Party on, industry

Listen hard at the restaurant show and you can almost hear the crack of the economic freeze as it starts to break.

Aisles are packed, booths are busy, and attendees are asking for product demo’s and more information, not for another sample to munch as they scout for more freebies.

I saw franchisees and executives of a sizeable chain descend on the booth of a supplier with a $32,000 piece of technology. There was no doubt the seller was going to get the contract, which would probably run far into six figures.

Then again, the exhibitor had already sold the equipment on display. A sign identified the buyer, a high-volume independent.

A walk down the aisles devoted to natural and organic products provided a looped rerun of that scene. Operators were asking precise questions about cost and supply logistics, which meant they were there to buy.

The show is the strongest sign I’ve seen that the industry is bouncing back, hard and fast.

Day One take-aways from the NRA show

What I learned so far during the NRA show:

The McDonald’s at McCormick Place doesn’t have a Dollar Menu. Reports that it’s the test site for a new Twenty Menu are probably just rumors.

College and university foodservices are way ahead of restaurants in composting food waste, but they face an inherent and peculiar problem>. “It’s widely done [on campuses], but it’s typically led by a student, a champion. So—guess what?—every four years they have a change in leadership,” explained Richard Young, senior engineer and director of education for the Food Service Technology Center, a facility that tests commercial kitchen equipment to determine its efficiency.

Young explained that schools feel the need to put it in place so they avert that four-year freshman-to-senior cycle.
His comments came during a presentation at the Conserve Solutions Center, a new feature of this year’s show. The section of the show floor features several green-focused suppliers and is presenting a slew of eco-minded education programs. Young participated in a session that highlighted a grant program run by the Hobart Center for Foodservice Sustainability. The prize is awarded annually to what the judges choose as the most innovative and well-educated sustainability project of the year (details are available here).

Truck restaurants will drive away with new respect and plenty of leads on would-be partners. The rolling-restaurant phenomenon officially moves mainstream with this year’s show. I had the good fortune of serving on two panels with Scott Baitinger, one of the principals in Milwaukee’s Street-za pizzeria-on-wheels, and it may be the closest I come to rubbing elbows with Mick Jagger or other rock stars. He drew a tremendous number of questions, and then was besieged with attendees afterward, pressing him for information. Others mobbed his truck, which was part of the show’s Truck Food Stop area. Once blasted as roach coaches, truck restaurants may be the hottest concept to emerge from the convention.

When trends collide

If you heard a sonic boom yesterday, it might’ve been the collision of two mega-trends. The National Restaurant Association’s annual convention hasn’t even officially started, but it’s clear the proliferation of truck restaurants and move to local purchasing will be major themes.

The two coincided during a presentation at the Marketing Executives Group’s meeting, a two-day get-together that traditionally precedes the main show. Scott Baitinger , a recent entrant in the booming truck-restaurant business, was explaining one of the twists to his venture, a pizzeria-on-wheels called Street-za. The truck will soon be zipping around its home base of Milwaukee to pick up whatever tomatoes and other produce home-gardeners would like to sell. “Then we’ll sell it back to them as pizza,” explained Baitinger.

Baitinger’s presentation was far from the only mention of truck restaurants and local purchasing during the MEG conference. Speakers cited restaurants-on-wheels ranging from the famous Kogi truck to the Blizzard Mobile that Dairy Queen plans to roll this summer.

Others noted that chains aren’t sitting idle as the industry shifts to local purchasing. One pointed out that McCormick & Schmick’s has long purchased local seafood. Now the dinnerhouse chain is featuring local produce in its salads, a MEG speaker noted.

The topics will be frequent areas of focus during the convention. Baitinger, for instance, will be discussing his mobile restaurant during the Restaurant Executive Breakfast at 8:30 tomorrow morning in room N427 (attendance is limited to chain executives). The session, which I’m moderating, will also feature Susan Shield of Jamba Juice, speaking about licensing and catering, and John Inserra of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, who’ll address educational sessions for consumers as a new revenue stream for restaurants.

What’s more, Baitinger’s truck restaurant will be one of several featured in a special section of the show floor, The Food Truck Spot.

