Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

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Winter 2019

Restaurant Foodservice News Official Magazine of the Culinary Federation

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contents Winter 2018 VOL. 9 NO. 4

CR&B SHOW WRAP-UP 50 Showing Off 52 Mentorship Finding Your Tribe 54 Culinary Education Culinary School is Growing Up

13

56 Local Food Farm to Table to Sustainability

COVER STORY

FEATURES

58 Institutional Foodservice Institutionalized

28 Back to Basics Why Mastering the Fundamental’s the Key to Marketing

13 Dinner Supplement Going Global

60 Characteristics of Success The Flexible Five

19 Cleaning Supplies Going to School

64 Technology Different Tech, Different Takes

DEPARTMENTS

22 Cooking Oil The Skinny on Fat

66 Bar Trends Q&A: Jeremiah Batucan

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

68 Product Highlights Innovation Inundation

4 Editor’s Note Time Will Tell 6 Canadian Trailblazer Retiring a Stereotype 8 Chef Q&A John MacNeil 70 Crunching Numbers Marketing by Numbers

(FROM OUR PARTNERS)

24 Turn Up the Volume

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

By Heritage Parts

37 The Culinary Federation’s À LA MINUTE

27 Point, Click, Eat

By Flanagan Foodservice

34 Consistent Quality, Every Meal

By Reuven International

47 Shining a Light on Autism

By St. Louis Bar & Grill

EDITOR'S NOTE

&

Canadian

Restaurant Foodservice News The official publication of the Culinary Federation, RestoBiz.ca, RestoBizBYTES and RestoBizGuide.

PUBLISHER: Chuck Nervick chuckn@mediaedge.ca

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Nick Nervick nickn@mediaedge.ca

CRFN, REVISED

T

his issue is a bit different from previous editions. While we still have our staple features, we’ve also dedicated a sizeable section of the magazine to MediaEdge’s inaugural Canadian Restaurant & Bar Show, which was held at the end of October (and which we recovered from through November).

To recap, the CR&B Show was a feature-packed event with hundreds of exhibitors, cooking and bartending competitions, a series of panel discussions and more. We wanted to produce an event that industry professionals didn’t just attend, but an event they engaged with, learned from and networked at. The goal wasn’t just to produce another trade show; the goal was change what a trade show could be. The CR&B team pulled it off, and next year will be even better.

The CR&B Show isn’t the only change, either. In 2019, Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News is revamping its industry coverage as well. Our bread-and-butter sections, like our cover stories, foodservice focuses and mealtime supplements are all sticking around, but readers can expect a refreshed list of columns and a dedicated cannabis update in every issue — the legalized sale of edible cannabis is expected in 2019, and we want to be ready. We’re sure you do, too.

Since this issue is already a bit different, consider it a head start on 2019, as well.

For our chef Q&A, we spoke to Calgary’s John MacNeil, founder of reTreat Edibles (pg. 8), which sells baking mixes designed to have cannabis added to them — think of them like proto-edibles. MacNeil, who both trained in Michelin-rated restaurants and has a licence to grow cannabis, is better positioned than most to dive into what will surely be a booming market. Past that, pore through this issue for other great content, including: • “Back to Basics,” and why going for the latest marketing trend might be a mistake (pg. 28); • Our Trailblazer feature, “Retiring on a Stereotype” (pg. 6), on Delmanor’s Sheldon Gould, and how retirement communities are quietly serving some of the best food in the business; • And, as promised, our CR&B Show wrap-up coverage (starting on pg. 49), with stories told with the help of our moderators and panellists.

We may be changing, but our commitment to covering foodservice, providing a platform for industry experts and delivering insight and advice to our readers isn’t — that’s in our DNA.

Gregory Furgala Managing Editor

4 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

MANAGING EDITOR: Gregory Furgala gregf@mediaedge.ca DIGITAL MEDIA DIRECTOR: Steven Chester stevenc@mediaedge.ca

ART DIRECTOR: Annette Carlucci

WEB DESIGNER: Rick Evangelista

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Magazine Editorial Advisory Board Jason Bangerter

John Lettieri

Executive Chef, Langdon Hall Country House Hotel and Spa

President and CEO Hero Certified Burgers

Donna Bottrell, RD

Ryan Marquis

Owner, Donna Bottrell Food Consulting

Corporate Chef, CW Shasky

Andrea Carlson

Gary McBlain

Chef/Owner, Burdock and Co.

National Director of Culinary Services, Amica Mature Lifestyles Inc.

Connie DeSousa and John Jackson

Brent Poulton

Co-owners/chefs, Charcut/Charbar

CEO, St. Louis Bar and Grill

Jeff Dover

Matt Rolfe

Principal, fsSTRATEGY

CEO and Hospitality Leadership Coach/Speaker, Results Hospitality

PRESIDENT: Kevin Brown

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT:

Chuck Nervick

Published by: MediaEdge Communications Inc. 5255 Yonge Street, Suite 1000 Toronto, Ontario M2N 6P4 Tel: 1-866-216-0860 Fax: 416-512-8344 E-mail: info@mediaedge.ca • Website: www.restobiz.ca Copyright 2018 Subscription Rates: Canada: 1 year, $50*, 2 years, $90*, US $75, International $100 Single Copy Sales: Canada: $12* * Plus applicable taxes Publications Mail Agreement No: 40033126 PAP Registration No. 10983 ISSN 1494-7625. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program towards our mailing costs.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News or the editorial staff. Although every care will be taken of material submitted for publication, Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News, its servants or agents accept no responsibility for their loss, damage or destruction arising while in its offices, in transit or otherwise.

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RETIRING A STEREOTYPE

Most people don’t think much of the food in retirement communities.

Sheldon Gould, COO of Delmanor, is changing that.

By Gregory Furgala

6 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

CANADIAN TRAILBLAZER

Sheldon Gould would probably forgive you if you think the food in retirement communities is boring, bland or just plain bad. It’s not that the sentiment is well deserved — it isn’t — it’s just all too common, so he’s used to it. Gould is the COO of Delmanor, a community of retirement residences in the Greater Toronto Area, and reckoning with people’s preconceptions of what his chefs are up to is just part of his job. So if you’re touring one of his facilities and show up expecting the worst, his team will take it upon itself to prove you wrong.

“We do everything from scratch. We have Red Seal chefs in our kitchen,” says Gould, referring to the Canada-wide trade certification program. “We do kitchen tours quite often if we get a sense there’s that perception.”

While Gould oversees operations generally for Delmanor, his focus on delivering a top-tier culinary program to Delmanor’s five communities is the product of a long career in foodservice.

After graduating from the Ryerson Institute of Technology, now Ryerson University, in hospitality and tourism, Gould took a job with Canadian Pacif ic Hotels, the predecessor to Fairmont Hotels, and spent much of the ‘70s jumping from property to property across Canada. Gould moved into chain restaurants, first with the company that developed the nowubiquitous Earls concept, then later with The Keg Group. Then, in the early ‘90s, with a young family in tow, Gould made the jump into retirement communities. Somehow, very little changed.

“It’s still very much a continuation of the hotel business,” says Gould. “I remember a friend asking me after I’d been in the retirement business for a few months if I missed the restaurant business, and I said, ‘Well, it’s a different business, but I’m still serving 750 meals per day.’ So all those components are still there.” Gould was still in hospitality; it just went by another name.

Gould grew up on a working farm in Renfrew, a town about 100 kilometres west of Ottawa in rural Ontario. His life, one way or the other, has revolved around foodservice, which is especially important for retirement communities. The retirement sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and the Boomers driving that surge is increasingly paying attention to what they eat.

The retirement sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and the Boomers driving that surge is increasingly paying attention to what they eat.

Canadian Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1965, are now retiring in droves.

According to Statistics Canada, the number of adults who aged past the 65-year mark jumped by 20 per cent between 2011 and 2016. In 2016, for the first time in Canadian history, they outnumbered children up to 14 years of age, and that process is still closer to the beginning than the end. The earliest Boomers reached retirement age in 2011, which means the Boomer generation still has 12 years of retiring in front of it.

And as a cohort, a 2011 study by the NPD Group, a market research firm, found that 72 per cent of seniors said nutrition is important when planning a meal. Today’s retirees are unwilling to accept substandard fare, and they don’t shy away from making that fact known.

Jordan Bruce, a culinary services manager at Delmanor, recalled a trifle he had been making for years with zero complaints from guests. Then came Adelaide. “She almost rang my neck,” says Bruce.

The problem, Adelaide vocally let him know, was the lack of rum. Bruce acceded to her request and added rum to the next one.

“It was a huge hit across the community.

Now the menu says Adelaide’s trifle.” says Bruce. “She has a little swagger in her step.”

Other Delmanor chefs have had similar experiences. One got pointers on her butter chicken, while another, received a recipe for goulash from one of his guests. Many residents formally contribute to menu planning, while others grow vegetables on site that go into various dishes, and the chefs are encouraged to act on their residents tastes and preferences, which vary from community to community.

The residents have lifetimes of cooking and eating behind them. They know what good food is, and they expect it at home. Letting the quality of it deteriorate could spell disaster for the brand, just like it could for any restaurant.

“I’ve attended a lot of residents’ meetings where the bulk of the meeting was, ‘the soup’s too salty.’ Meanwhile, someone else observes that there isn’t enough salt in it,

and that goes back and forth for the whole meeting,” says Gould, recalling his handful of decades in the industry. By contrast, Gould says food is rarely brought up at Delmanor residents’ meetings, which is important not just for the residents, but for the Delmanor brand.

“I’ve run properties in the past that had very solid culinary programs,” says Gould, “but once the perception is there that they have food issues, it’s a very tough thing to turn around.”

Hence, attracting Red Seal talent with hotel and restaurant experience, the focus on fresh, local ingredients, seasonal menus and not just white-linen service, but in-house pubs serving comfort food, too. The now-prevalent popular food culture isn’t limited to Millennials and Gen-Zers snapping photos of brunch. It’s intergenerational, and for retirement communities that do foodservice well — that can adapt to residents’ preferences and culinary wisdom — a competitive edge. Constantly improving the culinary program isn’t just a feature of the brand; it’s a core component of its growth and sustainability.

Managing that growth is at the heart of Gould’s work and altogether not very different than his role in first jobs hospitality and foodservice.

Only now, if Gould or his team slips up, it’s not one-off bad night. It’s conf irmation of the preconceived notion that the food in retirement communities is no good. It’s why Gould and Divakar Raju, Delmanor’s corporate manager of culinary services, have already started building the culinary team for Delmanor’s next residence in Aurora, which starts construction in February.

“We really focus on trying to bring our people up from inside the company,” says Gould. “By the time we open, we have more Red Seal chefs that know our product, know our brand, and are able to move into the new communities.” Gould wants the new team up to his standard, which at this point, is justifiably high. www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 7

Q&

JOHN MACNEIL “THE SKY’S THE LIMIT RIGHT NOW”

Cannabis-infused edibles may not be legal yet, but some chefs, treading lightly, are exploring the space all the same.

John MacNeil doesn’t sell edible cannabis products; he can’t.

While cannabis was legalized in Canada last October, the federal government held off on legalizing the sale of edible cannabis as well, saying it still needs to develop adequate regulations. Despite the hurdle, MacNeil has found his niche in his start-up, reTreat Edibles, which sells baking mixes formulated to accommodate the addition of cannabis that, like wine grapes, is produced in a countless number of strains with endlessly varying flavour profiles.

MacNeil trained at the Culinary Institute of Canada, put in stints at Michelin-rated restaurants in Europe, spent a decade at Teatro, one of Calgary’s culinary institutions, opened the Black Pig Bistro and is now executive chef at the Beltliner restaurant. With his growing license in hand, few chefs are better-prepared to take advantage of Canada’s newest ingredient than MacNeil.

8 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

John MacNeil: My culinary career started in my small hometown of New Waterford, Nova Scotia. My father used to take me to the farmers’ market every Saturday or Sunday morning. We’d go and look at the vegetables, and I got to learn about quality and taste. I found it easy and wasn’t super academic in high school, so I enrolled in the culinary arts program at the Culinary Institute of Canada. It was a two-year program, and when I got there, it was just amazing.

I love food and I love people, so it was a great match.

After that, I did a six-month internship in Banff and worked with a Swiss chef. I went back to school and afterward went to Calgary. I thought it was great — it’s kind of a big city but with a small-town feel. A year later, I went to Switzerland for a year-and-a-half and worked at some Michelin-rated restaurants. I did a lot of pastries, garde manger and vegetable prep, and I got a much greater understanding of what terroir is and how food can really taste. I also worked in France, Germany and Spain.

I came back to Calgary and found myself at Teatro where I worked for ten years before leaving to open up Black Pig Bistro with my wife Allison, who’s also a chef. After that we sold to our business partners, went to Montreal, came back to Calgary and started reTreat Edibles.

I’m also the executive chef at the Beltliner. It’s a breakfast, brunch, lunch, kind-of-busy restaurant.

CRFN: How did you get into cannabis?

JM: I’ve always enjoyed cannabis and thought it was a really cool

space. It felt different. And anything that’s really new or different, and that people aren’t really exploring — I tend to go in that direction. There’s always something to learn, and when I came at it

as a chef, I had a new ingredient to use. It makes everything so much more special.

CRFN: How did reTreat Edibles start?

JM: reTreat started as an MBA project. We had to come up with a

business in an industry, and cannabis legalization was coming. At that time, we didn’t know edibles were going to be postponed until 2019, so we came up with a brownie mix that the user would add their own infused oil from their providers, and could be enjoyed by people with dairy and gluten allergies and dietary restrictions. We wanted to hit all points.

CRFN: How has your culinary background informed your approach to cannabis?

JM: With cannabis, the genetics of each strain are different,

and when the plant is cured and finished, you end up with all these wonderful aromas. Some of them have a pine flavour naturally found in herbs like rosemary. So Delahaze, which is a dominant cannabis strain and quite piney, would pair well with a rosemary-sea salt-chocolate chip cookie.

CRFN: What’re some of your favourite strains?

JM: Delahaze for sure, for its piney terpene. Something like the

Mango strain has a bitter cocoa taste to it. So, mixing this with reTreat’s Coconut Midnight Brownie pairs well because you have sweetness from the coconut and brown sugar molasses helps tame that bitterness. It’s almost like having European 65-70 per cent chocolate. www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 9

Q&

CRFN: You also have a growing license — how has that helped you work with product?

JM: It’s really broadened what I thought good cannabis

could be. When you go from seed to finished product, you have a greater understanding of what it took to get it to the plate. It’s very similar to doing farm-to-table, or ocean-to-table, or anything like that.

If you have a small grow or a couple plants, you can really broaden what you can do with the cannabis plant, rather than just being focused on the sensimilla-style growing of the plant [a style of growing that maximizes cannabis plants’ THC content]. You can end up with some seeds, grind them, and put them into your bread. The stalks can be dried and cured; I’ve put those into vinegars before. You wouldn’t get any THC basically from those — there’s not much to the stalk — but you end up with a soft, roasted, hay-like vinegar when you’re done. So there are many different options other than just looking at the flower bud itself.

CRFN: So when you’re growing cannabis you’re growing the female plant, but you can end up with male plants, and you can use the seeds and stalks for culinary purposes.

JM: Yeah, that’s if you end up with a male. People

typically don’t want that. They want to grow in the style of sensimilla, which is grown without the male’s presence so they don’t produce pollen. That’s why the buds get so heavy and sticky, because the trichomes — they’re trying to catch any open pollen that’s out there.

They do that, and that when they’re going to turn into a seed, or if the plant is stressed, it can also turn it into a hermaphrodite. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park says, “Life will find a way,” and it often does.

— but for the most part, it’s repetitive trial and error. Making the recipe one time, trying it a second time, and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking.

The mixes we have now, we’ve tried those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.

CRFN: You see cannabis baked goods, cannabis candies, cannabis drinks — how can we expect restaurants to use cannabis in their day-to-day cooking when the time comes?

JM: I think it would almost be like going to a bar. It

comes down to whether someone has ingested too much cannabis before coming to dinner, or if they’ve ingested alcohol, which affects how THC enters your body. I think private dinners, and places that people feel very safe when they’re experimenting — I think that could be really something. But, the sky’s the limit right now.

