Murphy Signs Bill Supporting NJ Craft Breweries
Into Law. Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law today a bill requiring the state Division of Travel and Tourism to advertise and promote tours of breweries in New Jersey. “This is legislation that will undoubtedly promote economic activity in the state,” said NJBIA Chief Government Affairs Officer Chrissy Buteas. “New Jersey’s breweries are growing at a faster rate than our neighbors in Pennsylvania, but at a slower rate than in New York. Promotion of our well-regarded breweries will help New Jersey improve regional competitiveness in this industry.” According to the language of the bill, the Division of Travel and Tourism is to identify a series of breweries to be a part of a brewery trail. The division would create no less than three brewery trails to be identified for the program and special consideration will be taken for those who are geographically close to other breweries or have a specific theme or are surrounded by the arts, cultural, historical, entertainment, or other tourism destinations.
27 States Lost Restaurant Jobs
In August 2021. Job growth in the restaurant industry stalled in August, ending a 7-month period in which employers added nearly 1.4 million jobs. Despite the solid gains in recent months, eating and drinking places* remain nearly 1 million jobs – or 8% – below their pre-pandemic employment peak. On the state level, restaurant employment was a mixed bag in August, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia added restaurant jobs between July and August, while employment levels in Wyoming were essentially unchanged. Twenty-seven states saw restaurant payrolls contract in August, with job losses primarily concentrated in the southeast and northeast regions of the country.
Payment Innovation Takes Center Stage for Restaurants
Operators are facing increasingly tough decisions about their tech investment. From operational necessity to strategic imperatives, it’s time to pay more than lip-service to payment innovation. As the battle to rebuild custom commences, the quick-service restaurant industry is arming up with new commerce tools as a central part of their recovery strategy. While limited-service venues continue to recover lost revenue from COVID-19 disruption, their leaders are facing increasingly tough decisions about their tech investment. Before COVID, the industry was predominantly cash-based. Many brands were reluctant to invest in innovative payments and data-commerce ahead of the curve. This meant that they lagged behind other retail sectors in terms of integrating physical, digital, and mobile channels and updating their payment systems. And they are not alone. A recent study from J.P. Morgan and FreedomPay revealed that almost two in three (63 percent) of U.S. retail and hospitality leaders are dealing with issues around tech-investment direction, and where best to allocate resources—from POS and ecommerce platforms to data analysis and mobile apps.
The New Rules of Dining Out
How to become a five-star restaurant guest in the new era of hospitality. Dining out after my second COVID-19 vaccine jab felt a little like clipping a climbing rope onto a harness and walking out to a rock ledge with a thousand-foot drop. Will this thing really keep me safe? This past spring, as the country began to reopen, I took public health guidance from the CDC and mask-wearing cues from restaurant staff. Restaurant Editor Khushbu Shah came off the road after scouting the 2021 class of Food & Wine Best New Chefs about the time when I began to rappel off the rock and dine out in earnest. Even though a few experiences proved frustrating, they ultimately re-kindled my love for the people who work in restaurants. Going out to eat right now sometimes means that we’re left to our own devices, quite literally. This summer in New York City, while entering a new cocktail bar known for its fried chicken sandwich, I filled out a QR code–generated contact-tracing form on my phone. The server told me the kitchen was closing soon and asked me to order quickly via another QR code, a tiny, pixelated sticker on a tiny black bottle of hand sanitizer. The venue was so dark that I had to hold the bottle up to a lamp in order to pull up the menu on my phone. Then, I had to shout my order through my mask so the server could hear it over the loud music. Cue the tiny violin.
Coca-Cola Research Reveals
What guests want post-covid. Six major themes are expected to drive restaurant operator profitability and beverage attachment post-COVID, according to the Coca-Cola 2021 Fountain Foodservice Beverage Strategy Survey. The themes include: (i) pent-up demand; (ii) off-premise growth; (iii) expectation for ease and convenience; (iv) need for reassurance; (v) trust in fountain beverages; and (vi) assortment optimization. “After more than a year battling the coronavirus pandemic, consumers have begun thinking ahead toward what life will look like post-COVID,” said Diana Retter, Director, Commercial & Portfolio Insights, North America Operating Unit, The Coca-Cola Company. “While most consumers do not expect the pandemic to end in 2021, they are already considering their future lifestyles, including dining behavior.”