Local purchasing will be the focus of several education sessions at the show, including “’Local’ Making You Loco?,” Sunday, 2 to 3:30 p.m., and “Are Sourcing Local and Sustainable Food Mutually Exclusive?”, Monday, 2 to 3:30. All education sessions will be held in the North building at McCormick Place.

Hope to see you at tomorrow’s breakfast session.

Orlando starts its push for the NRA show

Looks as if Orlando is starting a full-court press to become the next host of the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention.

The Florida city ran an ad Friday in SmartBriefs, the NRA’s daily e-mail newsletter for restaurateurs. “Meet in Orland, Save $20 million?” read the headline of the pitch.

It explained that the Society of the Plastic Industry will save that much by shifting its big trade show to Orlando in 2012 and 2015. The savings, along with the service provided by the city’s convention center, “led SPI to leave Chicago after nearly 40 years and meet in Orlando,” the ad explained.

The NRA has held its trade show in Chicago for about 60 years. It’s committed to holding the mega-event in the Windy City’s McCormick Place through 2011. The association has worked with the convention center and the unions that serve it to bring down the cost of exhibiting, a complaint of some participants.

Before the NRA re-upped with Chicago in 2006, Orlando and Las Vegas had reportedly tried to land the convention.

The NRA show is one of the nation’s largest trade expositions, with attendance typically topping 75,000, not counting exhibitor personnel. Last year’s turn-out was dampened by the economy to about 38,000, with another 15,500 supplier company representatives also participating.

Giving credit where credit is overdue

Contrary to what you might suspect, the National Restaurant Association’s annual mega-show in Chicago is not subsidized by Dr. Scholl’s. Indeed, you may be surprised to learn the conference, one of the largest in the nation, is largely the responsibility of one person, though Mary Pat Heftman has put together a stellar team.

Even if that group was bigger than NASA’s usual launch squad, it’d still be undermanned, given how much has to be done. In truth, it’s more the size of a Roman candle ignition team. Yet the convention comes together every year—in laudable fashion, judging from the 30 or so I’ve witnessed. Insiders say the key reason is Heftman.

Granted, I strongly suspect that Heftman is a cyborg, if not multiple people cloned by the NRA from a master Mary Pat to handle all the daunting details. Most of us would be doing asylum time if we so much as oversaw the badges for such a gathering. Yet you routinely see her throughout the show, darting here and there, often ready with a quip and a warm hello. This is a show with several thousand exhibitors and tens of thousands of attendees. It’s not natural, I’m telling you.

Turns out we were right to suspect that Heftman is out of the ordinary. The Trade Show Exhibitors Association has just announced her nomination for Favorite Show Manager of the year, one of the top honors in her field.

At the same time, the NRA show itself has been nominated for Best Show of 2009 honors. It's a double tribute to Heftman, her staff and her colleagues.

Exhibitors are being asked to vote for which of the nominees deserves the top accolade in each category . If you’ve exhibited at or attended the NRA convention in Chicago, I suspect you may have a favorite. Do the right thing and cast your votes at the TSEA's online ballot booth.

And don’t forget to let all the clones have a vote.

Closing the deal: Help for vendors

One of my favorite people is Ernie Renaud, a longtime restaurant-chain executive and an even longer-time attendee of the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention in Chicago.

Ernie, now in his 80s, has been attending the show since the mid-1960s, when it was a collection of booths on Navy Pier. He was there again this May, which made everything right in my universe, since I could ask him once again about his collection.

The “collection” is a shoebox of business cards he’s amassed over the years from salesmen whose booths he’s shopped. Ernie would ask them to get in touch with him after the show because he was interested in a product or service for whatever chain he was representing at the time (the list ranges from Jerry’s Diner to Long John Silver’s to Fazoli’s). The ones who never responded had their cards put in the collection. It was a marvel to Ernie that they never so much as made a follow-up attempt to get his considerable business.