CRFN: So, what’s your favourite dish, and if cannabis isn’t involved already, how would you adapt it?

JM: I like chicken liver parfait mixed with cannabis

oil, but it really depends on how you want to feel. If you want to feel happy, maybe a strain with carolotholene, so it has something like black pepper to it. Something like that would be great with chicken liver parfait, or on a beef carpaccio. They’re clean, clear flavours. Girl Scout Cookie is one of my favourite strains. It’s high on that black pepper note.

CRFN: Outside of reTreat , what’s next?

JM: Every day presents new opportunities and

JM: There are a couple products that we’re working on

right now. Some are on the sweet side, some are on the savoury side. On the savoury side, we’re working on different dips, and different sauces, and we’re working on some other mixes, too, but I can’t get into great detail.

challenges. But I think cannabis-infused dinners are going to be something that’ll happen in the city and across Canada. If you have the framework in place, and the right certifications, as well as the right venue — that could really be something special. You could do some avant garde cooking and some really cool presentations, like using soy lecithin for the Delta-9 clouds, so it would be really airy—something like that.

CRFN: Is there anything you were hoping would work, but wouldn’t?

CRFN: So applying a lot of molecular gastronomy principles to it.

JM: A couple baked products that didn’t really turn out

JM: Yeah, presenting the ingredients in a different

CRFN: There must be some trial-and-error, so what’re you currently trying?

that well — things that could’ve been but weren’t

10 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

way. That’s what cooking is, right?

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The younger set has adventurous tastes and enjoys dining out — Canadian operators need to broaden their outlook to keep up.

By Sherry Tseng

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT: DINNER

Leftovers for dinner again? It doesn’t always have to be that way. There’s no question that dinner is an important daypart — it’s the second most-offered daypart among foodservice operators, according to Datassential’s Pulse 2018: Market Overview, and more than 90 per cent of restaurants offer dinner service.

With today’s up-and-coming generations more likely to eat out (Millennials, for example, are more likely than the general population to purchase meals away from home, according to Datassential’s Millennial Keynote Report), it can be hard to stand out in such a crowded landscape.

Inspiration can be taken from global cuisines, however, which often feature dinner entrées showcasing bold and exciting f lavours and ingredients.

Both Gen Z and Millennials are more likely than their older counterparts to experiment with new foods: more than 85 per cent of Gen Z consumers say they like trying new foods, while Millennials are much more likely to love global f lavours, according to the report. The key, then, to maintaining d i n ner t r a f f i c a nd s a le s i n a n increasingly competitive landscape is to stay on top of trending global dishes and consider how they might be adapted to suit your menu. Through Datassent ia l ’s MenuTrends tool, which tracks more than 500 Canadian menus and hundreds of thousands of U.S. menus, we’ve uncovered some of the fastest-growing global entrées on Canadian menus today — and there’s enough going on that you won’t have to repeat last night’s meal.

ESCABECHE

Escabeche (pronounced Esk-a-bet-chay) refers to a number of dishes featuring fish (or sometimes meat) that has been marinated and cooked in an acidic mixture made from vinegar or citrus juice. It’s similar to Latin American ceviche, but stars poached or fried rather than raw fish. Escabeche can be found in many countries and regions, such as the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, but is thought to have originated in Spain.

The dish is highly versatile, as it can feature a wide range of proteins (swap fish for chicken or pork, for instance) and be marinated in anything from lime juice 14 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

to apple cider to red wine vinegar. Escabeche can serve as a centre-of-plate protein at dinner alongside rice or steamed veggies, or it can be used as a topping for entrée salads or rice bowls. The dish has grown more than 250 per cent on Canadian dinner menus over the past 4 years and increased over 80 per cent in just the past year alone.

POKE

Poke (pronounced po-kay) has seen explosive growth in the U.S. over the past few years, so it’s not surprising that it’s now trending in Canada, too. The Hawaiian raw fish salad has grown by more than 250 per cent on Canadian dinner menus over the past four years with dedicated eateries like Vancouver’s The Pacific Poke and Calgary’s Po-ke popping up across the country.

At its most basic, poke is diced raw fish seasoned in soy sauce and sesame oil and served over rice, though many

“The key, then, to maintaining dinner traffic and sales in an increasingly competitive landscape is to stay on top of trending global dishes and consider how they might be adapted to suit your menu.” restaurants serving the dish will jazz it up with add-ons ranging from seaweed salad to pickled onions and cucumbers to avocado. These days it’s not uncommon to also find vegetarian renditions of poke made from tofu or non-seafood alternatives like chicken poke. Operators shouldn’t be afraid to experiment when it comes to poke — while purists may appreciate simpler iterations of the dish, offering a variety of toppings for guests to customize their own bowls can also add an element of personalization to the dining experience.

BEEF SATAY

There are countless regional variations of meat on a stick — Italy’s arrosticini, Japan’s yakitori, Turkish shish kebabs — and Indonesian cuisine is no exception. While satay (also spelled sate) is Indonesian in origin, it’s also popular in other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Satay can feature nearly any type of meat, from chicken to goat to pork (and even fish), but beef satay in particular is trending in Canada, having grown by more than 160 per cent on menus in the past four years. Satay is usually seasoned with a mixture of soy and peanut sauces, though other sauces like chili sauce can be used as well. Given its approachable and familiar format, satay could be leveraged as a dish to introduce customers to trending Southeast Asian f lavors without intimidating them.

FISH CAKE

Fish cakes are typically made from ground seafood (usually whitefish, like cod or haddock) and mixed with starch and egg, then pressed into a patty and fried. Alone, fish cakes typically have a relatively mild taste, making them a suitable canvas for many different f lavours, either by seasoning the ground seafood before frying it or pairing the cooked patty with a range of sauces.

Entree

Word

Penetration %

Incidence %

# of Restaurants

# of Items

1 Year Growth

4 Year Growth

Escabeche

2.1%

0.0%

4

5

83.2%

251.8%

Poke

2.1%

0.1%

4

6

22.2%

251.8%

Beef Satay

1.6%

0.0%

3

4

37.4%

163.9%

Fish Cake

2.6%

0.1%

5

13

14.5%

119.9%

Puttanesca

2.6%

0.0%

5

5

52.7%

119.9%

Brandade

2.1%

0.0%

4

4

266.5%

75.9%

Massaman

1.0%

0.0%

2

2

83.2%

75.9%

Saag

1.0%

0.0%

2

3

83.2%

75.9%

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 15

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT: DINNER Fish cakes are commonly found in Asian cuisines, though variations of the dish are also served in some Eastern European countries. They’re a common ingredient in Chinese hot pot, a communal dish that involves cooking a variety of proteins and vegetables in a constantly-boiling pot of broth, and also feature prominently in the popular Japanese street food oden, which is made with skewered fish cakes simmered in a soy-f lavored dashi broth.

Fish cakes have increased on Canadian dinner menus by nearly 120 per cent in the past four years, likely ref lecting growing consumer interest in Asian cuisines and ingredients as a whole. Operators might consider leveraging them as an alternative to traditional proteins in stews or curries or serving them lightly grilled with several different sauces so customers can customize the seasonings they like best.

SPAGHETTI ALLA PUTTANESCA

Everyone knows what spaghetti is, but what about spaghetti alla puttanesca? Hailing from Naples, this regional Italian pasta dish features tomatoes and olive oil with anchovies, olives, garlic, and capers to create an umami-packed dish.

While Italian cuisine is likely familiar to most consumers, in recent years, there has been growing consumer interest in discovering more regional dishes, puttanesca included.

The term “puttanesca” itself has experienced nearly 120 per cent growth on Canadian dinner menus over the past 4 years.

As operators look to stand out, menuing specific regional dishes like spaghetti alla puttanesca can be a way to pique customers’ interest without scaring them off.

“As consumers become more knowledgeable about global cuisines, they’re hungry to try the foods they’re learning about.”

Soup’s On With everyone bundling up against the cold, it’s time to start thinking about comforting meals, and nothing warms the heart and soul more than a bowl of soup. But soup has come a long way from your basic cream of tomato or chicken noodle, so it’s time to take your soup game up a notch!

Start by thinking internationally. Global cuisine — one of 2018’s top food trends — is a great way to travel and explore diverse international flavours without leaving the dinner table. Transform your chicken soup base into a beautiful mulligatawny soup by adding chicken, rice, vegetables and aromatic Indian spices, such as cumin, curry powder and ginger. You can also spice up a vegetable soup base with Mexican spices, tomatoes, corn, beans and chicken for a fiery tortilla soup, all topped with creamy avocado and tortilla strips.

Soup like that can take centre stage. Too often, soup has been relegated to sidekick status alongside sandwiches — but no longer. A hearty soup can be served as a meal all on its own!

Consider a nice, warm bowl of Turkey Chili or creamy seafood chowder on a cold day — both are loaded with ingredients that will keep guests full until their next meal.

Soup bases can also surprise you by doing double-duty as seasonings. They can be used as a lower-sodium salt substitute to add flavor to vegetable dishes, cook grains like rice or quinoa or even to marinate meat. It can thicken sauces and augment your own seasoning, effortlessly layering in new flavours and aromas.

Soup has come a long way and bases are more versatile than ever.

Update your current menu with simple, small changes using soup bases — the possibilities are endless! Visit www.luda.ca to find these recipes and more culinary inspiration!

16 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

BRANDADE

Making brandade only requires two ingredients: salt cod and olive oil (although it’s not uncommon to add dairy, potato and any number of aromatics to the equation). A whipped spread made by emulsifying rehydrated salt cod with olive oil, brandade is often eaten in France, Spain and Italy, where it can be paired with anything from crackers to crusty bread to polenta. While salt cod has grown on Canadian dinner menus by 33 per cent over the past 4 years, brandade has increased a whopping 260 per cent just in the past year.

Though it’s traditional to use salt cod, West Restaurant in Vancouver demonstrates that there’s no reason not to break out of the mold, featuring a crispy halibut brandade served with poached eggs and bearnaise sauce on its dinner menu.

Served in a scaled down portion, brandade can be a unique appetizer or tapas offering. Alternatively, operators might consider breading and frying brandade to make croquette-like fritters, which can be served as a centre-ofplate entrée.

MASSAMAN CURRY

While many Thai curries tend to bring the heat, massaman curry is a milder rendition that won’t scorch your taste buds. Mentions of it have grown by more than 80 per cent on Canadian dinner menus in just the last year, but what is it, exactly?

Commonly served with rice, the dish has Muslim roots, and as such, traditionally features chicken rather than pork.

It can also be made with duck, beef or goat, or turned vegetarian or vegan by omitting meat entirely. The dish is unique in that it features dried spices not commonly found in other Thai curries, such as cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves. Traditional Thai ingredients, like coconut milk, shrimp paste and fish sauce, aren’t lacking though.

Massa ma n cur r y ca n ser ve as a n approachable introduction to Thai cuisine, as it’s customizable (even the curry paste itself can be adapted to different tastes) and mashes up familiar f lavours like cinnamon with lesserknown ones like shrimp paste to create a unique dish.

SAAG

Saag (pronounced sahg) fits right into the plant-forward eating trend that’s been sweeping the restaurant landscape recently. Hailing from India, it’s essentially a curry made with leafy vegetables, and nearly any leafy green is fair game — spinach, mustard leaf, or collard greens can all be used to make saag. In the Western hemisphere, most renditions of saag feature spinach, although other mild greens like chard, beet greens or even finely chopped broccoli can star as the main ingredient (operators can even use Chinese bok choy for an unexpected mashup).

For a heartier entrée version of saag, chefs can add cubes of paneer (an Indian cheese) or tofu to keep things vegetarian, or add beef or chicken to appeal to meatinclined diners. As it’s grown over 75 per cent on Canadian menus over the past four years, saag is a dish operators should keep on their radars, especially as it appeals to consumers’ increasing desire to be health-forward.

AVOIDING AUTHENTICITY

While the idea of menuing dishes from lesser-known global cuisines can be intimidating for many operators, restaurant owners and chefs don’t have to keep things strictly authentic — consider creating mashup dishes that combine some of the above f lavours in a familiar format (for instance, consider featuring a beef satay burrito) to pique consumers’ interest. As consumers become more knowledgeable about global cuisines, they’re hungry to try the foods they’re learning about. Around half of consumers say they’ve eaten globally-inspired food in the past two weeks according to Datassential’s Global Flavors Keynote Report — as a result, it’s important that operators stay on top of and try to incorporate the latest global trends, as doing so can be just the edge they need to draw in customers.

Basic Beginnings, Flashy Finishes As we all know, Canada is an increasingly diverse, multicultural country, and Canadians’ dining preferences are following suit. More and more, Canadians are seeking global flavours and authentic dining experiences when they dine out, so how do you incorporate these exotic flavours into your menu, without breaking the bank? Start with some of the building blocks of flavour, such as demi-glace, hollandaise sauce or tomato, and add a few ingredients — you can transport your guests anywhere in the world through their palate.

Demi-Glace – Adding ginger and honey to your demi-glace sauce, such as the new LUDA Inspiration Instant Demi-Glace, results in an Asian glaze that is perfect for stir-fry or chicken dishes. Incorporating tomato paste, brown sugar and hot peppers produces a delicious sauce for Korean BBQ. Hollandaise – Not just for breakfast anymore, this rich, buttery sauce is quite versatile. Adding lime, black pepper and pineapple brings a taste of the Caribbean to your dish, whereas blending ginger, garlic, lime and curry paste gives it an Indian flare. Both are simple to make and don’t need any added butter when using our new LUDA Inspiration Instant Hollandaise.

Tomato – One of the bases for Italian cuisine, tomato sauce can easily transform into something different. Adding cumin, coriander and lime gives it a Mexican flavour profile.

Showcasing different cuisines from around the globe doesn’t have to be strenuous. It just requires a little imagination in using items you may already have in your pantry. Visit www.luda.ca to find these recipes and more culinary inspiration!

Sherry Tseng is a publications specialist at Datassential, a supplier of trends, analysis, and concept testing for the food industry. For more information about North American food trends, contact Dave Jenkins at 847-903-5744 or dave@datassential.com. www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 17

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CLEANING SUPPLIES

l o o h c to S

A university’s successful introduction of electrostatic disinfectant is instructive for what’s possible in an institutional foodservice setting.

By David L. Smith When responsible for the cleaning and maintenance of one of Canada’s largest and best known university’s residences, ensuring a healthy environment that enhances students’ living experience is top priority. Just ask the facility and housing team at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

“This is our students’ home away from home,” says Barbara Wowk, manager of facilities, housing and ancillary services at Queen’s. “In fact, for most of our students it’s their first time away from home, so creating a welcoming, comfortable and healthy living environment is essential to their well-being and academic performance.”

To maintain and continually improve the university’s high standards for facility cleaning and hygiene, Queen’s not only invests in the people who

work on its environmental cleaning teams but gives them the best possible tools for each job. “We’re always looking for new ways to make labour more efficient so we can have more time to devote to attending to the details and achieving the highest quality results,” says Wowk. “That’s why we regularly frequent cleaning and hygiene innovation showcases.

[They allow us to] see the latest and g reatest i n clea ni ng e quipment , products and tools.”

One such showcase, presented by the university’s cleaning and hygiene product supplier, introduced the team to electrostatic disinfection, a method of applying a liquid disinfectant to a s u r f a c e u s i n g a n e l e c t r o s t at i c applicator. The liquid is atomized into droplets, which are charged by an

electrical current as they exit the applicator. When the charged droplets approach the target surface area, they induce an opposite charge on it, which in turn attracts the charged droplets to the surface. The charged droplets also repel each other, preventing them from forming larger droplets and allowing them to uniformly cover a surface. The charged droplets are even attracted to the backs of surfaces, regardless of the direction of spray, enabling them to wrap around a wide range of surface types, from tables, desks and washroom f ixtures to intricate surfaces such as keyboards.

In a traditional spray application, the coverage of a surface is determined by the direction of spray and where the droplets fall based on gravity, which can result in uneven surface coverage. www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 19

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In contrast, the f ine, electrostatically charged droplets produced by an electrostatic applicator provide consistent coverage of a surface and do not linger in the air, resulting in the use of less disinfectant in the process.

