Design testing

Do you know what this is? I'm pretty sure it is a lawn gnome repurposed as a table in a fancy-shmancy restaurant.

I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that if I had to pay extra for dinner to cover the cost of that table, I would be extremely put out.

People send me weird pictures sometimes.

Little Owl - TestTestTest

A little while back I missed out on an opportunity to attend a party hosted at the Blue Owl Cocktail Room hosted to introduce their spring cocktail menu. So instead, I sat down with Charles Hardwick a little while back to talk about the spring menu, try out a few drinks, and make up for the horrible truth that I never visited the place though I feel like I see Charles all over the place.

Charles said that he tries to keep Blue Owl's menu seasonal, but added, "If a drink is popular and well-suited, it'll carry over."

Silence Silence Silence

Arlechinno
Columbina
Pedrolino
Pantalone
Pulcinella
Scaramuccia

Silence Fini

Janet Test Post

Maybe it's a stretch to consider Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises as an independent operator since it has 80 restaurants and $336 million in annual sales, but Rich Melman is definitely the quintessential entrepreneur and somebody who, in my opinion, is a positive example for any independent restaurateur reading this blog. When he wants to grow his Chicago-based empire, he's just as likely to think up a whole new restaurant concept than to build another unit of an existing brand he owns.

My first NRN 50 issue in 2006 was all about multiconcept operators, and the chief executives and founders of those companies all name-dropped Melman like he invented not only several restaurants, but the entire restaurant industry. Maybe he did. NRN is checking on this.

What's IN it for You: July 27

LEYE founder Melman wins NRN's Pioneer Award for '09

Maybe it's a stretch to consider Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises as an independent operator since it has 80 restaurants and $336 million in annual sales, but Rich Melman is definitely the quintessential entrepreneur and somebody who, in my opinion, is a positive example for any independent restaurateur reading this blog. When he wants to grow his Chicago-based empire, he's just as likely to think up a whole new restaurant concept than to build another unit of an existing brand he owns.

My first NRN 50 issue in 2006 was all about multiconcept operators, and the chief executives and founders of those companies all name-dropped Melman like he invented not only several restaurants, but the entire restaurant industry. Maybe he did. NRN is checking on this.

Upscale indies take page from QSRs with $5 deals

So the fine-dining guys are putting out a few scrumptious loss leaders to get the people coming in. Sounds pretty good, especially the lobster roll sliders. I doubt they'd be able to follow Quiznos down the road to a $4 sandwich, then a $3 sandwich, and now a $1 sandwich deal.

Senators with union ties agree to drop card check

Somewhere Rick Berman rejoices.

Operators aim to scuttle Tenn. concealed-gun law

Shocking, I know, but restaurant owners aren't thrilled with the idea of anybody being allowed to carry a firearm into their places of business. At least restaurant owners are allowed to post signs on their doors banning guns from the premises, but in principle this law seems screwy. Really, we want more guns in public places that serve alcohol? If the argument from the gun lobby is that people are better able to protect themselves from people with guns if they've got guns of their own (and I don't know if it is, I'm speculating), that's ridiculous.

Ambitious marketing ignites sales at grand opening for independent wood-fired pizzeria

I was glad I got a chance to do something in-depth in the magazine with an independent restaurant and visit the place in person. Not a luxury I often get when deadlines require me to write daily Web briefs and weekly articles while chained to my desk. The basic premise I got from Brad Nagy, co-owner of Frankie & Fanucci's in Hartsdale, N.Y., is that restaurants don't really get to have a soft opening anymore. If you open soft, you're writing the script for getting killed and not lasting long.

For a what it's worth, I'm seeing a similar philosophy from the chains. I just finished a marketing story for next week where chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Einstein Bros. are doing massive food giveaways to have a big opening day at new units.

Googling food safety

Plug “E. coli” into Google’s news search feature and you’ll pull up the latest on an outbreak in Canada, where officials are trying to verify that contaminated lettuce is what sickened more than 50 people. You’ll also be getting a test drive of what could become a powerful but controversial new tool in promoting food safety: The Google search itself.

