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Global Foodservice News — Oct. 1, 2026
INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT
More restaurants are struggling with profitability, and technology isn’t always helping
A third of operators have told the National Restaurant Association that they were not profitable in the first half of the year. Technology isn’t helping as much as you’d expect.
A third of restaurants have told the National Restaurant Association that they were not profitable in the first half of the year, as weak traffic, particularly among low-income consumers, have kept a lid on sales.
Technology that has been all the rage in recent years has helped, but not perhaps as much as it should.
According to another association survey, 28.8% of consumers said that technology reduced corporate overhead, 27% said it reduced labor costs, and 20.4% said it reduced upfront costs.But 28.3% said that it had no significant impact on operating costs and another 12% said that technology increased costs, meaning that around 40% of restaurant operators believe new technology hasn’t cut costs.
“There are some positives I think operators are already citing in terms of positive impacts,” Chad Moutray, chief economist for the National Restaurant Association, said at the FSTEC Conference on Thursday. Yet he noted that the percentages of people saying that technology has cut costs are “not as high as I would have expected.”
The profitability numbers do highlight some of the complexities of the current market. In his presentation at the conference, a sibling company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News, Moutray presented a range of seemingly conflicting bits of data.
For instance, he said, the economy is “holding up a little bit better than we kind-of give it credit for.” Moutray said that measures of the gross domestic product are expected to be “very strong” in the third quarter. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, forecasters expect the economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.5% in the period, compared with 1.5% in the second quarter.
But much of that growth is coming from AI. And the economy overall is “K-shaped,” Moutray said, meaning some are doing well and others are not.
Consumer confidence has weakened this year, largely due to gas prices.
Higher-income consumers are still going out and spending a lot. Lower-income consumers, on the other hand, are dining out less often. The association expects sales to grow 4.3% so far this year, or 0.8% after accounting for menu price inflation, so the expected results are somewhat muted.
Consumers are still dining at restaurants, Moutray said. Eighty percent of consumers told the association that they visited a restaurant the previous week. But higher-income consumers were far more likely to say they went out in the past week than lower-income consumers.
And, Moutray said, 39% of consumers said they visited restaurants less in the third quarter than in the second quarter, compared with 23% who said they visited restaurants more often during the period.
Operators are worried, too. Thirty-two percent of operators told the association in April that the economy was their top challenge, more than any other concern. That is up from 25% who said the economy was their top challenge in August of last year. “Despite the stronger economy, consumers and businesses are very fragile,” Moutray said.
Source https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/more-restaurants-are-struggling-profitability-technology-isnt-always-helping
Cyclospora outbreak put a damper on Olive Garden’s summer
Consumer concerns over contaminated lettuce put a lid on sales and forced the chain to change its marketing plans.
Consumer concern over contaminated lettuce threw a wrench into Olive Garden’s plans this summer.
The Italian casual-dining chain was prepared to promote its long-standing offer of unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks last quarter, but scrapped the plan after a massive cyclospora outbreak was linked to tainted iceberg lettuce.
Olive Garden was not implicated in the outbreak, but consumer resistance to lettuce contributed to sales challenges in the quarter nonetheless, said Raj Vennam, CFO of parent company Darden Restaurants, during an earnings call Thursday.
Olive Garden’s same-store sales rose 1% in the three-month period ended August 30. It was the chain’s lowest same-store sales result since late 2024.
Lettuce concerns and the World Cup delivered a negative hit of 150 to 200 basis points to those sales, Vennam said. Customers opting for lighter portions had a 50-basis point negative impact on mix. The chain was also lapping same-store sales growth of nearly 6% a year ago.
Related:TGI Fridays signs first U.S. development agreement in 10 years
However, results began to improve later in the quarter as the lettuce and World Cup headwinds eased, Vennam said. The chain also launched its popular Never-Ending Pasta Bowl promotion in late August and has seen a positive response to that.
Later in the quarter, Olive Garden will revive the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks campaign in an effort to help drive business during weekday lunch, which Darden CEO Rick Cardenas said remains “a meaningful opportunity for the brand.”
It will also start testing a new lunch platform with a “highly competitive value proposition and includes the abundance that differentiates Olive Garden.”
Darden reaffirmed its guidance for the 2027 fiscal year, which began in June.
Overall for the quarter, same-store sales across all of Darden’s brands rose 3.2%. That included a strong 6.8% growth for LongHorn Steakhouse, 1% for fine dining, and 4.5% for the Other Business segment, which includes Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen and Yard House.
Total revenues were $3.2 billion, including $1.3 billion for Olive Garden and $860 million for LongHorn.
Net earnings declined 9.4%, to $233.4 million.
Olive Garden finished the quarter with 20 more restaurants than a year ago for a total of 953. LongHorn finished with 29 more for a total of 624.
Source https://www.nrn.com/casual-dining/cyclospora-outbreak-put-a-damper-on-olive-garden-s-summer
Cracker Barrel’s new CEO plays it safe as turnaround 2.0 continues to take shape
The family-dining chain’s new CEO David Deno is all about “doing fewer things better”
Cracker Barrel is more than a year past its rebranding controversy and several quarters into a new turnaround strategy, but Wall Street is still watching closely to see if the company can move beyond the missteps of the recent past.
When new CEO David Deno took the reins six weeks ago, the family-dining brand had been slowly climbing out of a rocking chair-shaped hole and on a path toward a better tomorrow (though traffic and same-store sales are still negative). During his first quarterly earnings as CEO, Deno made it clear how he differed from his predecessor, Julie Masino.