Employers May Face More Monetary Penalties
For tip theft under final rules. Employers will face more financial penalties for tip-theft violations under a final rule scheduled to be published Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. The rule, published in the Federal Register and scheduled to take effect in 60 days, restores the department’s ability to assess civil money penalties against employers who take tips earned by their workers. Currently, under the rule revised during the Trump administration, employers face fines if tip theft is deemed “repeated or willful.” But under the finalized rule, the department has broader authority to determine when a violation is willful, aligning the regulations more with applicable precedent. Employers face civil penalties of $1,100 when they keep employees’ tips, the department said.
Outdoor Dining Saved My Business
Now we must save open restaurants. When COVID hit in March of 2020 and restaurants were shut down, I, along with my business partners Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer, figured our restaurant King would be closed for, at most, a month. Then two months dragged to three, and all we could do was watch the news from our homes and worry, most obviously about the pandemic that was decimating our city and the world, but also about everything else. The rent, which we had stopped paying and had no way to pay back without sales. Our staff, whom we’d had to furlough and who couldn’t get through to apply for unemployment. Whether pests were running rampant in our empty kitchen. Whether the ovens had been properly turned off. Restaurants are not meant to remain lifeless. The numbers simply didn’t work. We knew we’d have to close the doors on the restaurant we’d built just five years earlier. And then, that same month, Mayor de Blasio announced that the Open Restaurants program would become permanent. This is the only reason that King is still open today.
Nothing Chicken About Opening a Restaurant in a Pandemic
Read their story. Rich Berroa leads a double life. By day, he and his wife, Claudia, run Claudy’s Kitchen, a Peruvian quick service restaurant in The Bronx, N.Y. At night, he’s a paramedic for the fire department. The jobs, both gratifying, couldn’t be more different, he says. Hispanic businesses turn the tables on COVID-19. The restaurant, which specializes in Peruvian chicken and flan, started out as a stand at local street fairs, where Claudia, an accomplished chef, sold her food to the community. The husband-and-wife duo were on track to open their first brick-and-mortar in 2019, but delays pushed them to June 2020—during the height of the pandemic. The good news was the couple always planned to focus on takeout business—an 80% off-premises/20% on-premises split from the get-go—so when restaurants were forced to pivot to all takeout and delivery, they were prepared. They’d already done their homework on packaging, determining which styles and materials worked best for their menu. Despite never running a restaurant before, the Berroas won a Michelin Bib Gourmand award this year, for serving “great food at reasonable prices.” Claudy’s, he says, is a labor of love, maybe more so because of the challenges they’ve navigated since opening.
Did You Know?
National Flood Insurance Program summary of coverage for commercial property. Flood insurance covers direct physical loss caused by flood. In simple terms, a flood is an excess of water on land that normally is dry. The official definition used by the NFIP is “A general and temporary condition of partial or complete inundation of two or more acres of normally dry land area or of two or more properties (at least one of which is your property) from: (i) overflow of inland or tidal waters; (ii) unusual and rapid accumulation or runoff of surface waters from any source; (iii) mudflow; or (iv) collapse or subsidence of land along the shore of a lake or similar body of water as a result of erosion or undermining caused by waves or currents of water exceeding anticipated cyclical levels that result in a flood as defined above.”
Employee Tip
Dishwashing is not an art. The daily diligence of dish washing may not bring five-star reviews, but it will certainly help avoid a lot of one-star reviews. It never hurts to refresh your thinking about one of the most mundane tasks in your restaurant. Step one in this week’s National Food Safety Month topic is keeping the dishwashing machine clean, inside and out. After that, be sure your staff properly prepares the wares, soaking and scraping as needed. Once the dishes are in, don’t overload. And once they’re out, let them air-dry. Drying towels pick up contaminants quicker than you’d think.
Bielat Santore & Company – Restaurant Industry Daily Alerts
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RESTAURANT – BANQUET FACILITY FOR SALE
Historical restaurant with large banquet capabilities; extremely large kitchen able to handle a la carte and service large scale banquets simultaneously. Centrally located in a quaint Middlesex County town. Priced aggressively to sell.
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