The Queen’s team observed the effect of electrostatic disinfection during a simulated demonstration. A solution formulated to appear under black light was deposited on a chair using an electrostatic applicator. A black light was then used to show how the solution had been attracted to evenly coat the top, sides, back and underside of the chair. “The solution got to areas where we thought it couldn’t,” says Queen’s facilities supervisor Rob Dusharm. “That was very impressive because no matter how well you train your cleaning teams, there are only so many areas that wiping can physically reach. We saw this system as a game changer.”

Queen’s implemented electrostatic disinfection four years ago, as an add-on to its already rigorous cleaning program for the 4,800 bed spaces, common areas and washrooms throughout the university’s residences. Predictably, the response from cleaning personnel was mixed; many were excited to be given the latest cleaning and hygiene technology, while some were skeptical. Dusharm says it’s natural for people to be reluctant to change, “(but) once they saw how well the system worked and understood its value, they loved it.”

The university’s cleaning program had previously included a documented manual cleaning process with ongoing evaluation to ensure consistency and quality. This new technology took the program many steps further. “Though we already had an excellent cleaning program in place, adding electrostatic disinfection has allowed us to achieve a vastly improved result in very little time,” says Wowk. “We can now disinfect an entire medium-sized building in half a day, which would have been impossible before, and a washroom can be completed in less than a minute.”

The technology has also proven to be highly effective in helping to reduce the spread of illnesses. “Germs can spread so quickly in small, compact areas,” says Dusharm. “We can now use a proactive approach during cold and f lu season to help avoid possible outbreaks. Where we see trends on the rise, we increase the frequency of our cleaning and follow with electrostatic disinfection. The extent to which colds and f lu spread through our residences has been dramatically reduced.”

Queen’s focus on constantly improving its cleaning program means its processes constantly evolve. Since adopting electrostatic disinfection technology in 2014 — the first postsecondary institution in Canada to do so — the university has moved on to the system’s next generation. The units have received rave reviews from staff on their ease of use, lighter weight and manoeuvrability. “By working to continually achieve better results, we give students that ‘welcome home’ and create a happy, healthy environment that supports a transformative learning experience,” says Wowk.

David L. Smith is director of cleaning, hygiene and sanitation at Bunzl Canada, which provides cleaning and hygiene supplies, equipment, food and retail packaging, safety and industrial supplies to more than 45,000 Canadian businesses. With more than 25 years’ experience in cleaning and hygiene, David is a recognized expert in infection prevention and control, with special expertise in electrostatic disinfection technology. He can be reached at 613-449-2146.

This article originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of Facility Cleaning & Maintenance magazine.

20 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

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UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

THE SKINNY

ON FAT Everything from canola oil to avocado oil is on the table now (or in the skillet).

There’s no shortage of cooking fats out there, and not all of them are created equal.

Performance varies from application to application, and switching to one for its health benefits may mean losing another feature, like a neutral flavour profile. Gently whisper “sear” near some, and you’ll be met with billows of smoke. Others, meanwhile, can get scaldingly hot without letting off so much as a little puff.

22 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

The compositions of popular cooking fats vary wildly from one to the next, but are always composed of saturated f at , m o n o u n s at u r at e d f at a n d polyunsaturated fat. According to Health Canada, people should be particularly aware of how much saturated fat and trans fat, a pernicious type of unsaturated fat, they ingest.

Both raise LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) while tr ans fat simultaneously lowers HDL cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol). Unsaturated fat is, by and large, the good stuff, lowering LDL cholesterol and the ratio of LDL to HDL cholesterol. Since health has become a top-of-mind issue for Canadian consumers, being mindful of what you use where could potentially be a key differentiator between your foodservice operation and the one across the street.

It can be ver y confusing, but re-evaluating what oils to use can help shake up your kitchen for the better and healthier. Take a look at our breakdown of some cooking fats to decide what fits your operation best. Some, like canola oil and olive oil, will always be popular, while others, like avocado oil and duck fat, are enjoying newfound popularity.

CANOLA OIL

When refined, canola oil has a neutral flavour profile and a high enough smoke point for deep frying, making it a flexible kitchen staple. It’s also surprisingly healthy, with a high level of unsaturated fat — something too few operators are touting despite the ubiquity of the stuff. Recently, unrefined canola oils have gained traction in restaurants and found space next to premium olive oils. In 2003, Michael Allemeier, who’s since ear ned his certified master chef accreditation, called canola “the olive oil of the north.”

Cooking Oil

AVOCADO OIL

Like olive oil, refined avocado oil is particularly high in monounsaturated fat. Unlike olive oil, however, it’s blisteringly high smoke point makes it suitable for vinaig rettes and high cooking. Avocados are also having something of a moment in popular food culture, so featuring avocado oil on your menu could benefit from the movement.

PEANUT OIL

Its high smoke point makes it perfect for high heat cooking, and its powerful, peanutty flavour complements some dishes well, particularly in South Asian, Southeast Asian and Chinese cuisine. It tends to go rancid a bit faster than other oils, though, so it’s best bought in small quantities or used in large.

DUCK FAT

While it packs a decent monounsaturated punch, duck fat is also much higher in saturated fat than other cooking fats on this list, making it more stable at high temperature. It’s also extremely flavourful, lending a rich, savoury taste and crisp texture to anything dee p fried. It’s widely available now as well, letting chefs OLIVE OIL forego a long search or the timeLynchpin of the Mediterranean diet, consuming process of rendering it notably healthy and, when extra virgin, themselves. terrible for high heat cooking, olive oil is easily one of the popular cooking oils in COCONUT OIL North America. Make sure you're Of the fats listed here, coconut oil is getting the right stuff, though. Nearly a the highest in saturated fat, making it third of the samples of olive oil tested in solid and room temperature. While 2012 and 2013 by the Canadian Food not ideal for raw applications, it does Inspection Agency were adulterated perform similarly to butter, and can be with vegetable oil, refined olive oil, creamed with sugar when it comes to which is stripped of the characteristics baking — a good alternative when that make olive oil so desirable, and olive making vegan treats. Refined oils are pomace oil. If the price of your olive oil nearly flavourless, while unrefined oils is too good to be true, it probably is. can be intensely flavourful.

Saturated Fat

Monounsaturated Fat

Polyunsaturated Fat

Smoke Point

Canola Oil

7g

63g

28g

401 °F/205 °C

Olive Oil

14g

73g

11g

374 °F/190 °C

Peanut Oil

17g

46g

32g

437 °F/225 °C

Coconut Oil

86g

6g

2g

351 °F/177 °C

Avocado Oil

11.6g

70.6g

13.5g

480 °F/249 °C

Duck Fat

33.2g

49.3g

12.9g

370 °F/190 °C

Source: U.S. National Nutrient Database

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 23

FOODSERVICE FOCUS

TURN UP

THE VOLUME

Washing a few plates is one thing, but washing thousands demands a new approach — and top-quality equipment.

By Heritage Parts

College, University and other institutional foodservice settings handle more forks, knives and other wares than the average restaurant, and a breakdown there can create a proportionally huge operational problem — and a corresponding loss in revenue. The bad news is, equipment failure is inevitable. The good news is, with proper maintenance and a reliable e q u i p m e n t s u p p l i e r, t h e w o r s t consequences of that failure can be avoided. Below, Heritages Parts’ marketing director Erik Koenig explains why reliable warewashing equipment is critical in a college and university segment, the new equipment chefs ought to keep an eye on and how they can get the best out of what they have.

Heritage Parts: When it comes to warewashing, are colleges and universities just like commercial restaurants, or do they have special considerations?

Erik Koenig: They are different because

of the sheer volume that goes through their kitchens. Higher volume means larger equipment. And, unlike fryers, ovens or refrigeration — where there may be multiple units — there is typically only a single warewashing unit in an operation. Large conveyor-type

equipment is more specific to this type of operation and may have more parts specific to that model, increasing the need for regular planned maintenance.

These locations may also often have a pot washer or power-soaking sink, equipment typically not found in smaller kitchens.

HP: Does the volume of college and university operations have any effect on warewashing equipment?

EK: Yes. If your washing operation is

managed by one large piece of equipment it goes down, anything used to cook and serve food now has to be hand washed and the service shifted to paper, adding waste and expense.

HP: What warewashing equipment parts do colleges and universities need to keep an eye on?

EK: The number one is splash curtains.

Making that the OEM curtains which separate the different sections of the machine are in good working condition is key. When worn out, the curtains can let head exit the machine, requiring the heater in the wash tank to run more often. This can waste

24 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

e n e r g y a n d p o s s i bly a l l ow t h e temperature during the rinse cycle to drop below mandated levels required for food safety. Worn-out curtains can also allow too much rinse water to get into the wash tank, requiring detergent and increasing cost.

HP: How can Heritage Parts help the college and university segment work more effectively?

EK: We understand and have identified

the critical parts, which, when they fail, can take this type of equipment out of service. Our stocking levels are the best in the industry and are built with this critical information.

That fact, combined with our best-inclass customer service, ensures we have the par ts and infor mation needed to keep equipment running efficiently and to be repaired quickly when failure occurs. We work closely with all the major warewashing manufacturers, through continuous training. By consistently keeping up-to-date with current technical information, we are able to assist our customers by quickly identifying the c o r r e c t p a r t a n d a n swe r t h e i r questions.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

POINT, CLICK, EAT.

Joining the online delivery revolution It’s lunch with the click of an app. Pizza with the push of a button. A restaurant meal ordered fresh to your front door. Tap by tap, the appetite for online food delivery services is growing, opening foodservice providers to new opportunities and unique service challenges.

Food delivery is far from a new concept.

Yet while home delivery models were once reserved for quick-and-easy meals, modern customers are turning to ondemand ordering services like Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes to enjoy restaurantquality meals from the comfort of their homes. As a result, many restaurants who have traditional foregone a home delivery option are now recognizing the benefits of catering to off-premise eaters. “ The amount of people ordering full restaurant-quality meals through mobile apps is rising, and like any disruptive business model, industry players are trying to catch up,” says Barry Reid, Vice President of Sales and Marketing with Flanagan Foodservice.

T he challenge, he adds, is t wofold: choosing the right online delivery partner and making sure the quality of the product they deliver is the same as if it was served fresh to the restaurant table.

Choosing the right partner may be the easier of these tasks. Both Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes continue to expand their ser vices to major hubs across Canada, while alternatives like GrubHub, DoorDash, and Amazon Restaurants are quickly gaining traction. No doubt, there are options, and selecting the service that

fits comes to down to decisions around availability, rates, and the ability to keep pace with customer demand.

It’s how those deliveries are packaged that may require more considerations. Naturally, customers expect the food delivered to their door to be as fresh and appetizing as it would be if delivered in the restaurant.

Failure to replicate that experience could lead to reputation damage and, ultimately, lost business.

“If you haven’t got the right packaging, then the product being delivered to your customers isn’t going to be the same temperature or quality as if they ordered it on-site, and that can be disappointing,” notes Reid.

This is not a new consideration for restaurant chains built around the home delivery model. However, it can be uncharted territory for “sit-down” restaurants who may just now be learning how best to serve off-premise customers while maintaining brand quality.

The truth is, there is no one take-out solution. Each restaurant must decide whether to handle delivery in-house or through a third-party partner, and then determine what packaging best maintains the quality of their food.

This, says Reid, can be a balancing act: “People are looking for what product will sustain the food’s temperature, moisture, and quality; but also a solution that is environmentally friendly and costeffective.”

It’s a tricky balance to strike, he adds, but one that is needed in order to appeal to modern demands: “There’s no exact standard to follow, and you need to find a solution that works for both your customers and your bottom line. That’s why we help our clients review their options, seek out providers, and find the packaging that fits.”

It’s a point-click, online, and on-demand world; and it’s changing consumer habits.

There is big opportunity to be had for restaurants that can make the shift to online food delivery, but not at the expense of quality.

COVER STORY

BACK TO BASICS

Resist the urge to jump on the latest trend.

Despite the chatter, catering to it won’t generate the ROI you think it will

By Gregory Furgala

Remember charcoal? If you don’t, here’s an incomplete list of where it turned up: burger buns, pizza, lemonade, ice cream (and cones), lattes, macarons, croissants, crepes, waffles, wontons, ravioli, mozzarella and crusted on tuna. Chatelaine proclaimed, “This dark and moody food trend is popping up everywhere”; in its Life section, the Globe and Mail stated, “Charcoal cooking heating up restaurant kitchen”; and CBC called it “the new MVP of wellness.” Even the Fat Duck’s Heston Blumenthal endorsed a charcoal-laced bagel.

28 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

COVER STORY

CS S

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 29

COVER STORY

Notwithstanding CBC’s headline, charcoal’s dubious toxin-busting health benefits were, for the most part, only meekly touted by foodservice operators (although Health Canada concedes that it’s an effective antiflatulent). The smoky nuance charcoal lent to food saw some kind words as well, but the trend was really about the ‘grams. Shots of monochromatic food had become top fodder for social media, and several operators took note, taking to the medium in droves to get their share. Charcoal helped usher in the next stage of restaurant marketing, which depended on media saturation, and the headlines, social media and word-of-mouth buzz confirmed that Canadians loved charcoal.

Except they didn’t. Not really. #TRENDING

IMI International, a foodservice marketing consultancy, surveyed 100 people, asking them if they would be encouraged to go to a restaurant that featured charcoal-infused food. Two people answered in the affirmative. By contrast, three in 10 people said all-day breakfast would encourage them to visit a restaurant, which jumped to four in 10 for adults over 45 years of age. Despite Canadians’ overwhelming preference for pancake dinners, however, charcoal ate up all the bandwidth. Charcoal was a niche product, but magazines and and newspapers declared it the next big thing anyway. It’s easy to see how the sheer volume of charcoal content could sweep operators up in the free-for-all.

Noting the discrepancy, Sarah Stovold, managing director at IMI, warns operators that it’s a mistake to make decisions based on what they read in magazines and online against what they see in their own business, because hype, quantified, doesn’t necessarily add up to much. “There’s a big difference between editorial content and fact-based content,” says Stovold.

Conventional wisdom also falls short. Phoneaddled Millennials and Gen-Zers, well, aren’t — at least they don’t take what’s appearing on their screens as critical gospel. IMI found that 68 per cent of Millennial and Gen Z consumers prefer giving and receiving restaurant recommendations in person, and only 34 per cent of Millennials and GenZers are encouraged to a restaurant they found recommended on Instagram. A strong social media presence isn’t nothing, and it certainly shouldn’t be eschewed altogether, but orienting decision making around it will turn any foodservice operation into a niche business. For some, that might be fine — some businesses successfully ran with charcoal, and will 30 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

COVER STORY

likely take up the next trend just as well — but for others it could be a mistake. Do you want to expend resources capitalizing on the next big thing? Or would you prefer to run a place that stays comparatively low-key, offering menu items and promotions that, while not attention-grabbing, are in quietly high demand?

OVER THE HILL

Charcoal’s popularity may have been a hangover from the peak social media marketing. It’s been noted in the Globe and Mail, the New York Times and the Guardian, amongst other news sources, that social media has become a mature market. Facebook reported its first-ever decline in users in 2018, with three million European users leaving the platform in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, first reported by the Observer, which saw 87 million users’ data compromised. In the United States, market research firm eMarketer estimated that Facebook lost 2.8 million users under 25 years old last year, and predicted the trend would accelerate.

Facebook is still growing globally, but in developed markets, it may have peaked.

Smaller social media platforms have suffered net losses. Between the second quarter of 2017 and 2018, Twitter lost 1 million monthly users, while Snapchat, lost 3 million, according to company filings for both companies. Joseph Evans, a senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, a media research firm, told the Guardian in August that, “Kids are fickle and Snapchat definitely seems to be falling out of favour with young people, who are its biggest fans” On Twitter, Evans noted that it may have “topped out” and that it’s “definitely stalling at best.”

Facebook-owned Instagram, which has seen its user total climb month after month, seems to be the

lone exception. Nevertheless, another headline, courtesy of tech news website Recode, summed up the new social media landscape: “Social media growth is over in the U.S. — which is its most valuable market.”

Moreover, Stovold continues, it’s gotten harder to be good at social media. A decade ago, people were still figuring out how to best leverage the medium, and while it’s constantly evolving, it’s nevertheless become a polished, professional medium. Taking a poorly lit shot of a new dish on the pass won’t cut it. The dish’s appearance and photo both need to meet a high bar for public consumption.

