In education we have a simple, but ultimately complicated, mandate: to prepare our students for the future they will inherit. In many foodservice operations the functional demands of running a business and the need to balance short-term profits and long-term fiscal health often trump such thinking.
When someone asks us to describe CDN, the first thing we say is that we're a family-owned business. In fact, we're one of the few family-owned businesses left in the industry, and this shapes our culture, from the products we offer to the way we care for our customers. Every customer, big and small, is important to us.
College foodservice continues to enjoy a real renaissance period. That's because the administrations leading today's institutions of higher learning see foodservice as doing more than providing sustenance on a plate-by-plate basis. They understand the social significance of breaking bread together represents a key attribute of the student life experience. That's why the design continues to migrate toward more dynamic living environments and away from the institutional approach of the past.
Chef, Matthew Kenney Cuisine, Santa Monica, Calif.
This month, we visit with Matthew Kenney, a raw food chef, author of 11 cookbooks, founder of the ?Matthew Kenney Culinary ?Academy for raw and living foods in ?Santa Monica and owner of the adjacent restaurant M.A.K.E. as well as Make Out, a fast-casual raw food concept in Culver City, Calif. Kenney is also the consulting chef/owner of The Gothic New England in Belfast, Me., a plant-based finer dining restaurant; DÁTIL & LIMÓN, a plant-based fast-casual and juice bar in Merida, Mexico; and White Lotus, a living food restaurant soon to open in Miami. Kenney has even taken his education abroad to Thailand in early 2015 through MK Culinary Asia launching at the Evason ?Hua Hin & Six Senses Spa.
It's midmorning, you are a foodservice operator just starting a staff meeting and the lights go out in your office. It's dark. A major disaster has affected the power grid, knocking out power to your area for 48 hours. What do you do?
An unofficial theme pervades this issue of Foodservice Equipment and Supplies magazine and I can describe it in one Hawaiian word that packs a lot of meaning: Kina'ole. This single word roughly translates into "doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, with the right person, with the right feeling, the first time."
Innovation is, without question, one of the most prominent buzz words in our vocabulary today. Business leaders and politicians alike cite the need to innovate when addressing what ails a company, industry or even a government. When pledging to improve things for their employees or constituents, these leaders promise to become more innovative in their approach, each with varying degrees of success.
When a foodservice operator opens the box on a newly purchased piece of equipment or a supply item it's doubtful the first thing they look for is the safety or sanitation seal. That's because they assume the manufacturers, importers and dealers have lived up to their end of the bargain by supplying safe products. Unfortunately, that's no longer a given.
When you think about your career — when you think about your industry — what is it that you think about most?
A huge responsibility naturally accompanies naming a particular brand Best in Class across each category of commercial foodservice equipment and supplies each year.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. If that is true, and I think it is, then competition has to be considered at least the older sibling of growth and innovation. Recent advancements in healthcare foodservice represent a prime example.
Channel conflict remains the subject of constant conversation in all corners of the foodservice industry. The nature of many business relationships among trading partners has changed in scope, eroding profit margins for some and vastly increasing them for others.
Lisette Coston is executive director of support services for Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa, Okla. She is also president-elect of the Association for Healthcare Foodservice (AHF).
The headline to our piece on the Field Museum in Chicago might have been, "The Best Things in the Field Museum are no Longer Confined to the Basement."
My first job in corrections was at a prison where we served the inmates cafeteria style using four lines. My second day on the job I was watching the food lines, standing with my back to the inmates entering the dining hall. From behind me a very deep and menacing (at least he thought he was) voice asked the question "What's this f$%@#%g s#@t?!" Not quite sure how to respond, I thought for a few seconds, straightened my shoulders and turned around to find myself staring up into the face of a very large inmate. With a smile on my face I responded, "Lunch."
September is National Food Safety Month. This is a great time to refresh our knowledge of HACCP Guidelines, what these mean to us as foodservice professionals, and the proper techniques to build an in-house food safety plan.
Leadership and management are two terms inextricably tied together. In fact, these terms are so closely associated that it's easy to mistake one for the other. But in order for all foodservice professionals to be successful in today's business environment, they need to be able to not only understand the differences between leadership and management but also be able to balance the two.
Although I am no expert on sustainability, it seems to me that that the best kind of recycled glass is that made from the shards of a glass ceiling.
Quick...what do the years 1983, 2002 and 2014 have in common? And, no, they do not correspond with the years my favorite blazer has been in style.