The New York Times reported last week that a philanthropic arm of the internet powerhouse is experimenting with a new service designed to help U.S. health officials detect a flu outbreak at least a week before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typically spots a cluster. The premise of the program is that sufferers or their families will search for symptoms of the illness via Google in hopes of determining what ails them. The search engine notes the spike in queries and pinpoints where they’re arising, thereby flagging an outbreak. See it for yourself at www.google.org/flutrends.

Right now, the only incarnation of the service is Google Flu Trends. But the same concept would presumably work with such food-related illnesses as norovirus or E. coli. “From a technological perspective, it is the beginning,” Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt told the Times.

The capability would seem like a no-brainer of a breakthrough. But it’s already stirred up controversy as well as hopes. The Times’ popular technology blog Bits has aired the fears of some groups that the detection function could lead to breaches of privacy. Google has issued assurances that disease-related search results would be aggregated rather than recorded by searcher, but public advocates are worried the capability could be misused to identity persons coming down with a particular ailment.

Potential risks aside, what’s the pay-off for such a system? In tests, Google Flu Trends spotted an East Coast flu outbreak a full 14 days before the incidences were collated by the CDC. That news came to light as health authorities in Canada were looking at reports of diarrhea and other potential signs of E. coli poisoning from a school in North Bay, the town where a Harvey’s family restaurant was implicated as the source of the lettuce-related outbreak.

Fortunately, it looks as if the school children were afflicted with the flu, not ailments caused by the potentially deadly bacteria. But if the Google system had been in place there (right now it’s only used domestically), and the agent was indeed E. coli 0157:H7, health officials might’ve gotten a jump that could’ve saved lives.

With a benefit that important, it seems like a service worth adopting, especially if reasonable privacy safeguards are put in place.

Set phasers on stun

Depending on which side you believe, a Starbucks in Minneapolis either was or wasn’t unionized this week. Either way, it may be a preview of a disconcerting future for chain restaurants nationwide.

First, the dueling realities: According to the Industrial Workers of the World, better known to our grandparents as the Wobblies, employees of the downtown coffeehouse voted yesterday to be represented by an affiliate called the Starbucks Workers Union. A statement on the Wobblies’ website said management of the store had been presented with a 500-signature petition demanding that a security guard be hired. The posting also asserted the unit’s baristas walked off the job and declared an affiliation with the SWU, though the connections between those developments was not explained.

The statement convinced the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal and other media to report that the store had unionized and thereby become the second Starbucks in the state to organize. But as that coverage noted, Starbucks' corporate office experienced a much different reality. No baristas walked off the job, no other Starbucks in Minnesota has been unionized, no employees had so much as asked for a union vote, and the Starbucks Workers Union isn’t even really a union.

Apparently the company’s spokeswoman had a point. The paper posted a correction under the story to acknowledge that no unionization vote had actually taken place at the store.

This is hardly a “Roshamon” kind of thing, where an event witnessed by several advisers is perceived and recounted as totally unique experiences. It sounds more like one of those “Star Trek” episodes where a character is stretched between separate and conflicting universes and facing certain oblivion unless a brilliant solution is hatched.

And guess who's playing that character in this potential pilot for the seasons ahead? That'd be you, bunkie.

Even before Barack Obama was elected last week, business groups were bracing for doom because the Illinois senator was sympathetic to unions—and, by extension, presumably their new organization tactics. Much has been written in Nation’s Restaurant News and elsewhere about card check legislation, a measure that could force employees to vote publicly on proposals by their peers to unionize. It’s hard to cast a ‘nay’ when everyone, including the zealots, can see how you balloted.

But that’s just one of the tactics that unions might use to foster the organization of restaurants, the new frontier for the labor movement. Presenting alternative realities may be another. The situation in Minneapolis underscores just how far organizers will go to push their cause. Clearly it may be a matter of going where no man has gone before.