Major restaurant and foodservice brands employ social media managers and food stylists, an investment that oft profit-challenged independent operators could probably put to better use. “Unless you’re going to do it well,” says Stovold, “don’t do it at all.” You can’t just make a charcoal-whatever and expect to start counting money; you need to build and orient a media push around it, too. A mature market means it takes more to make a statement in it, and moreover, that statement likely won’t have the pickup you think.

This isn’t an alarm, just a call for restraint. Major platforms have hundreds of millions of monthly users, each, and operators should undoubtedly have a presence on social media. It’s a helpful tool for building and maintaining brand identity, engaging customers and promoting new menu items and events. But there’s a difference between having a presence on social media and underwriting a business with it. The former advertises what you’re already doing; the latter demands orienting a brand around likes and engagement. Unless you’re already set up for it, developing and then shoehorning a product onto your menu for the sake of capitalizing on a social media trend is unlikely to generate the return on investment that a simpler, brand-appropriate promotion would, like a fresh, seasonal dish that capitalizes on your brand’s strengths. “There’s a bit of a counterintuitiveness,” says Stovold. “But it’s not really a new behaviour.

People have always had their recommendations face-to-face. The world’s not changing as much as Facebook wants you to think.”

OLD HABITS

As always, it’s a game of finite resources and maximizing your return-oninvestment. IMI found the five biggest detractors to repeat visits wasn’t a charcoal-less menu or insufficient engagement with the trend du jour. The biggest detractors were exactly what you’d expect: bad service, bad food, high prices, uncleanliness and noise. Nailing the fundamentals of hospitality goes www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 31

COVER STORY

consulting firm, either (although it probably helps).

Even if they don’t know it, Stovold insists that operators have resources. “Every restaurateur can talk to their customers,” she says. “That’s free.”

Free and instantaneous. Feedback from regulars is immediate and valuable, and it can be applied to a new initiative or endeavour at the restaurant. It can be as simple as we’re thinking about doing X. What do you think? The other route, studio-made creative — the kind that requires consultants and directors and money — is often ineffective, says Stovold, with 57 per cent of it destined to fail before the art director puts the finishing touches on it. As a term, “marketing” may seem daunting, but independent operators shouldn’t refrain from starting with a DIY approach. “You’re in more control than you think,” says Stovold.

MORE SOCIAL, LESS MEDIA

much, much further toward promoting your business than attempting to leverage various media channels with a trendy product.

The effectiveness of in-person recommendations dwarfs those pulled from social media, with 68 per cent of Millennials and Gen-Zers reported that they prefer their recommendations via word of mouth. Amongst Canadians generally, 34 per cent are encouraged to go to a restaurant from seeing a picture on Instagram, compared to 48 per cent who are encouraged to go to by a friend recommending it — and that’s the channel operators should focus on first. To that end, Stovold has five recommendations: eliminate noise; optimize your first and last points of contact; find out what works, and eliminate what doesn’t; forego “always on” in favour of “always relevant”; and drive on premise, every touch point, every day. It’s essentially marketing-by-performance.

The first point, eliminating noise, seems obvious but is more difficult than one would think. In the Atlantic, architecture and design critic Kate Wagner notes that restaurant design has shifted toward a literally hard-edged minimalism, supplanting the plush overstuffed seating and carpeted floors that used to be the mark of high-end design. Aesthetic preferences notwithstanding, those old, soft surfaces did more work than just cushion diners; they absorbed the noise made by clattering plates, clinking cutlery and the conversations of diners. Wagner goes onto measure how loud various environments are, as well. A coffee shop was 73 decibels; a wine bar at dinner was 80 decibels; a high end food court, 86 decibels; and lastly, a brewpub during happy hour was an earsplitting 90 decibels. By comparison, highway traffic noises typically clocks in at 80 to 90 decibels. Walk around your own operation and ask yourself, could I have a conversation in this place? If you’re running a bar or a nightclub, that might be a write-off to start with, but it’s important for a sit-down restaurant. If operators want to stand out, they could make some noise by mitigating it in their restaurants.

Stovold’s second recommendation, to optimize the first and last points of contact with a guest, is more straightforward but no less important. First impressions count; leaving a positive lasting impression does, too. An unappealing storefront is unlikely to encourage guests to walk in. The same goes for out-of-date or otherwise unattractive websites. And when it’s time for the cheque, ensure the process is efficient. When it’s time for guests to leave, someone ought to say goodbye. Stovold’s third point regarding touch points is an extension of this approach. Touch points essentially boil down to customer experience. What part of your restaurant is the guest engaging with and reacting to? Optimizing those points is part and parcel of hospitality.

Eliminating what works and what doesn’t — Stovold’s fourth point — is the approach underpinning all of this. In the context of charcoal, it means looking at the data instead of guessing what will work. Gather information, assess it and act. Don’t just assume the trend that others have taken up should be imported into your own business. Getting that information doesn’t require an international 32 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

Think back: in all your interactions with your guests last summer, how many wanted something made with charcoal? And how many wanted good food and good service? Some operations are tailor-made to capitalize on social media trends. Toronto-based iHalo Krunch serves on-trend soft serve in purple yam, matcha and, naturally, charcoal hues, and they’re successful because of it. But that’s because social media is less something they use than an operating principle of the business. Operators looking to expand can look at businesses like iHalo as a model, but they should know it might be more niche than the headlines would have them believe.

A more effective marketing strategy dovetails with making a better restaurant. Guests aren’t just sources of revenue; they’re brand ambassadors.

Given the option of an aggressive marketing campaign or getting the fundamentals of hospitality right, operators should choose the latter. Those ambassadors will pass along the good word and, in a way, the restaurant will market itself. While it’s changing like everything else, hospitality is still a word-of-mouth business. The majority people rely on their friends and family more than anything else for their restaurant recommendations. Your marketing effort should start with making them happy, and go from there.

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ADVERTISING FEATURE FOUR IN A FOUR-PART SERIES

Chef David Cocker

CONSISTENT QUALITY,

Corporate Research Chef Reuven International Ltd.

EVERY MEAL

When customer expectations aren't met, reputations are on the line. That's why foodservice providers are challenged to maintain the highest level of service and quality for everyone that steps through their doors.

“Speed of service, efficiency, and consistency are essential components of what makes a restaurant successful,” says Chef David Cocker with Reuven International.

“Consumers are more knowledgeable and demanding of the meals being served to them and expect the same level of highquality food and service with each and every visit. This can be difficult due to the amount of variables required to deliver a perfect meal with impeccable service.”

Those variables can range from kitchen skills to cooking techniques, and ingredient sources to customer volumes. But what about the ingredients themselves? When it comes to poultry, there are even more factors that can skew a consumer's dining and eating experience such as product storage conditions, sizing, the age of the product, and relative protein to fat ratio, among others.

MEETING EXPECTATIONS In an industry where consistency is king, it helps to work with consistently prepared ingredients. Herein, Reuven takes numerous steps to ensure the fully-cooked, valueadded poultry products it delivers to one kitchen is the same as it delivers to another, and that it continues to be the product chefs expect on all future orders.

“Our products are manufactured using state-of-the-art equipment to ensure many of those variables are controlled, ensuring high quality eating experiences for the consumer in a labour-friendly, cost-effective environment for our customers in the food service industry,” Cocker explains.

That includes weight calibration equipment that ensure products are of consistent size and weight. This enables kitchens to readily reproduce meals using the same cooking parameters from store to

store, which provides the end customer with the same eating experience each and every visit.

Moreover, the ability to provide consistent portions per order ensures associated costs to the foodservice provider remain steady.

THE FROZEN FACTOR In the pursuit of consistency, fully-cooked frozen products can offer advantages over raw.

Raw breast meat, for example, typically experiences a 33 per cent yield loss during the cooking stage and nearly 50 per cent of raw thigh meat doesn't make it onto the plate.

Comparatively, Reuven's fully-cooked chicken breast typically achieves an 8.5 per cent yield loss while its fully-cooked frozen thigh meat only loses 12.4 per cent of its original weight.

Similar results can be observed when preparing chicken wings. As Cocker explains: “Most raw wings require an 8- to 10-minute

deep-fry and can achieve upwards of a 50 per cent yield loss, whereas a fully-cooked frozen wing will be plated in 4 to 5 minutes and achieve a yield loss of 22 per cent. This means faster service and higher cook yield retention that makes it to the plate and results in significantly lower oil degradation.”

Cocker adds Reuven has a lineup of neutral flavoured, value-added products which can be transformed by adding your favourite marinades, glazes, seasonings, and coatings.

NO SURPRISES It doesn't matter the kitchen. It doesn't matter the variables. Customers care about what gets served to their table and the more foodservice providers can do to ensure their favourite meals arrive as expected, the greater the chance of winning their loyalty.

This is the end of Reuven's of a four-part series comparing fully cooked and raw poultry products.

Read the previous articles here, and contact Reuven to learn more about how Reuven's fully cooked poultry products can ensure your kitchen will have consistent food portion costs and eating experiences that leave your customers happy and coming back for more. Visit Reuven International LTD. (www.reuven.com).

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THE CULINARY FEDERATION’S

À LA MINUTE THE CF WOULD LIKE TO THANK AND RECOGNIZE OUR 2018 NATIONAL PARTNERS PLATINUM

GOLD

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+LOOKING TO 2019 | BEAUTIFUL THINGS | HELPING HANDS | GOURMET FLAVOURINGS

COOKING FOR A CAUSE | A CHEF’S DAY FOR STUDENTS |

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

LOOKING TO 2019 Our hosts in Charlottetown made this year’s annual conference the best yet.

DEAR MEMBERS, Fall is in full swing, but we’re looking ahead. The Culinary Federation team has started planning for the 2019 national conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, which is being held from May 26 – 30, 2019. The committee and I are excited to bring you another one-of-a-kind experience with educational workshops, seminars and the best that Niagara has to offer.

At this year’s conference, I want to spend a half a day assisting CF branches with membership recruitment, retention and engagement. We want to make sure that we’re serving the needs of our membership, and we’ll be forming a subcommittee to oversee this program piece. Feedback is welcome, so please forward your suggestions on how to attract new members and keep them involved to admin@culinaryfederation.ca.

We’re happy to announce the first workshop in our continuing education series, Chocolate 101 with Cacao Barry. The workshop will include a demonstration, tasting and networking night, and is being offered exclusively to Culinary Federation members in Charlottetown, Edmonton, Kelowna, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg. A charcuterie workshop is in the works as well, and will take place in February/March of next year, so stay tuned.

During the 2018 conference, we had the unique opportunity to gather our junior members in one room and discuss their vision for the future of the federation. The juniors felt it was time to transition to a membership name that was more relevant and in sync internationally with other organizations. Going forward we will now be referring to juniors as young chef members. Please join me in addressing the next generation of chefs accordingly.

I want to thank all of our branches for their enthusiasm and effort working with the new Culinary Federation website. We wanted to lighten the load on local branch administrators, especially with processing and recording annual membership fee, and will be rolling out a new process of online renewals for the 2019 membership year. We’ll communicate with each branch directly about the new processes, while every member will be contacted with a link to renew their memberships online. We’ll disperse members’ dues to every branch electronically every month.

As a result of our rebranding and logo change, and at several members’ request, I have been working on a mini medal that will be a suitable replacement for the previous CF ribbon and sash. We’ll share the final design CF members once it’s ready, after which they’ll be available for purchase by contacting admin@culinaryfederation.ca.

Thank you for your time and attention in reading this message. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at president@culinaryfederation.ca or 780-297-6912.

Keep on cooking!

Simon Smotkowicz President, Culinary Federation

FALL IS IN FULL SWING, BUT WE’RE LOOKING AHEAD.

38 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

UPDATES

A CHEF’S DAY FOR STUDENTS For International Chefs Day, students at Toronto’s Monarch Park Collegiate got a crash course foodservice.

By Martin Aller-Stead INTERNATIONAL CHEFS DAY is a time for us to share, celebrate and — for truly great chefs — teach. Chefs Paul Hoag, from McMaster University; Kira Smith, from Shalit Foods; and David Franklin, from Sysco Southwestern Ontario, all brought that spirit to secondary students in Monarch Park Collegiate’s culinary arts and hospitality program, sharing their passion for cooking and letting the class know how to embark on career in the industry. The first step: preparing lunch for 45 guests.

The visiting chefs demonstrated some new-school techniques and technology to the would-be chefs. Hoag showed off a Spherificator, a molecular gastronomy standby that turns food into pearls, and made macaroons with aquafaba, the protein-rich liquid by-product of cooked pulses. Smith taught students about allergic sensitivities and the differences between grains, while Franklin shared his deep knowledge of the entire industry, and created new ways for my students to think about themselves in the wonderful world of food. Everyone had a chance to try things, ask questions and taste samples.

Then it was time to put theory into practice. Each chef took a group of students and focused on one dish to create with flair and perfection. Franklin oversaw the hot line and had students make two risottos, an al funghi and a quattro formaggi. Hoag took on garde manger and showed his students how to make a classic caprese salad, but with some gorgeous changes. Instead of plates, they placed the basil, tomatoes and mozzarella on large blocks of pink salt, and bringing the Spherificator back, used balsamic vinegar pearls. Smith and her team ensured that the room looked beautiful and that the apples pies, made the day before, were properly presented.

While the chefs and students hurriedly got lunch together, I counted down the minutes and called out the minutes, then seconds, until all the guests showed up. The pace picked up with each call, and each group pushed to get their dish done. Stir, blend, set out, dash into the room, repeat. “Five minutes till showtime!”

That day, the school kitchen had become a restaurant kitchen.

Hoag pushed his team hard, demanding both speed and accuracy.

Smith’s students hustled trolleys into the dining room and gingerly dropped salads onto the tables they had set. From across the hot line, Franklin ensured that his small team cooked quickly and cleanly. Then, almost too quickly, my students’ fourth-ever rodeo.

“Showtime! Here they come!”

The student-chefs started plating, garnishing and running the plates out to guests as quickly as possible. Care was taken to leave two spaces at each table for a student and guest chef. Everyone ate together and had a chance to slow down for a moment or two and enjoy the fruits of their labour. It was a well-deserved break after a hard day’s work, and what International Chefs Day is all about.

Special thanks goes to the students, and especially our trio of guest chefs. My kitchen is ever theirs. www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 39

UPDATES

HELPING HANDS An assist from Humber College culinary students made a new venue feel like home.

THE SAYING GOES, “many hands make light work.”

Certainly one of the more challenging tasks in foodservice is managing a large event, especially when it’s being run for the first time at an unfamiliar venue. Enter MediaEdge’s inaugural Canadian Restaurant & Bar Show and the Sysco Provincial Culinary Challenge.

Chefs from the Culinary Federation’s Central Region donated their time to support the event from, setup to judging. I’d especially like to thank our young chef volunteers, including Yaseen Sultana, Nicholas Moraglia, Gourav Gumber and Jacob Clarey from Humber College’s culinary program. With their many hands helping, along with assistance from the hardworking event staff, the competition went off without a hitch.

Congratulations to competition winner Alejandro Winzer of CF Oakville Branch, who will represent Central Region at the 2019 CF National Conference next May in Niagara Falls.

Pictured right-below: Chef David Franklin, CF Central VP. Steve Harding, Sysco Canada. Chef Alejandro Winzer, CF Oakville and Chuck Nervick, MediaEdge

NEW HEARTH, NEW HOME A community rallies to revitalize the kitchen of a youth shelter.

IN SEPTEMBER, the staff and board of directors of Youth Haven met to open its new kitchen, which was renovated over the summer. Youth Haven, Simcoe County’s only youth emergency residential shelter, is a temporary home for at-risk youth between the ages of 16 and 24 years old.

It was a top-to-bottom refresh.

The old kitchen was gutted and r e p l a ce d w i t h n e w cu p b o a r d s , granite counter tops, lighting, flooring and a fresh coat of paint.

While it was the board and staff that cut the ribbon, it was the donations of materials, appliances and labour from the surrounding community that made it possible, including one of the Culinary Federation’s own.

