When trying to assess the health of an industry, many people look to the macroeconomic factors that often impact performance. Two factors regularly linked to the foodservice industry include national employment levels and personal disposable income, among others.

Ask any foodservice operator and they will rightfully tell you their business is pretty complicated. But nowhere is that more the case than in today's healthcare foodservice industry.

For so many members of my generation, the lasting image of college foodservice remains a less than positive one. We entered meal periods hoping for the best but never truly knowing what we would get. Naturally, when looking at today's college foodservice environment, we can't help but marvel at the progress this industry segment continues to make.

Forget the talk about the impact Millennials and Generation Z continue to have on the foodservice industry. Among all the trends affecting today’s foodservice industry, technology has the most profound impact.

It's fairly common for people to refer to their co-workers as family. And that often happens with good reason. Start with the simple fact that in a given work week you likely spend as much or more time working with your work family as you do with your actual family.

All aspects of the foodservice industry love the romance of the entrepreneur. The story usually involves someone having a vision and the determination to see it through and applies equally to operators, consultants, dealers, reps and service agents.

People eat with their eyes first.

 Savvy operators will require more in the form of information and training.

Planning to renovate a commercial kitchen? Here are four steps critical to the success of any project.

The foodservice industry tends to be rather transient. Rarely a day goes by that we don’t receive word of someone changing companies for numerous reasons.

Beyond the varied menu and service styles, food halls often feature a retail component, which allows customers to take a portion of their experience home to enjoy later.

Foodservice really isn’t foodservice. In the recent past, as the name implies, foodservice operations simply provided food as a service to their customers, whether that took the form of a restaurant, a cafeteria, patient feeding, etc. Today, however, executing that menu represents but one small ingredient in a foodservice operation’s recipe for success.

In the foodservice equipment and supplies industry, evolution continues to take different forms. And at no time was that more evident than during the month of June.

Real growth continues to be hard to come by for the foodservice industry. In fact, overall customer traffic was flat through the first quarter of 2016, according to The NPD Group, a market research firm covering the foodservice industry. Revenues and customer traffic may be inching along, but one area growing at breakneck speed is labor costs.

Ask healthcare foodservice professionals about some of the challenges that keep them up at night and they will try to tell you their businesses are much like other industry segments. And, in a sense, they are right.

It’s hard to write a story about Ace Mart, FE&S’ 2016 Dealer of the Year without referencing its founder Norman “Gus” Gustafson. And that’s with good reason.

Of course, in order to specify the correct piece of equipment or supply item, foodservice operators and their supply chain partners need to understand which questions they should ask.

From now until Memorial Day, hardly a week will go by without a foodservice-related association hosting a conference for its members. Undoubtedly, these events will include some conversation about recruiting and retaining younger employees and, in the case of events hosted by members of the foodservice equipment and supplies community, there will be plenty of banter about what ails the supply chain.

When it comes to socializing, people love to discuss the latest restaurant they have tried. Just last week I was scrolling through one of my social media accounts and saw that a friend had posted the picture of a beer she was having with dinner that night. Being a hops and barley enthusiast myself, I stopped to take a quick look at what my friend was drinking, but it was where the consumption was taking place that really caught my attention. She was at a local supermarket — one with a pretty well established presence in the Chicago area.

One of the most fundamental elements of the customer experience in our industry is often the most overlooked when it comes to investing in our restaurants: the tabletop budget. Let me set the stage with one example. At Kendall College, our School of Culinary Arts runs an open-to-the-public fine-dining restaurant to provide our students with real-life experience.

For good reason, Chipotle has long been one of the standard bearers for fast-casual restaurants.

Chain restaurants will continue to push for better user interfaces that help maximize use of labor and ensure consistent production of menu items.

Unfortunately, while the quantity of information seems to be at an all-time high, the same can’t be said for the quality of information.

The foodservice industry seems stuck in a rut. 

As I write this, my beloved Chicago Cubs are enjoying an unprecedented renaissance under groovy manager Joe Maddon. As a lifelong Cubs fan, decades of shattered hopes remind me to enjoy the moment and not worry about what comes next. But what amazes me about this team is not so much that they are winning but how they are winning. And it strikes me that their success this summer contains a few lessons applicable to the foodservice industry.

It’s August and that means most companies are about to begin formulating their plans for the coming fiscal year, if they have not done so already. Corporate planning exercises can quickly become introverted experiences, meaning it is easy to focus only on the company when trying to move forward.

It is tempting to make the recipe for success more complicated than it needs to be. When that happens, businesses from all segments of the foodservice industry can lose focus on what truly drives success: creating great customer experiences.

Celebrity chefs and celebrity chef wannabes have carved out a place for themselves in today’s pop culture scene. Yet one group of culinarians consistently overlooked are those individuals serving in the healthcare foodservice community, which has become one of the most sophisticated operator segments there is.