Subway rolls out a design update. Sodexo expands its East Coast operations. Restaurant sales keep rolling. These stories and more This Week in Foodservice.

Everyone loves a good comeback story, and a new Chicago restaurant is hoping to write lots of them.

Last week Mac’s Deli opened in the city’s West Loop neighborhood serving a menu of Windy City staples, including Chicago-style hot dogs, Italian beef sandwiches and more, per a Chicago Tribune story. What makes this opening notable, though, is staff of Mac’s Deli consists of individuals in recovery from drug addiction. The restaurant was opened by the Haymarket Center, which helps people with their recoveries. In fact, Mac’s Deli was built into the side of Haymarket Center’s building, which means employees are literally steps away from other support services they need. Chicago’s Vienna Beef helped train the employees at Mac’s Deli.

This is one of many heartwarming stories taking shape in the industry, as operators continue to innovate with a purpose greater than profits. Tale, for example, Gerry’s Café in Arlington Heights, Ill., a suburb Northwest of Chicago. This non-profit coffee shop employs adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and provides its team with extensive training experience, teaching transferable job and life skills and paying competitive wages, as the owners of Gerry’s Café explained during the 2024 Foodservice Equipment and Design Thought Leadership Summit in Chicago.

No doubt, restaurants often become community cornerstones and places like Mac’s Deli and Gerry’s Café will only enhance that role.

Foodservice News

• Blackstone has acquired Jersey Mike’s. Jersey Mike’s Founder and CEO Peter Cancro will maintain a significant equity stake and continue to lead the business. The partnership with Blackstone will enable Jersey Mike’s to accelerate its expansion across U.S. and international markets, as well as its continued investment in technology and digital transformation.

• Ghost restaurants face a spooky future. After posting sales growth of 12% in 2023, sales for this segment will decline to 9% real growth in 2024 and 6% in 2025, per Datassential. A variety of factors continue to conspire against ghost restaurants, including complex delivery logistics, reliance on third-party delivery apps and consumer hesitation, per Datassential. That said, ghost restaurants do have a few things going for them, including lower overhead costs, high demand for delivery and the ability to run multiple concepts.
• Subway will roll out an update of its global restaurant design in 2025. Known as Fresh Forward 2.0, the new design features updated brand personality and vibrant décor elements and signage, elevated lighting, and warmer wood tones, as well as better support of Subway's growing digital sales channels. The chain is testing self-serve kiosks, order-ready screens and kitchen display systems in markets around the world, with the goal of offering added convenience for guests and streamlining restaurant operations for franchisees and their teams.
• In a deal valued at $650 million, Wonder has acquired GrubHub. Wonder operates food halls in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Wonder customers who order online can do so from multiple restaurants all on the same ticket, per a company release. Once the deal is approved, which is expected to be during the first quarter of 2025, Wonder will integrate GrubHub into its operations. The release announcing the deal said GrubHub works with more than 375,000 merchants and 200,000 delivery partners. And all Wonder locations will be available for delivery through GrubHub. JustEat Takeaway purchased GrubHub for $7 billion in 2020 and had been trying to sell it for several years, per multiple published reports.
• Chipotle is getting sued by one of its shareholders due to inconsistent portion sizes, per a CNN story. The class action lawsuit alleges the fast-casual chain understated customers’ feelings about the inconsistent portion sizes. As a result, the value of the chain’s common shares was negatively impacted. This comes during a time when consumers are on high alert for shrinkflation, which is the downsizing of products without lowering their cost.
• Sodexo fortified its operations in the Eastern U.S. by acquiring CRH Catering. The deal is expected to close during the first half of Sodexo’s 2025 fiscal year. CRH Catering is a 57-year-old full-time industrial catering and foodservice company that covers Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia and parts of West Virginia, New Jersey, and North Carolina. CRH offers cashless vending, operates its own bottled water plant, and works in office coffee sales. CRH Catering’s commissary will also accelerate strategic synergies between offsite production and convenience in key Northeast and Mid-Atlantic markets, per a release announcing the deal.
• Back-of-the-house technology may play a critical role in fueling Cava’s continued growth. The fast-casual Mediterranean-themed chain has rolled out an AI-fueled labor deployment model that helps its restaurants better anticipate when to prep, batch cook and schedule, as Restaurant Business reports. The chain is also open to exploring the use of an automated make line, which is something other fast-casual chains like Chipotle and Sweetgreen are using. In Cava’s case, though, it would be a secondary digital make line.
• Eater has come up with a list of the 14 best new restaurants of the year. The list represents “a collection of restaurant folk – including chefs, hosts, line cooks and servers – who are doing exactly what they want to be doing because, hell, it’s now or never.”
• Expect celebrating the holidays to take on more of a global flavor this year – at least for young adults. In fact, 89% of the young adults participating in a survey from Chicago-based research firm Y-Pulse said they enjoy exploring new cultures through food. And 82% said they like to share foods that reflect their heritage.

Economic News

• U.S. retail and foodservice sales increased 0.4% in October compared to the previous month, per the advance estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau. This also represents a 2.3% increase from October 2023. The Census Bureau attributes the growth to an uptick in sales of vehicles and electronic items, per a Reuters story for Yahoo! Finance. Total sales for the August 2024 through October 2024 period increased 2.3% from the same period a year ago. October retail trade sales grew 0.4% from September 2024, and 2.6% from last year. Sales at eating and drinking places grew by 0.7% for the month for a total of $97/3 billion, per an analysis from the National Restaurant Association. October was the seventh consecutive monthly increase in sales at eating and drinking places.
• The Consumer Price Index increased 0.2% in October, the same increase as in each of the previous three months, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. These increases were in line with economists' projections for the month, per CNBC. Over the last 12 months, inflation increased 2.6%. The index for shelter rose 0.4% in October, accounting for more than half of the increase. The food index also increased over the month, rising 0.2% as the food at home index increased 0.1% and the food away from home index rose 0.2%.
• The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.2% in October, per data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Final demand prices advanced 0.1% in September and 0.2% in August. The index for final demand moved up 2.4% for the 12 months ended in October. The BLS attributes most of the October increase to a 0.3% advance in the index for final demand services. Prices for final demand goods inched up 0.1%.
• A confluence of factors led to a 0.3% in industrial production in October, per the latest data from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Factors fueling the decline include the strike at Boeing and Hurricane Milton. Productivity declined 0.5% in September. At 102.3% of its 2017 average, total industrial production in October was 0.3% less than its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization moved down to 77.1% in October, a rate that is 2.6 percentage points less than its long-run (1972–2023) average.