40 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

Cu l i n a r y Fe d e r at i o n M u s ko k a branch president Marcia Budd volunteers at the shelter once a week making meals for Youth Haven’s residents and teaching them how to cook. Like the kitchen she now works in, the job has been totally revitalized.

"I help prepare the meals from scratch, but also show the young people how to make a good healthy meal and expand on each meal using fresh ingredients," Budd said. "It's like night and day being able to work in these new surroundings." Budd and her husband Ian also donated a new refrigerator.

It's likely this new kitchen would have cost $14,000 if the facility h a d n' t re ce i ve d d o n at i o n s a n d discounts from local companies.

UPDATES

A WINNING MEAL Chef and CF member Stephan Schulz is calling on others to help those in need.

THE OAKVILLE BRANCH is looking to enter the Culinary Federation into the Guinness Book of Records this May at the 2019 National Conference in Niagara Falls. But the winner won’t be the CF — it’ll be those who need a win most. CF Oakville member Stephan Schulz has mapped out an altruistic route to the world record: prepare a world-beating number of meals for charity.

“Our Chapter wants to do something for the community by preparing meals for charity groups,” said Schulz. “We are looking to feed a lot of people and give these charities some relief, so why not try to challenge ourselves by inspiring other chapters and groups to try and beat the record we establish.”

“The winners will always be the charities,” added Schulz.

The key ingredient, though, is ready and willing chefs.

Schulz is still looking for volunteer, attendees and sponsors to participate and make this world-beating, people-feeding event a reality. Those interested in helping others — and breaking a world record while they’re at it — should reach Schulz by email at chefstephanschulz@gmail.com.

COOKING FOR A CAUSE CF Oakville pitches in to help recentlyarrived refugees.

ALL OF OUR LIVES are journeys, and members of the Culinary Federation’s Oakville branch were recently asked to take part in a particularly poignant one. Matthew House, a not-for-profit organization in Toronto that helps welcome, house and support refugees as they transition to life in Canada, asked for CF Oakville’s assistance in executing its 20th anniversary Celebrating the Journey fundraising gala.

After many hours of planning recipes, sourcing donated ingredients and coordinating logistics, a brigade of chefs gathered on September 27 at the Daniels Spectrum, a community centre in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood, to deliver an exceptional culinary experience to 250 supporters of Matthew House’s mission. The menu took guests on a delicious journey of the four regions that the majority of Matthew House’s clientele hail from: North Africa, East Africa, South America and the Middle East. The event was a wonderful opportunity to learn, collaborate and give back to the community — all of which speaks to the heart of what CF Oakville is all about.

THE MENU TOOK GUESTS ON A DELICIOUS JOURNEY OF THE FOUR REGIONS THAT THE MAJORITY OF MATTHEW HOUSE’S CLIENTELE HAIL FROM.

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 41

UPDATES

BEAUTIFUL THINGS Notes from the NVICA Charcuterie Workshop.

Shawn Galway, from eatdrinkbreathe.com

“MY FATHER TOLD me once that there are three things in life that we must do: Work hard, be honest and make beautiful things.”

With these words John Van Der Lieck plunged his hands into a dark, shimmering paste of pork liver to the reverent, nodding ascent of a roomful of chefs.

We were in the spacious commercial kitchen of North Island College’s Culinary Arts department for the NVICA Charcuterie Workshop, a twoday journey through the world of salting, curing, pressing and preserving meats. Around 20 of us, all foodservice professionals, gathered around John as he guided us from whole hog to finished product and every critical step in between.

John is as close to a charcuterie master as one gets (although he’d be the first to shake his head and say there’s no end to the learning) and had driven up from the Comox Valley to show us the ropes. He was the founder of Oyama Sausage Co. in Vancouver and had spent the bulk of his career working on Granville Island producing world-class charcuterie for Vancouver’s bustling foodservice industry and discerning foodies. Aside from being a skilled craftsman, he’s a joy to listen to, recounting proverbs, favourite recipes and anecdotes from his long career with the easy flow of a master storyteller.

The hog was from Lentelus Farm in Courtenay, a small town halfway up Vancouver Island, and came in two whole sides. When chefs Xavier Bauby and Ronald St. Pierre trotted them out 42 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

(sorry, couldn’t help that pun) an audible sigh went up from the assembled cooks indicating that I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t worked with such an impressive and daunting chunk of meat.

It was no problem for John. Armed with only a hacksaw and a thin boning knife, he set about taking apart the beast, and within an hour one whole side had been portioned into the kind of primals most of us would recognize.

Each piece was described in detail and assigned to a particular pile depending on what type of fat or meat they contained and what sort of beautiful things could be made of them.

As John reiterated many times during the two days: “The key to good charcuterie is determining what you want. Do you need meat to last? Do you need it cooked right away? What kind of flavour are you looking for?

How much space do you have? Once you know, you can make whatever fits the criteria instead of working backwards and wasting meat.”

On day one, everyone broke into groups and started cutting, rendering, scraping or in my case, fishing eyeballs out from the head. Soon piles of glistening pork fat were sorted into groups depending on the concentration of pure fat-to-meat.

Anything that wasn’t going to be salted, brined or rendered was added to an enormous, rolling, gelatine-filled stock that would act as both a flavourful medium for the brine and as a binding agent for our terrines.

That’s right around when John brought out the offal. The liver was

UPDATES

cleaned, heavily seasoned, ground to a mousse-like texture then wrapped in caul fat and baked. Tongue and pieces of meat plucked from the head were mixed with chopped pickles, salt, sugar and vinegar, encased in jellied stock, then chilled to make headcheese.

“Of course, if you call it headcheese, no one will buy it!” laughed John. “So we’ll call it tete de cochon or what have you. That is why French cuisine is eternal! They have such wonderful names for things!”

Once the brined pieces went into the smoker and the pates and terrines were squared away, the whole crew surrounded John in the cold kitchen for a sausage making party. He fired up a big industrial grinder and a thermo-mixer (imagine a big, temperature controlled Vitamix) and fed through batches of pork, fat, salt and spices in varying quantities to produce five unique sausage fillings.

Chef-turned-farmer Brian McCormick from Clever Crow Farms out in Black Creek, B.C., brought in a hand crank sausage stuffer and everyone took a turn feeding the hopper and guiding long tubes of ground meat into casings and then twirling them to create sausage links.

This last step took a bit of finesse, but after a couple of tries under the guidance of the maestro even I got the hang of it.

This was the heart of the whole two-day affair. Everyone got their hands into a bowl of ground pork and spices or twirled a crank while someone else fed the stuffer. Instead of lone wolf chefs from desperate worlds babysitting pots at various ends of the kitchen, everyone was together in this beautiful messy business.

Once all the casings were filled and pricked, it was time to eat!

Over on NIC’s vast line a couple of pans were fired up and the freshly made sausages started to sizzle and pop. Terrines were un-moulded and pates were carefully sliced and arranged

onto platters. We all sat down in the North Island College Dining Room and tucked into the beautiful things we had made from such inelegant hunks of pig — crostinis and napkins were offered, but in my enthusiasm, I mostly used my hands.

Both terrines were spectacular! The liver was subdued and perfectly accentuated with spices so that there was no organy aftertaste. The peppercorns were a perfect fit and the caul fat provided both a structure for the terrine, a crisp lid to eat and added fat to the whole affair. The head cheese was equally great and had a variety of really exciting textures, including my personal favourite, the tongue!

Speaking of favourites: I’m a sucker for a farmer-style sausage, so the Toulouse-style and Chef Brian’s special sausages were admittedly my favourites of the whole workshop! Both were rough and herbal with just a hint of lemon, rosemary and just enough of that distinctive offal twang to make things interesting.

Both the paprika-spiked chorizo and Morteau sausages were exceptional and

more aggressively spiced than I imagined when I was mixing up the filling. The smoke added another layer of BBQc o o k o u t- L o u i s i a n a - h o t- s a u c e - h o tsummer-tarmac flavour to them both and the char from the frying pan added a beautiful crust.

Finally, the boudin blanc was a combination of bright white pork fat, a bit of chicken, bread soaked in cream, lemon and herbs.

The colour was (as you’d expect) pale as a ghost and full of subtle, bright flavours and the texture was incredibly smooth. It was a perfect foil for all of the other more assertive, fatty sausages and gave our meat board a dash of class.

And that was it. After we’d gorged on our handiwork and fed the dishes through the washer, we got a last chance to ask John questions and then mill around exchanging emails with all the great new friends we’d made. Everyone couldn’t wait to bust out the grinder at their work and start cranking out house-made charcuterie!

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 43

UPDATES

AN EVENING OF EXCELLENCE Windsor-area culinary professionals gather to recognize the year’s best.

CULINARY FEDERATION WINDSOR Branch and the Windsor Region of the Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association (ORHMA) presented their second annual Evening of Excellence Gala at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts in October. The evening saw several individuals, organizations and businesses operating in the local hospitality industry take home awards.

Gerry Deluca, chef and owner of Torino Pizza in Windsor, was given the CF Central Region Lifetime Achievement Award, and Adelina Sisti-DeBlasis, president of CF Windsor, was awarded Chef of the Year 2018. The Essex Gold and Country Club, represented by CF Windsor members John Kukucka, John Romiens, Alex Migneault, Linda Nelson and Kenny Knowler, was awarded Best Members’ Club

by Best Bar None Ontario, and industry-led accreditation granted to establishments practicing the highest standards of beverage service and hospitality.

The evening featured entertainment as well as amazing hors d'oeuvres and a five-course dinner prepared by CF chef-members.

Special thanks goes to CF vice president David Franklin and F. Dick Knives’ Carmelo Vadacchino for attending and helping to present the awards.

THE EVENING FEATURED ENTERTAINMENT AS WELL AS AMAZING HORS D'OEUVRES AND A FIVE-COURSE DINNER

44 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

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SHINING A LIGHT ON AUTISM St. Louis Bar & Grill put on a night of drinks, dancing and dining, raising a windfall for the Shining Through Centre and autism awareness

By Gregory Furgala

“You don’t have a choice with autism.

The children don’t have a choice, and the families don’t have a choice.

And what we need to do is create opportunity. And the way we’re going to create opportunity is by increasing awareness.”

These were the opening remarks from Brent Poulton, Founder and CEO of St. Louis Bar & Grill, a sports bar and restaurant chain, to kick off its fundraiser for the Shining Through Centre last November. Founded in 1999 by five families, all of whom had a child with autism, the Shining Through Centre has grown into a world-class organization with campuses in Woodbridge, North York and Mississauga, Ontario. The evening featured a live auction and raffle, and capped off St. Louis’s

month-long drive to raise funds for children with autism at local schools for Autism Awareness Month, which lasted through October. It was also a roaring success, raising $260,000 — $60,000 over St. Louis’s goal.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of our organization, with respect to what we’ve been able to accomplish,” said Poulton.

Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 1 in 59 Canadian children aged 5 to 17. The symptoms of ASD vary in intensity and kind, and often coexist with other disorders, but affected individuals typically experience difficulty with social interactions and are prone to repeating specific patterns of behaviour. That variability can complicate support, which is

necessarily tailored to each individual — what works with one child might not work for another.

St. Louis Bar & Grill was an early supporter of Shining Through. This year for Autism Awareness Month, customers were asked to donate $5 in exchange for a book of coupons with more than $30 in savings. To date, St. Louis has raised more than $1.2 million in support of the Shining Through Centre.

Every dollar for the centre helps. It costs $75,000 per child, per year. The fundraising that St. Louis has provided has helped Shining Through develop a world-class program. It now employs a staff of highly trained and specialized professionals who create new programs and, in total, provide 110,000 hours of therapy per year.

For Additional Information Contact Jennifer Peach, St. Louis Franchise Ltd, at 416-485-1094 x 238

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Chuck Nervick Senior Vice President, MediaEdge Communications

THE RESULTS ARE IN: THE INAUGURAL CANADIAN RESTAURANT & BAR SHOW WAS A ROUSING SUCCESS!

The team that brought the show together:

When we decided to take the plunge and create our own foodservice trade show, we wanted to set a new standard, and not just for the number of exhibitors and attendees. We wanted our attendees to participate, learn and be entertained.

Foodservice and hospitality is about engaging guests, not just putting food in front of them, and we wanted the same ethos to drive every decision we made. The Canadian Restaurant & Bar Show wasn’t about breaking trade show rules; it was about writing new rules altogether.

Walking around the trade show floor — well, running — I saw suppliers and distributors networking, talented chefs going head-to-head in friendly competition and the slickest group of mixologists and flair bartenders I’ve seen gather in the same place at the same time. The oohing, ahhing and occasionally raucous crowd could be heard across the entire trade show floor.

We’ve since caught our breath and assessed everyone’s feedback. The overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey said they were happy to see the involvement of our partner associations, including the Culinary Federation; Women Chefs & Restaurateurs; the Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association; the Nightclub & Bar Show; the Manufacturers’ Agents Association for the Foodservice Industry; Foodservice Consultants Society International and Ontario Independent Meat Processors. Most of our respondents also said it was a fantastic networking opportunity and that they made valuable connections at the show, while more still said they plan to attend next year.

An invaluable part of our show was our education sessions, and over the next few pages we’ve produced a series of stories and spreads that sum up the engaging exchanges that took place between our moderators and panellists. If one word can sum everything up, it’s change. Culinary school is changing, technology is changing, local food is changing. Nothing is static anymore, except maybe everyone’s enjoyment of a good meal.

Foodservice is exciting, daunting and non-stop — it’s why we love the business. Keep up with CRFN for the latest news, and check out next year’s CR&B Show as well. As proud as we are of what we’ve accomplished at our inaugural show, we plan to do even better in 2019.

Chuck Nervick Senior VP

Sincerely,

Kevin Brown President/CEO

Carmine Aquino Distributor Partner Liaise Edwin Cabural Director of Sales Annette Carlucci Art Director Kateryna Dolhova Show Operations Intern Cara Dsouza Marketing and Show Operations Coordinator Rick Evangelista Web Developer Gregory Furgala Managing Editor Alex Holding Event Sales Geoff Leung Web Developer Sue Mercer Education Program Manager Brad Moore Director of Show Operations Nick Nervick Associate Publisher Carlos Parra Event Sales Erin Ruddy Executive Editor Kavita Sabharwal-Chomiuk Online Editor, REMI Network Rachel Selbie Production Manager Danielle Stringer Marketing Assistant Noel Vinluan Designer

Chuck Nervick Senior Vice President, MediaEdge Communications

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MENTORSHIP

Finding Your Tribe: Learnings from Mentoring and Being Mentored Along the Way.

By Jacqueline Warrell

“You need to find your tribe!”

A friend and mentor said that to me about a year-and-a-half ago. The statement struck a chord with me. It was an inspiration, a spark and a realization of the importance of surrounding oneself with people who are like-minded, who share your values and who make you a better person.

As a women, restaurateur, entrepreneur and academic, I knew these words were true. They came at a serendipitous time when I knew more than ever that I needed

to re-find and re-connect with my people.

I say re-find and re-connect because I had strong people, friendships and mentors in my life, but some of those relationships had dwindled. I was at a point of significant discovery and change in my career, and I knew I needed to re-build my tribe.

Teaming Up A tribe cannot consist of just one or two people; a tribe includes many. I have learnt that this process of building your tribe needs to be an intentional one. It doesn’t just happen on its own (at least not in my experience). Over the last year and a half, I have made a conscious effort to find my people, connect with them and invite them to be part of my tribe, which prompted me to look inward first at my own tribe. Who was part of it? Who was missing? My reflections affirmed that I had strong people and meaningful relationships, but that I also had some gaps to fill. I began to think about who I wanted to be in my tribe and I started intentionally connecting (and in some cases re-connecting) with these people.

I was recently introduced to the term “ment-working,” a portmanteau acknowledging the blurry line between mentoring and networking. This is how I would describe my process of re-building my tribe over the last year and half. To rebuild, I have needed to get myself out there and meet new people, but also reach out to those already in my network and community. I never thought

52 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

I would interview a mentor, but I have made decisions over coffee or a glass of wine about whether this person should be part of my tribe. Being involved in organizations such as Women Chefs & Restaurateurs has been important. I have experienced WCR as a space for mentworking with other like-minded women, who I hope are also sussing me out to be part of their tribe, too.

