The emerging market in “alternative” beverages is front and center at the 2004 NRA Show. Consumers looking for non-traditional tastes from their beverages have a variety of new options to choose from, as smaller beverage companies carve out niches in upscale carbonated and non-carbonated beverages, the energy-drink sector continues to grow, and international tastes and flavors penetrate the American market
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https://www.restaurant.org/show/news/story.cfm?ID=236
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New Pepsi
. “Innovation is what consumers are looking for, particularly in the small, routine things in their life,” says PepsiCo ceo Steven S. Reinemund, as quoted by Diane Brady in BusinessWeek (6/14/04). For PepsiCo, that outlook translates into “an intense lack of sentimentality about its principal brands.” [Read more…] about New Pepsi
Sick and flabby with a liver "like pate",
The Independent on Sunday and the Observer look forward to the opening of Morgan Spurlock”s, Super Size Me. The award-winning documentary, which will open in the UK late this summer, follows the American filmmaker for one month, during which he eats nothing but McDonald”s food and super-sizes whenever the option is offered. The results? Sick and flabby with a liver “like pate”, Spurlock”s experiment reveals that, yes, eating nothing but fast food really is bad for you.
Retail prices for many Australian wines have plummeted
The Sunday Times UK reports that the Australian wine industry is suffering from an unprecedented glut that has pushed the average price of grapes down to less than half what they fetched two years ago. The world”s fourth biggest producer does not have sufficient local demand to consume the rapidly swelling wine lake, whilst exports have suffered as a result of a recent surge Australian dollar. Retail prices for many Australian wines have plummeted in British supermarkets.
Restaurants cover the spread
Italian restaurants were the first to give up offering butter with bread. They replaced the butter with olive oil, which was poured into small plates and garnished with garlic or herbs. Other establishments followed suit. [Read more…] about Restaurants cover the spread
The New York Times > Dining & Wine > Children on the Side, Baby Sitters on the Menu
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/dining/02PLAY.html?8hpib
Last November, PlayDine opened downstairs at Big City Bar & Grill, 1600 Third Avenue (90th Street). The space is used as a late-night lounge, but Mr. Lowenstein convinced Stephen Ryan, an owner, to try his fledgling operation in the daytime and early evenings. For $10, a child between 18 months and 9 years old may play in the space before and after a meal, for as long as his or her parents are seated in the restaurant. (Two children are $9 each; three children are $8 each, and tipping is encouraged.
Hotels demand results from their restaurants
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2004/05/31/focus3.html
“At the highest level, food is the soul of the hotel,” said Arnstad from her offices at the Ashland Springs Hotel in Southern Oregon. “Of course, you have to be brilliant on the sleep side. Your guests expect the best,” said Arnstad, a board member of the 160-property Preferred Hotels and Resorts, “but the artistry and individual expression of a hotel is through its food and wine.”
Research also suggests that food can be a source of profit for the lodging industry. Between 1991 and 2001, the largest share of all tourist dollars spent in-state went for food, according to a January 2003 report prepared for the Oregon Tourism Commission by Portland market research firm Dean Runyan Associates. In 2002, the report states, visitors spent $1.4 billion on eating and drinking in Oregon.
How to be different
Mr. Propstra’s Burgerville. When the big, national fast-food chains moved into his neighborhood, George Propstra, founder of a Vancouver, Washington-based restaurant chain called Burgerville, knew he needed to do something different, reports Brian Libby in The New York Times. “We needed to focus on what we do well,” says Jack Graves, Burgerville’s operations chief, “and that’s our relationship with local growers and ranchers and dairies.” And so Burgerville, www.burgerville.com, which has about three dozen locations in Oregon and Southwest Washington, unleashed a parade of local seasonal specialties. [Read more…] about How to be different