House’s rules for countering illegal immigration. Straight from the files of Ripley‘s is this account of a company getting caught in a disastrous tug-of-war. And if that’s not enough of a sideshow draw, consider the really amazing part: It could be a preview of what’s in store for other restaurateurs if the government makes good on a pledge to drop more no-match letters into the mail within the next few weeks.

The tale began last fall when the D’Amico & Sons chain received a batch of the letters from the Social Security Administration. The letters, if you’ve strangely never had the experience of receiving one, alerts employers that the Social Security numbers provided by an employee don’t match the information in the agency’s data banks. Perhaps the numbers were assigned to someone with a different name, or the number just doesn’t exist. Or perhaps the new hire was recently married or divorced and is now using a different surname.

Regardless, the employer is given the heads-up that the discrepancy has to be reconciled. Otherwise, the Bush Administration would like the employees to be canned because they could be illegal immigrants using bogus I.D.s. It tried without success late last year to make that preference an obligation, but was thwarted by the courts.

In any case, D’Amico dutifully alerted the 15 or so employees of the no-match notices. According to reports by media ranging from Minneapolis Public Radio to the Twin Cities Daily Planet, the employees were given seven months to rectify the mismatches of information. Initially, according to the reports, the staffers were told to write the Administration. Later, D’Amico execs advised them to go visit agency and clear up the problems in person.

Only one employee apparently followed the counsel. The rest did not settle anything with Social Security. So D’Amico fired them at the end of March.

The company acknowledged that no-match letters aren’t yet grounds for firing people. But it also argued that some employers have been accused of helping illegal immigrants break the law because the companies had unresolved no-match letters in their files. The unheeded communications were taken as signs of complicity.

According to the MPR report, D’Amico said it terminated the employees, including several with more than a dozen years of tenure, because they didn’t follow the company’s directives.

The weeks since have made D’Amico the targets of such big-name dvocacy groups as the Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World (better known as the Wobblies), and the sanctimonious-sounding Workers Interfaith Network. The discharged workers have also turned for assistance to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that they were the victims of prejudice since all were Latinos.

Meanwhile, petitions have reportedly been drafted, and Minneapolis-based bulletin boards carry consumers’ accounts of seeing picket lines outside the restaurants they’ve known as customers. Some delivery trucks apparently refused to cross the pickets. The Wobblies claim that some D’Amico employees staged an impromptu sit-down at one restaurant.

“I went to D’Amicos often and loved their food and ambiance,” said one poster on the Daily Planet’s website. “I will be boycotting the company from now on.”

MPR said in its report that a banquet customer cancelled its booking with D’Amico because of the situation.

Meanwhile, the federal government apparently hasn’t commented on the situation, much less clarified the obligations and rights of both parties in the matter. Instead, it’s silently leaving D’Amico as its proxy.

After a court struck down the Bush administration’s efforts to require employers to fire staffers who can’t fix a no-match situation, officials from the Department of Homeland Security expressed confidence they’d eventually prevail in their efforts. It indicated at the time that it would address the objections that prompted a federal court in San Francisco to strike down the fix-it-or-nix-it aspect of the law. Among the flaws that were cited by the court was the mere 90 days that was granted to fix a mismatch in Social Security info. That and other concerns prompted the court to bar the Social Security Administration from sending out letters that threatened penalties. The SSA said it didn’t have time to fix the content and resume sending the no-match letters, and suspended the practice.

But the agency said it planned to address a court directive and resume sending no-match letters again in the spring of 2008. The season ends on June 19, or about three weeks from now.

Tales of the talks

Sit long enough in one spot at the NRA show and you’re likely to witness either an awards ceremony or a speech. Yet, my fellow sore-footed conventioneers, where was the event that tied the two together? Honors were bestowed for standout performances in any number of areas, from culinary-school academics to menu making. Similarly, I listened to more than 50 presentations from a podium during my four days at the show. Some of them clearly deserved the distinction of a prize. So here, to plug an obvious hole in the book-sized list of convention activities, is the inaugural presentation of the Outstanding Oratory Achievement Awards, popularly known as the Oo-Aahs.