Along the way, I have learned the importance of having a tribe with people who can play different roles to offer different advice, support and mentorship. Some of the types of people I have discovered as part of my tribe are listed below. This list is by no means exhaustive. Some people in my tribe play more than one role, others have a more specific purpose. Some positions are still up for grabs, but these are some of my people: • Cheerleaders: People that can scrape me off the floor, build me up and push me forward to see the possible in what seems impossible.

• Coaches: People with whom I can talk business, share advice, brainstorm and who help me generate concrete ideas, plans and solutions.

• Listeners: People that will listen to whatever I need to talk, vent or share about without judgement.

• Devil’s Advocates: People that aren’t afraid to challenge me, push me outside my comfort zone, invite me to think differently and call me out when I need to be called out.

• Validators: Sometimes I just need someone who will validate me and my work.

• Friends: People who I can talk to about anything, but most importantly we can get together without ever talking about business.

• Mentors: These are special people.

We support. We share. We care. We get each other. We are part of each other’s learning. We feel each other’s challenges. We experience each other’s successes.

I want to share some of my experience of the mentors in my tribe. At the time when the idea of “finding my tribe” was offered to me, I was at a place in my career (and still often am) with many mixed emotions — excitement, anxiety, hope, insecurity.

And if I were to be honest, I spent a lot of time then feeling lost and lonely, which isn’t new for any woman in the food and beverage industry. The hospitality industry remains male-dominated, not just in the number of males working in the field, but in the ingrained macho mentality and culture that persists in many of food and hospitality workplaces. Sometimes, the industry feels like an uneasy and unfamiliar place.

Give and Take I mentioned that, in addition to being a restaurateur, I’m also an academic.

Angostura_CRFN_Winter_ad_2018.indd 1

In many ways, the academic world is not that dissimilar to the foodservice industry. It too is male-dominated and can be a lonely place to survive in, and survival as an early career academic often relies on long hours, working exhausted and making a paycheque that seems dismal — all things most women restaurateurs can also relate to. But part of what got me through the early years of my academic career was an amazing person and mentor who created a culture of care for me and who taught me to strive to do the same for others.

Traditionally, we associate words like teacher, coach, expert or guide with a mentor. We also expect mentors to be pillars of wisdom, our cheerleaders, our devil’s advocate and open ear. In my experience, these can be aspects of a mentoring relationships, but for me there is one element that distinguishes a mentor from a teacher, a business coach, or a personal advisor — mutual care.

I have had several significant mentors in my life and as part of my tribe, and those relationships have never been a one-way street.

They’re reciprocal, and looking back at some of my most powerful mentoring relationships, I have been both a mentor and a mentee. One of my favourite sayings is, “We are all

teachers and learners together.” Phil Collins similarly said, “In learning you will teach, in teaching you will learn.” I do not see my mentors as just experts, guides or teachers, but as people I can establish a mutual and genuine relationship of learning, support and care, with particular emphasis on the latter. For me it’s what sets mentors apart from other people in my tribe.

Care focusses on the person and the relationship.

Unfortunately, a culture of care has not been my experience of the norm in the food and beverage industry, but I see this shift happening! A shift towards being accepting of new ways of knowing and being inside and outside kitchens, restaurant floors and catering rooms that no longer accept the shouted “yes, chef!” mentality. A culture of care shifts the focus to the people and the relationships within the workplace and not the business, the menus, the food or the egos. My mentors have helped me see this, experience this and, hopefully, pass it on.

My mentors are only one part of my tribe, but a powerful part. I hope for some of you reading this that these words and my reflections also come at a serendipitous time. Find your people!

Build your tribe — re-build it! Ment-work!

And while you do, never forget to nurture meaningful relationships of care.

www.restobiz.ca 2019-01-08 | Winter 2018 53 5:58 PM

CULINARY SCHOOL PANEL

Cooking School is Growing Up Once upon a time, cooking school was about knife skills and the classic techniques deployed in a brigade kitchen. Those basics remain, but students want more, and the schools are responding.

Craig Youdale remembers his small class at Canadore College, a small school. His two chef professors, recent imports from France and the U.K., were both classically trained, as Youdale would soon be, too. The curriculum was straightforward, with a balance of kitchen time and classroom time, a student-run dining room and lessons spread out over two years. They focused on mastering garde manger, sauce, baking and butchery, and the skills that underpinned each practice.

“Twenty-five, 30 years ago, we learned how to make sauces and roast a chicken and compose salad and make a dessert, and we haven’t really changed that,” says Youdale. Only now there’s just so much more.

Youdale has since started teaching, and is the dean of the Canadian Food and Wine Institute at Niagara College. While fundamental cooking

skills — searing, roasting, poaching and other familiar techniques — remain as important as ever, modern culinary school syllabi have dropped the gallocentrism for an international outlook, new technology has foisted itself on young cooks and schools have evolved past just teaching skills in the kitchen and moved into management, nutrition and entrepreneurship training, amongst others. While still considered a trade, cooking has developed into an interdisciplinary profession with a global focus, demanding new skills and proficiencies from the young chefs entering into it. Today’s culinary schools have had to refashion themselves to keep up.

At Niagara, that has meant teaching students how to use sous vide machines and combi-ovens alongside Wüsthofs and All-Clads, and how to prepare Escoffier’s five mother sauces alongside pho stock. Michael Allemeier, certified master chef and professor at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, has had a similar experience as Youdale, and recognizes it as a product of broader societal and technological shifts.

“The industry has gone to a contemporary, regional, fresher, seasonal Instagram-driven type of cuisine, and it’s evolved quite considerably,” says Allemeier. “When I did my apprenticeship, we cooked out of our Hering’s Dictionaries.

Kids today don’t even know Hering’s Dictionary. You can’t even find Hering’s Dictionary!”

Allemeier isn’t lamenting the development, but rather explaining

54 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

how the industry’s approach to contemporary dining has changed culinary schools. The new tools, availability of exotic ingredients and constant exposure to food media have changed the restaurants we eat at and have changed young cooks’ training as well. Cooking used to be French and regimented. The protein was placed over the sauce, and the vegetables and starch were placed alongside. Take a look at popular Instagram accounts like @igbrunchclub or @theartofplating, and it’s easy to see how that structure fell out of favour.

It’s also where young chefs are taking their cues from.

“There’s no ceiling anymore, and before there was a ceiling,” says Allemeier. “You can be as creative as you want. But if it’s not amazing and people don’t get it, you’re going to be bankrupt and out of business, so we have to temper it with a bit of common sense.”

That common sense, unfortunately, is occasionally lacking. Allemeier says he’s dealt with cooks who are experts at accessory skills like sous vide cooking, but are lost when asked to sear and roast a piece of meat. In his view, their education — whether it’s been from culinary school or just on-the-job training — has failed them. “I think of it as having all the decorations for the tree,” says Allemeier, “but you need a tree first!”

With secondary skills and the basics in hand, though, students are positioned to tackle a broader range of in-demand jobs in foodservice, or continue pursuing their education.

Rudi Fischbacher, the acting dean of the School of Hospitality, Recreation and Tourism at Humber College, was trained in classic techniques in his

youth like Youdale and Allemeier.

More recently, he’s been expanding Humber’s curriculum in response to students worried about the workload, pay and work-life balance.

“Some do it out of passion, but when they see how hard it is physically, it’s a bit of a deterrent.

And we don’t want them to see it through rose-coloured glasses, like they’re all going to be the next TV superstar chef,” says Fischbacher.

“It’s not going to be that way, but you can make a good living. Looking at the career pathways, you do it through education. Get them a diploma, make sure they get their

Red Seal, make sure they get their certified chef de cuisine.”

“There are many other food-related industries,” continues Fischbacher.

Fischbacher stresses this point: there are more options available to cooks than just restaurant kitchens in Toronto, and education can help. It helps him address students' concerns about pay and professional opportunities outside of restaurants. Fischbacher also emphasizes the global transferability of the skill set, and has set up exchanges in Florence, Strasbourg and Taiwan. “It really has become an international trade. It’s really made [cooks] global citizens,” says Fischbacher.

The real sign of Humber’s success, Fischbacher says, is its students. Some of them end up in restaurants, others end up in hotels, retirement homes or with equipment companies. Some pursue nutrition or management positions, while still others end up coming back to Humber to teach part time. That’s the world culinary schools have adapted to, and now, graduates from school’s like Humber ply their trade, or something like it, all over the world. “Some are in Dubai, some are in Hong Kong, some are in Hong Kong,” says Fischbacher. “It’s beautiful.”

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LOCAL FOOD PANEL

Farm to Table to Sustainability Local food might be a route to operational and environmental sustainability, but it’s not a sure thing. As our local food panellists explain, it takes a bit of work.

By Gregory Furgala

The local food movement sparked an explosion of urban pastoral destinations that introduced city dwellers to meat raised and produce grown at nearby farms. In what seemed like an overnight phenomenon, Canadian diners clamoured for whey-fed pork chops, grass-fed steak and foraged spring onions from towns they recognized, not just pork, beef and scallions from wherever. Diners were willing to pay a premium too, and restaurateurs wisely capitalized on the demand.

Darcy MacDonell was an early adopter of the trend.

Since opening Farmhouse Tavern in 2012, he’s stuck to an uncompromisingly local menu made up exclusively of Ontario ingredients, wine and beer. It wasn’t just about making a buck, though. For MacDonell, who grew up 100 kilometres west of Montreal in Alexandria, Ontario, it was about bringing his rural roots into the city.

“I wanted to showcase people I knew,” says MacDonell. “I wanted to showcase Ontario, and entrepreneurs that started a winery on a small plot of land and just support those farmers and growers.”

It’s a familiar impulse: help the people you know. But it’s one usually lost on a balance sheet. At least it is on most.

In 1994, British author and entrepreneur John Elkington coined the term “triple bottom line,” a new metric that expands the traditional profit motive of any given business into three equal parts. In addition to profitability, it includes the environmental and social result of any given business.

It’s a readjustment of how we measure any given business’s success, one that local food, with its practical distance from factory farms and market demand, fits well, but not perfectly.

Local Issues Bruce McAdams, an assistant professor at Guelph University’s School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management, says there’s definitely a triple bottom line benefit to local food, but it’s not a sure thing. “We look at local food as being sustainable,” says McAdams. “We think about it in restaurants as a huge part of sustainability. It is a part of it, but I believe it’s a small part.”

“Most scholars studying the local food movement say the biggest gain for organizations in in supporting that societal

56 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

aspect of the triple bottom line. So, helping the community by supporting local farmers by purchasing local products,” says McAdams. “That’s where the biggest benefit is.”

The environmental side is less certain. In 2017, Seth Wynes, a PhD candidate at UBC who published an analysis of different “green” actions, told the CBC that, “In terms of emissions, [buying local] just isn’t a big deal.” McAdams theorizes that it could actually be worse on the environment, noting that as global food systems have become extremely efficient, transport and delivery trucks loaded with onions might, on a per onion basis, pollute less than a farmer driving into to town to drop off a single crate of them. The equation might break the other way, but ultimately, a restaurateur looking to increase their environmental bottom line should focus on things like low-flush toilets, energy efficient light bulbs and reducing waste.

Moreover, says McAdams, locally-sourced ingredients typically cost more than conventionally sourced ingredients.

For restaurants working on tight margins — that is, most restaurants — eating those costs or passing them onto their customers are both uncomfortable decisions. The problem is compounded with issues of availability, which especially in Canada, makes accessing good local fare difficult year-round.

The end run around that problem is canning, preserving and freezing, which have their own added costs.

For the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, though, that can be a value-add.

Local Food, Industrial Scale Nearly a decade ago, Richard Willett, MTCC’s vice president of food and beverage, started reforming the centre’s culinary program, refocusing its efforts on local food. Willett says there was "a little bit of fear" surrounding the transition.

When its at capacity, the MTCC will serve up to 10,000 meals in a day, so any operational shift is necessarily huge.

Naturally, there were growing pains.

“Through the process, it was about walking, falling down a little bit, stumbling in some cases, and getting back up,” says Willett. But he continued to commit resources to it, even hiring a sustainability officer to help educate Willett and his staff, forge relationships with local farmers and assist with

economic benefits for the organization. But a few years later, absolutely it’s been financially rewarding for us,” says Willett. The MTCC’s program is on a scale that’s magnitudes greater than Farmhouse Tavern’s, with a corresponding difference in investment, but it can work.

The financial benefits can accrue alongside the social benefit, and increasingly because of, as people actively look to dine on local produce.

the infrastructure upgrades to preserve, cure and can meat and produce for colder months. It was no small investment of time, labour and resources. But it worked.

“Today the operation is very different than it was eight years ago,” says Willett. By way of example, he explains how MTCC chefs recently slaughtered two pigs that were purchased last spring. They had grown to 200 pounds apiece over the summer, and after being butchered, gave the MTCC fantastic, homemade charcuterie. "It tells a story, it's local and has an educational component," says Willett.

A lot of that is lost in the bulk purchasing process, and despite stumbling out of the gate, the effort has paid off.

“There has been a return on investment for us. Initially, there were a lot of scratching heads. ‘Is this going to work?’ Not everyone was convinced that there were

Risk and Reward Local food isn’t an automatic triple bottom line panacea.

Developing a restaurant or foodservice operation built on local food and sustainable principles takes money and effort.

“My opinion is guarded, especially from the environmental point of view. You need to get as much information as you can from your supplier and be willing to do the legwork if in fact you’re ordering and using of local product is environmentally friendly,” says McAdams. “You have to be willing to work a little harder and be more on top of local food when you’re working with it, as opposed to of just picking up your phone and ordering from one of the large distributors.”

Do that, though, and a restaurateur can genuinely make good on all three bottom lines, with the social and environmental pillars driving the financial one. The mistake, really, is thinking it’s an entirely new concept.

“We always knew our neighbours,” say MacDonell. “We’d maybe trade half a cow for pasture rental, or straw or hay.

There was bartering between neighbouring farmers, and that idea of community support for each other. We’d help you get your profit and you’d help us get ours.”

It takes a little more work, but there’s a payoff. In fact, there’s three of them.

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 57

INSTITUTIONAL FOODSERVICE

Institutionalized Institutional foodservice may be done on a massive scale, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe from subtle industry shifts.

By Doug Radkey

Day after day, foodservice providers in hotels, schools, hospitals, convention centres, casinos and other large facilities prepare and serve hundreds, sometimes thousands, of meals to their unique guests.

Managing those numbers requires a corresponding volume of human resources, sales data, inventory and multiple menus as well as the support of an entire team with both leadership and scalable capabilities, because overcoming industry-wide challenges like staffing shortages and cutting costs — similar to that of a typical restaurant — is not something that happens overnight. Add in the ever-changing food trends hitting the industry, and the capability to adjust menu offerings on a large scale quickly becomes a necessity.

Consumers of these segments

demand the quality and innovation they have come to expect from a foodservice provider — they don’t care that institutions have a more difficult time responding to change, they only care that they do it.

So how can large foodservice operators adapt to change? Let’s look at the three segments: Colleges and Universities The phrase “staff shortage,” or more specifically “chef shortage,” has been used countless times in 2018 — including its use by small independent restaurant operators that may employ 8–10 people or fewer in their kitchen. But can you imagine the headache of staffing 50 cooks? How about the migraine of hiring 100?

What many don't realize is that campus dining programs have a difficult time attracting and retaining qualified staff in their kitchens. Despite offering flexible schedules, fair wages and a positive environment, many post-secondary schools are struggle to adequately staff their facilities. Overworking the staff members that they have leads to burnout and frustration, running the risk of leaving your morale at an all-time low. And if that happens, operators will have an even bigger staffing shortage to deal with.

While it would be ideal to hire new staff quickly, that may not be a wise decision. Hiring new staff should be a careful, methodical process

58 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

of onboarding where values beat out required experience. Hiring and retaining the right people is essential or you’ll find yourself right back where you started: short on quality, dedicated people. Directors, chefs and managers who know how to attract, inspire and develop their people will remain in high demand, not only in today’s restaurants but in today’s schools and large foodservice facilities.

Casinos and Entertainment Groups Food and beverage is a critical component of casino operations. The majority of these operations include several cafes, bistros, buffets and restaurants with different themes, price points, and menu options.