That situation comes to mind because I just learned of a webinar the NRA will be offering this afternoon to those who exhibited at the show. It’s called the Exhibitor Success Institute: Post-Show Success, and it’s offered for free. Among the topics slated for discussion is the use of social media to spread the word about a vendor’s brand.

I’m going to participate, in large part out of curiosity. I can’t figure out why a company would invest considerable time and money in exhibiting at a show, only to squander opportunities by failing to make the most of the sales opportunity.

I encountered the problem firsthand when I was a co-presenter of the Menus conference for Restaurant Business magazine, which I served as editor. In attendance would be dozens of menu planners for restaurant chains, including McDonald’s. Yet our exhibitors would invariably complain about not having enough exposure and access. They’d be in their booths, waiting for prospects to come to them. Clearly they weren’t exploiting the opportunity that was gift-wrapped for them. And these were big companies with extensive sales forces.

It got so bad that decided to hold a sales primer for the exhibitors—only to catch guff that we were talking down to veteran marketers. So that idea was dropped.

The NRA appears to be taking a much more sophisticated tack in providing support to exhibitors. It’s a laudable effort that certainly appears to be worth the required time investment.

A spokesperson for 13M restaurant employees

From time to time, the National Restaurant Association and its state affiliates have waged marketing campaigns to encourage dining out. If the groups are considering a similar drive during these trying times, they should save their money and just lift a snippet from a video aired by a panelist at the association’s just-completed convention in Chicago. All they’d have to do is run the clip with a caption reading, “This is the person you’d be helping.” 

The video was run by Burgerville, a 40-unit fast-food chain, during an educational session on the top-line benefits of pursuing sustainability. The segment featured an employee identified as a “team member,” who earnestly explains how she looks up to the managers who have been her bosses and tries to model her life after theirs.  

“I didn’t really have that when I was growing up,” she says to the camera. 

Now, she says, she has her own house and some money together.  

I really, really doubt that she was reading off a teleprompter.   

Let Madison Ave. stick with ads for breakfast cereal and car insurance. The restaurant industry has stumbled on an eloquent spokeswoman who can articulate its genuine economic importance. All it needs to do is remind consumers that patronizing restaurants helps far more people than just the stockholders of McDonald’s and Darden.

The top surprises of NRA Show '09

That familiar foot pain is back, and I still haven’t shaken my persona non grata status at the Nathan’s booth (like there’s really a Chicago law on how many franks you can give away to one person). But there were some definite surprises to this year’s National Restaurant Show:

It was a high-commerce show. There’s no doubt that turnout was down considerably from prior years. But vendors say the restaurateurs on the show floor were there to do business. Ones who I knew cited lists of what they wanted to see, from dishes to desserts to new apple products. It seems the economic downturn filtered out the half-hearted shoppers who really came for the free pens and food giveaways, or to say hello to old friends. The ones who still came were there to buy, an assertion heard repeatedly.

Even advocates are airing second thoughts about always buying local. Heightened interest in buying seasonal produce or other types of supplies from local providers was plainly evident during educational presentations or even off-the-cuff conversations. But some converts voiced second thoughts. For one thing, they said, locally grown doesn’t always equate to better quality or flavor. Others noted that some jurisdictions are now requiring foodservice operators that do business with the government to buy equipment and supplies from concerns in the area. That can take quality considerations out of the process, and the price could be a wallop if there's insufficient competition to hold down the charges.

Green and grey can co-exist. Most of the educational sessions I’d selected to attend were focused on green matters, rousing fears of being surrounded by skateboarders in iPod buds who’d call me Gramps. Yet the sessions, which tended to draw well, were attended by the tattooed and un-pierced alike. Interest in sustainability may still be more common among younger dudes and dudettes, but the industry’s green movement is snagging interest from all age groups.

Remember swine flu? The big fear of a few weeks earlier seemed like a dim memory during the show. Sure, there were the 130 hand-sanitizer dispensers that Ecolab had installed for the event, and clearly they were getting a workout. But I had only one person who balked at shaking hands, and I didn’t see one mask. Nor was the matter a common topic of conversation. I attended one education session on H1N1, and it was sparsely attended.