Return of the Herminator: With Indiana Jones and Batman making their comebacks, is it any surprise that one of the industry’s own action heroes would strut back onto the stage? Herman Cain has been out of the business for eight or 10 years, working in politics and hosting a radio show in Atlanta. But he clearly hasn’t lost his touch for rousing an industry audience. The former head of the NRA and Godfather’s Pizza, who once shot up at a town-hall meeting to out-debate a stunned President Clinton, knocked the dust off chandeliers with two booming presentations. At a luncheon that brought together hospitality-school students and industry luminaries, the one-time senatorial candidate recounted how his father worked three jobs so he could realize his dream of buying a house where Cain and his brother would each have his own bed. “Twin beds?,” Cain boomed. “We’d been sharing a cot in the kitchen. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

That night, at a gala where he was awarded the lofty distinction of Diplomate by the NRA Educational Foundation, Cain sounded a more somber tone. “Some of you may have heard that I had cancer,” he said in a voice that could slip deeper than a foghorn. “I say ‘had cancer,’ because I had cancer. I’m now 100 percent cancer free.” Word that he’d beaten Stage Four colon cancer, delivered in his evangelical style, had the audience roaring.

But he was no match for his fellow award-winner, a thoughtful, a bashful by comparison chef from Washington, D.C.

Ricchi rocks the house: The Diplomate designation was also bestowed that night on Chris Ricchi, chef-proprietor of Ristorante i Ricchi in the nation’s capital. Looking more like a surfer on spring break than a working mom with two grown children, Ricchi was profiled in a video that highlighted an aspect of her life that was unfamiliar to many of us. Ricchi’s son, the tape explained, had a disability that required his enrollment in a specialized school in the D.C. area. The place sounded like a wreck, with a leaky roof, grounds that had all the warmth of a war zone, and a food service whose only recognition would likely come from health authorities. An administrator recounted how Ricchi took a look at the place and calmly informed another parent, “We can do better.” She then proceeded to raise some $4 million for a transformation.

Taking the podium, Ricchi acknowledged that she’d raised the money by turning to her peers in the restaurant business, who “all opened their checkbooks.” Then she asked her children to stand, including the son whose life had been so powerfully affected by people in that very room. The applause could’ve been heard on the space station.

“This is it,” she roared with a fire that could only come from the heart. “This is what’s important. It’s all about how we can help others. And no one does it better than this industry.”

There were more napkins dabbing eyes than you’d see at a wedding.

But Ricchi wasn’t the only speaker to prompt the sort of sniffling you might hear from first graders on Day One of school. The industry was introduced the next morning to the well-spoken young director of training for Whataburger, who pulled no punches about where she came from.

‘I had to get out.’ “I grew up in Haines City, Fla., in a neighborhood where drugs were available 24 hours a day,” Nicole Jackson recounted in the printed bio that was handed out for the NRA’s Faces of Diversity Awards. “My mom worked a lot but partied a lot, so we lived with my grandmother.”

“We lived on public assistance, and I was told I could aspire to be a janitor or a maid,” she wrote. “I knew I had to get out.”

She did, ultimately picking the restaurant industry as her path. The first step was a crew position at a McDonald’s, earning $3.35 an hour. She quickly moved up there, was hired away by Krystal, and then by Whataburger. And there she was on Sunday, winning an award from the restaurant association for showing others how to climb out of their dire circumstances.

“It may seem like an award to you,” she told the directors of the National Restaurant Association. But for her, she explained, it was validation of the good she’d found in the job—not only for herself, but for the people with whom she worked every day. “We are counselors to 16-year-olds,” she exuberantly reminded the industry greybeards. “We are supplemental income because someone was a little short that month.”

Addressing some of the biggest names in the business, Jackson summoned an extra measure of volume and enthusiasm to let them know, “You wrote the lyrics to our new song. And we will pay it forward.”