According to a report from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research, food and beverage revenue makes up about 22 per cent of a typical casino’s total yearly revenue.

As the demographics of today’s gamers become more diverse, so must the menus. Dining selections that appeal to gamers also bring in customers who appreciate a welldesigned menu to enhance the overall experience. And like cars and fashion, the casino food and beverage business remains highly sensitive to trends, and the speed of change continues to increase.

Casino operators have a wide range of customers to satisfy, and keeping these diners happy means offering

enough options to please everyone, all while keeping costs and food waste down.

Recent food trends should be taken into account when revamping offerings, creating new menus or promoting limited time offers — if you’re an independent restaurant operator, then I’m sure this sounds familiar. Keeping menus interesting and current is essential to developing and maintaining a loyal customer base. For years, the leading casino programs have recognized the important relationship between innovation, investment and engagement, leading to higher customer satisfaction and stronger revenues. The challenge for operators and suppliers is to position dining programs to be more responsive in shorter time frames and with less investment.

Convention Centres Determining the direction of a convention centre is always an interesting task considering its events range from black tie to trade shows to cosplay conventions. Taking over the kitchens of a convention centre that needs to be known abroad for the quality of its cuisine is a huge challenge. An executive chef or foodservice director’s newest challenge falls within the financial officer’s increasing quest for new sources of revenue and controlled costs.

One could argue that the customers' heightened expectations for diversity, quality and transparency in their food, as well as special diet needs, collectively put upward pressure on the average guest cost — in this case, food and beverage.

The best way to overcome this is to efficiently control labour, quality, energy costs, supply chain management and food safety.

Convention centres are going through extensive renovations to accommodate these challenges and pressure from shareholders, building kitchens with combi-ovens, blast chillers, hydroponic gardens and even conveyor belts, which speed up plating.

FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT PARTS EVERY COMMERCIAL KITCHEN

Instead of building out, they’re building up by stacking equipment that is capable of accomplishing various tasks, like the aforementioned combi-oven, which makes better use of available space.

YOUR POCKET-SIZE PARTS EXPERT

The Only Constant No matter the size of venue, whether it’s a 1,000 square foot restaurant or a 15,000-plus square foot kitchen, operators need to adapt to change and operating challenges. There is no denying the influence that economics, society and limited budgets have on food and beverage programs found in many of these segments. The vision however, must continue to focus on creativity, simplicity and authenticity – three key fundamental ingredients to success!

Doug Radkey is the principal owner of Key Restaurant Group, a global restaurant/ bar start-up development agency based in Ontario. Being in the food and beverage industry for over 17 years has allowed him to become a leading voice in the development of feasibility studies, unique concepts, business plans, marketing plans, memorable menus, guest experiences, and financial management systems.

Continue the conversation with Doug on Twitter @KeyRestaurants, on Facebook @DougRadkey, on Linkedin, or by visiting keyrestaurantgroup.com.

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www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 59

FIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL RESTAURANT BRAND PANEL

The Flexible Five It takes boundless energy and innumerable skills to run a restaurant, but lasting success comes down five key characteristics.

By Doug Radkey

What does it take to be a good restaurateur? It takes sacrifice, a highlevel of creativity, social skills, system management and stress management, all fuelled by a hell of a lot of passion — and not just for the industry, but for winning in it, too. And like a good restaurateur, a successful restaurant brand comes down to a handful of key traits. At the 2018 CR&B Show, I sat down with a panel of independent operators to learn how they adapt to change and maintain brands that are memorable, scalable, sustainable, profitable and consistent.

The engaging session included Penny Nunn and Jim Loshaw of The Crepe House, a Port Dover, Ontario-based cafĂŠ serving sweet and savoury crepes, and Zena Polin, owner of The Dish and Dram, a bistro in Kensington, Maryland.

Together, they highlighted a number 60 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

of socioeconomic and staff challenges, marketing plans, pricing strategies and operating systems unique to independent restaurants, and the research, thoughtful design and multiple levels of planning, execution, and accountability it takes to reckon with them. Strategies varied, but everyone agreed that operations and planning need to be geared toward five, interrelated characteristics: scalability, sustainability, consistency, profitability, and, of course, it needs to be a memorable place to visit.

Now, we can even take these characteristics one step further: How do they relate to vendors, suppliers, and distributors within the restaurant, bar, and hospitality industry?

Depending on the size of your business model and menu, dealing with vendors and developing a supply chain

management system can be locally scaled and simple, or a large, complex undertaking for a corporate or chain restaurant operation that demands more time and more resources. For equipment, supplies and technology, the service sequence plus kitchen and bar planning process can be one of the most exciting, exhausting and confusing aspects of starting and running a restaurant. But stick with it: it determines the long-term success of your venue. For food and beverage, transparency, traceability, and accountability must be the top concern when deciding on vendors. After you, they ensure all products entering your restaurant or foodservice business are not only safe for your customers, but for your community. Knowing them, their practices and their stories is imperative toward pursuing the big five characteristics.

Scalability Scalability means providing your concept with a system that can proportionally handle very small to very large usage and service levels. When customer numbers fluctuate, it needs to react almost instantly and with no significant drop in cost effectiveness, functionality, performance or liability. For food and beverage, this means proactively developing a relationship with a primary supplier and secondary distributor for each of your core food and beverage products and ingredients to reduce the risk of not only running out of your par-level inventory, but being quickly prepared in the case of any type of shortage or product recall.

While developing those relationships, ensure you’re also meeting with vendors that will be able to scale with your business model to ensure there is no drop in performance. Sure, they can supply you that product now, but what about 12 months down the road when your purchases have (hopefully) doubled? Or how will they react when you can’t meet your minimum order threshold during a cold snap in January? How can you protect your consistent quality and flavour profiles as your business scales both up and down? These are the questions that need to be answered that will lead your business to sustainability.

Sustainable Whether it’s a restaurant, bar, cafe or food truck, the producers, manufacturers,

FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT PARTS EVERY COMMERCIAL KITCHEN

delivery drivers, owners, managers, kitchen staff and service staff ultimately share the responsibility to create a safe, memorable, and enjoyable experience within your concept.

Working with prime vendor programs or large foodservice distributors like Sysco can be a match made in heaven for many operators, but a smaller footprint is often better for independent operators. As much as possible, they can deal directly with local or regional growers, co-ops, artisans and distributors who also meet a high level of quality assurance standards.

Eliminating third parties can also reduce the risk of shortages, delays, spoiled product and food safety. The opposite of risk is opportunity; dealing directly can provide any concept with the opportunity to grow sustainably through cost effectiveness and optimal performance.

How? Working with local and regional growers, suppliers and artisans enables operators to engineer a more strategic, compact menu with 10–20 items, keeping it innovative, fresh, profitable, sustainable and memorable.

Memorable Freshness and seasonality play a large part in many restaurants — even humble pubs and bars — and that’s dependent on vendors. Outside of just delivering quality product and rotating menus, it’s important to meet with them, and tour their facilities. But how can your vendors help you create a memorable venue that stands out from the crowd? It can be as simple as building a strong relationship with your vendors, who should, in fact, play a large part in your marketing efforts.

Why? Because of the profound effects of storytelling!

Where did that product come from?

How did it get from there to the plate or glass in front of me? Showcase these stories through the use of video and photography on your menu, social media channels, website and

YOUR POCKET-SIZE PARTS EXPERT

Share photos and videos with parts experts GET THE APP

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 61

WE DON’T BREW OUR BEER FOR THE AWARDS. BUT HE DOES! Our brewmaster, Andrew Kohnen, threw away a successful career in logistics to pursue his dream of reconnecting with the brewing roots of his family. This carried him to the UK’s prestigious Brewlab in Sunderland, England, where he procured the alchemy that would drive his signature brewing style.

He took what he could from there and ventured to Scotland, Cornwall, and ultimately to Krefeld, Germany, working in the same brewery that had belonged to his ancestors.

He came home to Canada for Hockley.

You could call it dumb, but we call it destiny.

Andrew Kohnen Brewmaster

HOCKLEYBEER.CA

anywhere else that you can tell your story. You can even take it one step further. Guests today are looking for one-of-a-kind experiences, right?

Imagine the memorable impact of an educational food and beverage tasting series, local collaboration or a dinner and tour at the vendor’s facility.

Finally, vendors should also play a part in your staff training program, whether at the vendor’s property or yours. This provides staff with their own memorable experience and an opportunity to develop a story that will help sell the product, resulting in memorable guest experiences and sustainable profits for your concept.

Profitable Most of you reading this can agree that the paying customer wants high-quality product at the lowest price point possible.

Rising food costs — and the known requirement of keeping these costs within a certain percentage of your sales — can lead to a link within the supply chain breaking. Poor decision making and haphazard quality control can end any effort to adapt, leading to lower traffic levels and a confusing concept.

If you provide yourself with scalable and memorable opportunities for storytelling, you can begin to control your costs and offer price points that your market can sustain, leading to profitability.

It takes innovation, the right mindset and open communication between the leaders of the kitchen and bar, in addition to the vendor, to sustain a profitable supply chain. Out of your available suppliers, who’s willing to communicate?

Get everyone involved in the process by working together through collaboration to control your costs and to drive profits by elevating your guest’s variety of senses through product innovation and to develop consistency in your operations.

Consistent There are endless ways to lose money in this business, and one of the most vulnerable areas is in dealing with food and beverage. When it comes to design, the supply chain, work flow, and storage,

FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT PARTS EVERY COMMERCIAL KITCHEN

there’s little room for trial and error. The quality and price of raw materials can fluctuate, new food safety regulations may be imposed, delivery logistics will get more complex and even changes to packaging that once coincided neatly with your limited storage capacity might blow up your careful arrangement. A once desirable system that drove consistency can become one that sticks together or untangles on you in the blink of an eye.

A simple mistake could cause serious problems in your supply chain and result in lost revenue or wasted product, hurting your brand, losing otherwise loyal customers or worse. Your once-loyal customers may be exposed to food-borne illness. All your sacrifice and passion would be for naught.

This is where having the correct systems in place. Through means of design, communication, equipment, storage, flow and technology will equally position you and your team to operate consistently no matter the concept. This is where having the right strategy and mindset in place for food and beverage product, kitchen and bar supplies, equipment suppliers, schematic designers and point-of-sale vendors along with everything else it takes to run a restaurant, is invaluable.

It then takes ownership and the right leadership to enforce the importance of training and holding everyone accountable on these systems and how they relate to keeping your concept scalable, sustainable, memorable, profitable, and consistent.

Planning early through feasibility studies, concept development plans, and strategic business plans while instilling standard operating procedures in your day-to-day operations will create consistency, increase your businesses value, and improve your capital investment.

It should be no surprise, however, that the choice in the right vendors and supply chain management systems is the means to enhancing food & beverage quality and safety, consistency, and marketing all while reducing and controlling your costs.

At the end of the day, the right vendors and choice of supply chain can actually be used as one of your best marketing tools and simply cannot become overlooked or cheated upon. Finding vendors that compliment your concept is an integral part of a successful restaurant or bar.

YOUR POCKET-SIZE PARTS EXPERT

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www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 63

TECHNOLOGY PANEL

Different Tech, Different Takes Connectivity and cloud computing are new solutions to old problems. The next step is widespread adoption.

Marc Italia, Lightspeed Cloud POS provider Cloud-based POS has enabled table-side ordering and seamless communication between front and back of house. Food allergies, dietary preferences and the nutritional value of menu items can be instantaneously communicated back-and-forth, speeding up the overall time it takes to process orders. Guest turnover is faster, and with fewer mistakes. For customers and operators, it’s win-win. Look at Sapporo Revolving Sushi, based out of Las Vegas: customers send orders directly to the kitchen via iPad, while conveyor belts bring food to the tables.

Moving forward, increased demand for tech-based solutions will continue to push providers like Lightspeed to develop new tools, like system and service integration such as planning finances and organizing work schedules. Lightspeed’s recent integrations with Intuit QuickBooks Online and Planday are prime examples of this. Looking to the future, we can also anticipate a greater shift toward mobile and contactless payments.

Erik Koenig, Heritage Parts Foodservice parts distributor The internet of things and connected kitchen has changed how we think about the role Heritage Parts can play in foodservice. Our customers want a 360-degree view of their kitchens, and the tools we’re developing are geared toward responding to that want and quickly delivering information on a phone or tablet.

Equipment downtime is lost revenue; getting it back up is imperative.

The connected kitchen makes it possible streamline that process, and improvement of equipment generally. With data delivered via mobile phones, the connected kitchen brings the necessary data together in a single, easy-to-access platform that provides operators, service technicians and manufacturers a one-touch view of performance and the means to assess problems, employ solutions and involve our customer service representative and technicians at both the level of operator and the level of the equipment.

Going forward, technology will allow us to enhance our customers’ education. Online materials, including video, that promotes cleaning and simple repairs, as well as in-depth factory authorized service training, will be key for us moving forward. And, of course, so will having live experts on hand who can answer the inevitable question quickly and efficiently.

64 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

Brand Culture Marketing & Promotions

Gra Prow Burger (Entrée)

REVISION:

4

DOCKET: MC18-022

14-5250 Satellite Drive, Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5G5 T: 905 361 0305 F: 905 629 9305 DATE: JULY 24, 2018 CLIENT: McCormicks

COLOUR: CMYK

PROJECT: BBQ Ad (Cattlemen’s & Club House La Grille)

Ingredients: Gra Prow Burger 8 pieces bacon 600 grams Chuck beef, ground medium 2 tbsp La Grille Fiery Habanero and Roasted Garlic Seasoning 2 tbsp Club House Piri Piri Seasoning 1 cup Holy Basil, chopped 1 tbsp Thai Kitchen Fish Sauce 4 eaches Brioche round bun/quality sesame buns, split in half 6 ounces Melted butter 8 eaches Mozzarella cheese slices Fried Egg 6 eaches Eggs ½ cup Canola oil Garnish 1 each Red bell pepper, pickled and grilled ½ each Cucumber, sliced 1 each White onion, sliced Instructions: This recipe was created for Club House for Chefs by: Nuit Regular, Chef Owner Brand of Pai and Kiin in Culture Marketing & Promotions Toronto.

14-5250 Satellite Drive, Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5G5

TRIM SIZE: 3.375” x 9.563”

DESCRIPTION: Canadian Restaurant & FoodService News - Half Page Vertical Ad - ENGLISH

BLEED SIZE: n/a

CONTACT: Barbara MacDonald

LIVE AREA: n/a

DATE REQUIRED: 2018

Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Shape the ground beef mixture into four 1/2-inch (1 cm) thick patties. Place patties on greased grill over medium-high heat; close lid and cook, turning patties once, for about 10 minutes or until no longer pink inside. Remove from heat and top with mozzarella slices. Keep warm. Lightly brush cut side of buns with butter; grill or toast buns.

For the Fried Egg: In a wok, heat canola over medium heat. Once hot, add four eggs (one egg at a time) and cook until whites are set (completely coagulated and firm) and yolks begin to thicken (no longer runny, but not hard). Turn eggs over if desired, for additional firmness of yolks. Keep warm.

For Serving: Place patty on the bottom of a bun and add cucumber, grilled red bell pepper, and cooked bacon. Top with fried egg. Cover with buttered bun on top. Add additional condiments to taste.

Yield: 4 Servings

We know where our spices come from.

Do you?

T: 905 361 0305 F: 905 629 9305

For the Gra Prow Burger: Cook bacon until JULY 24, 2018 REVISION: 4 crispy. Drain DATE: the oil. Cut slices in half; keep warm.

DOCKET: MC18-022 In a large bowl CLIENT:place McCormicks ground beef, two COLOUR: CMYK eggs, Holy PROJECT: BBQ Ad (Cattlemen’s & Club House Grille) SIZE: 3.375” x 9.563” Garlic Basil, LaLa Grille Fiery Habanero andTRIMRoasted DESCRIPTION: Canadian Restaurant & FoodService News - Half Page Vertical Ad - ENGLISH BLEED SIZE: n/a Seasoning, Club House Piri Piri Seasoning and CONTACT: Barbara MacDonald REQUIRED: 2018 LIVE AREA: n/a Thai Kitchen DATE Fish Sauce and mix well together.