Viral marketing has arrived for foodservice. One of the most-talked-about presentations during Convention Week was the explanation of how a supplier called BlendTec had created a global marketing campaign with a $50 budget. As executives explained to the Marketing Executives Group , whose conference leads into the NRA Show, the solution for the company was YouTube. It posted videos that showed a lab-coated representative using a BlendTec blender to grind up things like an iPhone. Before long, fans were contacting the firm with requests of what they wanted to see minced.

The gee-wiz aspect of the campaign was demonstrated at MEG by a BlendTec representative, who turned a garden-variety garden rake into sawdust with the blender he had on stage. As a gift, he was given a box of chattering teeth--which he then put into the blender.

I didn’t attend the MEG conference, which is off the record for reporters in any case. But I heard about it from a number of people who attended. Virally, you might say.

Ted Turner on life as a bison

Ted Turner shared the business rationale behind his 20-million-acre bison-ranching operation during his appearance on a panel at the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago.

“We produce more male bisons than we need,” said the founder of CNN and the co-owner of the Ted’s Montana Grill casual-dining chain. “You only need one male for every 10 females to build your herd, so there’s a surplus. So…we eat them.”

“It’s tough being a male bison,” observed moderator Christopher Koetke, a.k.a. dean of the culinary program of Kendall College in Chicago.

“If you’re a surplus male, but not if you're a brood male,” retorted Turner. “They have it made.”

Goading green

There was a passing mention here, a quick aside there, an oh-by-the-way tangent to a speaker’s larger point. But the five or six references, coming on a single day of the restaurant show, suggest the industry may soon have to contend with a new dose of government agita, this time dealing with conservation.

At least two of the day’s presenters mentioned a growing interest among public officials in obliging restaurants to operate in a greener fashion. A representative of Energy Star, a federal resource for cutting energy consumption, advised restaurants to benchmark their demand on utilities in part to protect themselves from heightened government scrutiny. You want to be able to show what you’d done to conserve, just in case, she explained. But she didn’t specify why regulators or lawmakers might be gauging restaurants’ efforts to cut their power consumption, or what actions they may be contemplating.

A representative of IPC Subway, an independent purchasing cooperative for the chain, was far more explicit. Tina Fitzgerald, director of produce and social responsibility for IPC, cited interest by some nations, states and counties in outlawing certain types of containers or packaging materials, like plastic bags or plastifoam boxes. She noted that Canada is already levying a tax based on “how much packaging goes out the door,” a spur to cutting how many containers or wraps come in through the back.

Fitzgerald also recounted how Subway sent an energy-saving CFL bulb to every franchisee to encourage the replacement of less-efficient incandescent bulbs. She indicated that the franchisees have found religion, so to speak, and then commented that mandates might soon force the non-believers to make the changeover in any case.

I don’t think she meant the franchisor would levy that demand. The aside seemed to fit her point that governments are becoming more active in regulating green.

Re-thinking show etiquette in the swine-flu era

Rumors of exhibitors giving away logo’d face masks at the National Restaurant Association’s upcoming convention are completely unfounded. Ditto for the promise of free Tamiflu inoculations at one vendor’s booth.  I say that with complete assurance because I made up both notions. (Important note to vendors who now have a figurative light bulb above their heads: A copyright fee applies.)   

But more than a few of the social conventions evident at a trade show may well be reconsidered this time around. For instance, the convention is largely a series of awards ceremonies with several hundred booths, seminars and parties mixed in. A handshake is de rigueur for accepting whatever honor is being bestowed. Might that tradition become a victim of the outbreak?   

The same holds true for the obligatory grip-and-grin photo that accompanies each prize presentation. It’ll be a tough adjustment for photographers, so don’t be judgmental if you see a few shutterbugs sulking around the Jim Beam booth.   

You also have to wonder about the taxi line at McCormick Place, which can look around 3 o’clock or so like Section J of Wrigley Field.  Will people start leaving more space between themselves and the next person in the queue? That could extend the line by two or three more miles.   

My prediction: The Ecolab booth will be particularly busy this year as some attendees stop by and beg for a complete spray-down.