Beef Ribs with Cattlemen’s® St Louis Original BBQ Sauce seasoned with NEW La Grille Fiery Habanero and Roasted Garlic seasoning.

Pure Flavour Tastes Better

NEW

even better

together

The #1 BBQ brand in Canada and the top choice of professional pitmasters for over 50 years have come together to show you how BBQ was meant to be.

For more flavour inspiration, visit ClubHouseforChefs.ca/evenbettertogether

BAR TRENDS PANEL

Q&A with Jeremiah Batucan: “There’s no place more social than a bar” For better or for worse, technology is changing how often we go out for a night on the town, how we order, and even how we interact.

Interview by Gregory Furgala paid person’s opinion—just guiding us down a road. With bartending, the day I turned 21, I became a bar manager. I was super slick with Excel.

I love running through the numbers, and trying to figure out how to get my liquor costs below 20, 19 or 18 per cent, and everything I did was run through that, and I used the same principles when I worked with, say, a Marriott Hotel account.

CRFN: Since joining the Nightclub & Bar Show, what trends have you seen emerge in the bar and nightclub space?

CRFN took a moment to chat with the Nightclub & Bar Show’s Jeremiah Batucan, who moderated the bar roundtable discussion at the CR&B Show. Batucan shared his insight into the bar and nightclub scene, sharing some details from the NC&B’s 2019 Bar and Beverage Report and offering his take on what people — staff and customers both — want from a constantly evolving industry, and how technology is changing everything.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity CRFN: What do you do now?

Jeremiah Batucan: I am the director of conference content and industry relations at the Nightclub & Bar Show, which aside from being a mouthful, means I’m focused on ensuring that the show’s education sessions, speakers and content is both timely and relevant to the challenges and opportunities of bars, nightclubs, restaurants and the way they’re approaching the nightclub scene.

The second half of that is we’re obviously always trying to look for partnerships, ways to work with partners, other event and media brands, and just trying to push this industry forward.

CRFN: What drew you to hospitality?

JB: I just think it comes down to being

interested in people. I think everyone has an interesting story if you ask the right questions. I bartended all through college, and through all these other jobs I actually kept a job at the bar. It’s just getting to meet people every day and listen to their stories. It was always something that came to me naturally.

CRFN: How does that experience behind the bar inform what you do now?

JB: Almost to a fault, we try to make sure we have the right data. It’s based on what the numbers are telling us in terms of reception and feedback from our audience, and then pairing that with a little bit of gut. We try to avoid what I call the “hippo”—the highest-

JB: In the bigger markets, you see bartenders whose work isn’t just serving drinks, but social media and trying to be an ambassador. But not every place is a big market, so what do you do when you’re a smaller town and just don’t have that kind of reach? What’s a way they can approach it? A return to service is kind of number one.

Bar owners and bar operators aren’t hiring bartenders anymore, either.

They’re hiring people with interesting stories and interesting backgrounds — people that are nice — because you can’t really train someone’s inner being and how they treat people, but you can train them to make drinks.

Unemployment in the U.S. is at an all-time low, so staff retention is hard.

I just read that the average turnover for young staff is a month or two, so how can you train and cultivate a new environment or culture when they’re only lasting that long? It’s a constant reminder of what most people are looking for in a job. They want to feel like they’re contributing in some way.

The paycheque is important, but they want to feel like part of a team and that they’re building something more.

DOCKET: XXXX

CLIENT:

COLOUR: CMYK

PROJECT: Frank’s RedHot Table Top

TRIM SIZE: 3.375” x 9.563”

DESCRIPTION: Canadian Restaurant Foodservice News/MediaEdge - Half Page Vertical Ad - ENGLISH

bLEED SIZE: n/a

CONTACT: barbara MacDonald

LIVE AREA: n/a

DATE REqUIRED: 2018

CRFN: What trends do you see coming up?

JB: Food delivery is going to be huge. Some are forecasting that it’ll be at least 15 per cent of sales in the next few years, and when they’re taking 20–30 per cent of your margin, the restaurant is losing that. It’s also the foot traffic going into the restaurant — they can’t sell that extra drink, or that high profit margin beer or wine, so they’re losing on two fronts.

It’s exactly what I saw in the hotel space six or seven years ago with online travel agencies. Expedia, Priceline, and these huge mega accounts, are spending so much money.

The hotels were giving the same percentage away to Expedia that restaurants are giving to DoorDash and UberEats, and they found they couldn’t pull it back because they made a monster so big that, if they weren’t on these sites, your hotel was going to be a lot emptier than you’d like. But the airlines never gave in.

For booking online, the airlines would give a few dollars, whereas hotels were giving hundreds of dollars or 20–30 per cent, and I see the same thing happening with Uber Eats.

CRFN: What’s having the biggest impact on the industry?

JB: Technology can be huge. Social media and its impact on our psychology, and just this generation as a whole. It’s all about “me,” and people want things to be frictionless.

How do you pull someone in? You have people that are more socially awkward because they spend so much time in these digital channels rather than interacting in person. When you look at selfserve systems, mobile payment tabs or going to a handheld tablet and punching in a beer, and the waiter drops it off — they could’ve just come over first and asked, “Hey, how’re you doing? What’re you drinking today?” Instead, it feels very cold. What’s the real purpose of going to a bar if you don’t interact with the staff and each other?

There are some good things, though. I was just at a bar in Atlanta called Drafts and Dogs, and they do really cool cocktails on tap and offer really unique concoctions—I couldn’t even tell they were poured on draft. From a labour management standpoint, they save a tonne of cost not having to hire a bartender. It’s a win-win for the consumer and the business, and we might see more of that. That’s where technology could be a good thing. But again, technology hampers human interaction and social experience of most things in the world, and there’s no place more social than a bar.

CRFN: What do you want to tell people that are on the fence about going to the 2019 Nightclub and Bar Show?

Make it the #1 choice iN your establishMeNt

because it’s the #1 choice iN their hoMes 1

Canadians reach for Frank’s RedHot® Sauce at home more than any other hot sauce brand. So why make your patrons reach for anything less on your tables?

Visit frenchsfoodservice.ca for money-saving rebates and info on all tabletop sizes and flavours.

JB: This year, we have more than 70 education sessions, everything from social media to bartending operations, we have six different workshops, we have marketing strategies that are guaranteed to drive your business. And it’s all in one. There’s no place where you can get this much education with that much product selection from walking around our trade show floor and understand what’s going on. That’s the biggest takeaway. It’s not just the education, not just the experience — this has it all, and it has it all packed in three days.

And we’re going to make as much of it available to our attendees.

It’s a constantly changing business, and if you’re not staying ahead, it’s hard to stay relevant.

®

1 AC Nielsen 52 weeks ending December 9, 2017. Based on dollar sales. ®Reg. TM The French’s Food Company LLC. Used under licence.

www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 67

INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS

Innovation Inundation There was no shortage of game-changing products featured at the CR&B Show, but the following stood out from the already impressive pack. just last summer. Founders’ founders Len Fragomeni and Andre Scherbina set out to upend the underwhelming RTD category with craft principles, and the result is an intricate, approachable take on the prohibition classic: Bourbon and rye (the former for sweetness and body; the latter for spice), smoked chocolate and vanilla bitters and house-made gomme syrup, which lends a silkier texture than plain sugar. Bottled after a month of barrel aging, all that’s needed is a glass, rocks and a twist of orange.

Despite the literally small 200ml start, Founder’s intends to launch a 750ml format soon, as well as a barrel-aged Manhattan and Negroni. The pair have rye and ginger, salted grapefruit Paloma and bourbon sour nearing shelves, too.

200ml bottle – $14.95 | foundersoriginal.com

Chowbotics Sally Chowbotics’ Sally, a salad-making robot, is either a very old concept or a very new one. Automats first married fresh-ish food and vending machines in the late 19th century, but Sally has taken another step forward (and dropped the “ish”).

In a refrigerated package that’s, well, about the size of a refrigerator, 11 canisters dispense grains, dressings, yogurt and fresh fruit and vegetables into waiting bowls, updating the price and nutrition information with each push of the touchscreen button. Sally produces exportable data on its temperature and power usage, amongst other things, making its performance easy to verify by operators and health inspectors.

So far, Sally has proven popular in office environments where remote workers make traditional cafeterias unnecessary, but those remaining still want something fresh, healthy and convenient. It’s also expected to perform well in institutional settings, where it can help extend the availability of fresh food beyond traditional mealtimes.

Just White Shirts’ Stainless Shirt Three working professionals started the brand in 1994 as a solution to their problem: they couldn’t find good white shirts at a reasonable price. They’ve branched out since, and more recently, they solved another problem: making a white shirt that looks and feels good, endure the rigours of foodservice and stay pristine in the process.

The starting point is 100 per cent Egyptian cotton, which creates a finer, smoother fabric than most commercial cottons.

From there, the fabric goes through a proprietary process that renders each fiber largely immune to the rigours of frontof-house service. Liquids run off, odours don't permeate and creases are avoided, while some stretch enables servers to comfortably reach across the table for plates.

The Stainless Shirt is available in 27 different sizes and can be made for private labels, as well.

Just White Shirts’ stainless shirt – $119 (discounts available for bulk orders) | justwhiteshirts.ca

One unit and two sets of canisters – $30,000 | chowbotics.com

Founder’s Original Old Fashioned Born in a Toronto cocktail bar, the Founder’s Original Old Fashioned became a buyable, potable, ready-to-drink reality 68 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

Vito Filter Fryer Need to run the deep fryer oil through a filter? Put a pot and chinois below the spigot underneath the fryer, turn the crank and drain the thing. After collecting the service’s-worth of burnt food detritus and debris that’s accumulated in the fryer’s nooks and crannies, lift the unwieldy pot back and pour the oil — which, while not service-hot, is by no means cool — into the fryer. In short, manually filtering the oil from a deep fryer is laborious, dangerous and unimaginative.

Alternatively, drop in one of Vito’s fryer filters and leave it on for five minutes. In that time, a pump will draw oil through two filters. A disposable woven cellulose filter catches debris down to five microns, while another helps create turbulence within the fryer, lifting debris out of corners. Nothing is added to the oil — there’s no chemical or additive — and it can be done while the oil is at temperature, meaning if a chef’s fried food starts tasting off during a busy service, they can drop in Vito for a few minutes during a lull to improve it. Vito estimates its fryers, available in 50 and 80-litre-per-minute sizes, can extend the life of any given kitchen’s fryer oil by 40 to 50 per cent.

Vito Fryer Filter $3200–$3800 | vitooil.com

Paradise Island Foods’ Goldstream Cheese There’s no shortage of dairy-free cheese out there, but here’s the rub: while plenty of it tastes like cheese, precious little of it acts like cheese. On nachos, oil-based cheese is prone is “oiling out,” which no amount of guacamole can save, and on pizza, the allimportant stretch gives way to an all-too-disappointing snap.

Paradise Island Foods stepped into the lactose-free gap with its Goldstream brand, which is actual milk — not nut, not soy — processed to produce cheese that both tastes and behaves like actual cheese, because aside from lacking lactose, it is. For bars and pubs, Paradise Island’s main customers, it means availing their menu to customers with dietary preferences or restrictions without having to compromise the integrity of their product.

And while ordinary cheese can take months to make, Paradise Island’s Goldstream takes only 48 hours, meaning the product is substantially cheaper.

Parmesan, angel hair, asiago, cheddar, swiss and hardskin and regular mozzarella are all available, lactose free, in foodserviceready formats ranging from shreds to 2-kilogram blocks.

Various products and prices | paradise-foods.com

Advanced Closed System+ Guarantees perfect steam, humidity & heat transfer for five star results ConvoClean+ Fully automatic cleaning system with eco, express and regular modes Various cooking methods ConvoSmoke, BakePro, Crisp&Tasty® and Sous Vide Right size your operation 20 UL® Listed ventless models 18 ENERGY STAR® rated models Mixed or full loads 399 cooking profiles without flavor transfer

Distributed by Garland Canada: garlandcanada.ca • convotherm.com www.restobiz.ca | Winter 2018 69 CONV_GARca_1_4Page.indd 1 Convoclean_CRFN_Winter_2018.indd

1

9/7/184:00 11:39 2019-01-08 PMAM

CRUNCHING NUMBERS

Marketing by Numbers NOW MORE THAN EVER, IT’S IMPORTANT FOR RESTAURATEURS TO GET INTO ONLINE MARKETING. LUCKILY, IT’S EASIER THAN IT LOOKS

By Jeff Dover Marketing has always been important to the restaurant industry, but how successful restaurants market themselves has changed drastically.

Online marketing, including the use of social media, is becoming increasingly important. According to Monetate, a marketing software provider, more than one billion restaurant visits in the United States are influenced by online marketing. We came to a similar conclusion at fsSTRATEGY, as well. Our research found that our clients and competitors with large social media followings effectively drove sales using social media promotions.

In particular, online marketing caters to Millennials, who dine out more than any other demographic in Canada and are less likely to see advertisements in traditional media like print and television. And while different companies have reported different numbers on the various nuances of social media marketing, they all tell the same story. YP Marketing Solutions, the Yellow Pages’ business marketing division, conducted a survey of social media users and found that 37 per cent research brands, products or services prior to making a purchase. A study by Social Media Monthly found that 75 per cent of Facebook users have the platform when deciding where to eat, while Mashable, a digital media company, reported that 49 per cent of users search Facebook to find restaurants. Empathica, a customer experiment management firm, reported that 72 per cent of consumers have used Facebook to make restaurant or retail decisions. It doesn’t stop with the search, either.

Restaurant Marketing indicates that 19 per cent of restaurant customers, including 47 per cent of Millennials, use social networking sites while eating their meals. TrackMaven, a marketing analytics firm, notes that Instagram is particularly popular with restaurant brands, which isn’t surprising given visual quality of restaurants and food.

Social media-adjacent online reviews also have a bearing on success.

According to Foodbeast, a popular food blog, a half-star difference on Yelp can impact sales by 27 per cent. Bright Local, a digital marketing firm, indicate consumers are more likely to read online restaurant reviews than any other industry, and that 84 per cent of consumers trust them as

much as personal recommendations — and even professional critics.

According to OpenTable, 25 per cent more people read reviews on sites like OpenTable, Yelp and TripAdvisor than reviews by professional critics, and 60 per cent of consumers read reviews prior to eating a meal away from home.

ReviewTrackers, which designs software that aggregates reviews, has found that 33 per cent of frequent restaurant customers won’t patronize restaurants with ratings of less than four stars (out of five) on sites like Yelp and Google.

While customer reviews are ostensibly peer to peer, they’re also a valuable proxy for monitoring customer satisfaction and a means toward mitigating dissatisfaction. Operators need to respond to negative reviews in a nondefensive way, indicating steps taken to correct the problem. If you haven’t done so already, go online, take ownership of your Yelp entry and add as much information as it will allow and verify that any online listings for your restaurant are accurate (remember, these likely exist on multiple platforms even if you didn’t set them up).

Flyers often find their way straight to the recycling bin, but email marketing can be effective. Restaurateurs should collect email addresses from their clients — business card draws and contests are effective — and reach out to them regularly. Keep in mind that email marketing requires either explicit or implied consent from the recipient and that the message has to have an option allowing them to unsubscribe.

Search Engine Optimization is a key digital marketing strategy. Many marketing firms consult on it, but some strategies you can do yourself. Ensure the title of your homepage has your postal code and list your restaurant in Google My Business, which will help your restaurant show up in searches for nearby restaurants. You can further increase your SEO by regularly posting to social media and writing a blog, linking posts to your social media platforms as well.

Digital marketing is a new frontier for restaurants, and operators need to familiarize themselves with it. There’s abundant data shedding light on what’s effective and what’s not, but all of it drives at the same story: Millennials are particularly responsive to online marketing. Luckily, there's no shortage of ways to reach them.

Jeff Dover is a Principal with fsSTRATEGY Inc. fsSTRATEGY is a niche consulting firm specializing in strategy in the hospitality industry with an emphasis on the foodservice sector. For additional information on fsSTRATEGY services, contact us at nextsteps@fsstrategy.com or 416-229-2290.

70 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News

FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT PARTS. EVERY COMMERCIAL KITCHEN.

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72 Winter 2018 | Canadian Restaurant & Foodservice News