While Masino envisioned bold changes for Cracker Barrel, including the ill-fated logo change and store remodels, Deno’s theme is caution. Cracker Barrel will not be opening any new units this year, and will be focused on smaller, less flashy goals, like improving food quality, raising guest satisfaction scores, and simplifying the retail shopping experience.
With this “less is more” strategy in mind, one of the bigger changes Deno has in mind is focusing on the dinner daypart.
“Dinner is our biggest opportunity, and we plan to upgrade our chicken, hamburger and steak offerings,” he said during Wednesday’s earnings call for the fourth quarter. “We also want to ensure our great food meets guest expectations for taste, temperature and quality on every visit.”
Deno is not trying to tear down what Masino built, nor is he trying to sway the company in an entirely new direction. For example, when asked what still needs fixing in the company today, Deno said Cracker Barrel needs to build upon the improvements it already made, by continuing to focus on food quality and addressing customer needs.
“To make sure that we continue to keep our trends going and improve our trends, our priority is going to be on food, experience and people and what matter most in regardless of the backdrop,” Deno said. “That’s how restaurant companies win.”
While Deno insisted that the brand is “on the right track now,” Cracker Barrel playing it safe and leaning into its status as a traditional legacy brand is what prompted the Board to hire such an aggressive innovator like Julie Masino in the first place. In 2024, Masino cited slumping sales and an aging prime demographic as reasons behind the Cracker Barrel evolution as the brand strove to “gain relevance again.”
Now, after scrapping those plans, Cracker Barrel is back at stage one, hoping that small tweaks — like improvements to the dinner menu and retail experience — will be enough to boost the brand in the long run.
“We will accomplish our objectives by relentlessly executing against the priorities we have identified and doing fewer things much better,” Deno said.
Contact Joanna at joanna.fantozzi@informa.com
Source https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/topics/cracker-barrels-new-ceo-plays-it-safe-turnaround-20-continues-take-shape
Potbelly Franchisee Jignesh Patel Named 2026 IFA Franchisee of the Year
Potbelly announced today that the International Franchise Association (IFA) named franchisee Jignesh Patel a 2026 Franchisee of the Year, recognizing his entrepreneurial leadership, investment in his team and commitment to growing the brand across the Austin, Texas market.
Jignesh will be honored during the IFA26 Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C., Sept. 14-16. Nominated by their respective brands, IFA Franchisee of the Year recipients represent leading franchise owners from across the country who demonstrate excellence in entrepreneurship, community outreach, workforce development and service to others.
Since joining Potbelly, Jignesh has established himself as a growth-minded operator, pairing ambitious development with strong operations and a people-first mindset. Together with fellow franchisee Nitin Patel, he grew an original six-shop development commitment to 15 locations across the Austin market after becoming one of the first franchisees to participate in the Potbelly 50/50 Large Area Developer Incentive Program. The pair currently operates three Austin-area shops, with a fourth opening soon. Beyond development, community outreach is central to Jignesh’s approach to ownership, from creating welcoming neighborhood gathering places to providing employees with opportunities to grow into leadership roles. As their business continues to scale, he remains focused on investing in experienced leadership, strong teams and the infrastructure needed to support long-term success.
“Jignesh embodies the entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to people that define a great Potbelly franchisee,” said Jennifer Durham, Senior Vice President of Franchising and Development at Potbelly. “He has approached growth thoughtfully, building strong teams and investing in the communities his shops serve while remaining focused on delivering a great neighborhood experience. We’re incredibly proud to see his leadership recognized by IFA.”
For Jignesh, the recognition reflects the people behind the growth and his commitment to creating Potbelly shops that become meaningful parts of their neighborhoods.
“Being named an IFA Franchisee of the Year is an incredible honor and a reflection of the team that has helped us build and grow,” said Jignesh. “We see tremendous opportunity ahead with Potbelly, but our focus has always been on growing the right way, investing in our people, delivering great food and good vibes and building shops that become part of the communities we serve.”
As Potbelly grows nationwide, the brand remains focused on awarding franchises to experienced franchisees, entering markets strategically and delivering the craveable food and neighborhood hospitality guests have loved for nearly 50 years.
For more information about franchising with Potbelly, visit https://franchising.potbelly.com.
Source https://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/potbelly-franchisee-jignesh-patel-named-2026-ifa-franchisee-of-the-year/
DoorDash Agrees to $131.5 Million Settlement Over Worker Pay
The funds will compensate roughly 264,000 New York City delivery workers and require three years of payment monitoring.
DoorDash agreed to pay $131.5 million to settle allegations that it underpaid or delayed payments to hundreds of thousands of delivery workers in New York City.
The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection described the agreement as the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest involving food delivery workers in the U.S. More than $115 million will go to workers, while DoorDash will pay another $16.7 million in civil penalties and costs.
The department said its investigation uncovered “systematic violations” of local delivery worker laws. DoorDash, meanwhile, acknowledged that it made mistakes while trying to comply with what it called “the most complex earnings standard for delivery workers in the country.”
“Simply put, we screwed up,” the company said in a statement. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.”
The issues emerged after New York City began enforcing a minimum-pay standard for app-based delivery workers in December 2023. The rate, which is adjusted annually for inflation, currently stands at $22.13 per hour before tips.
DoorDash said technical bugs led to errors involving deliveries that crossed city boundaries, included multiple pickup or drop-off points, or were partially completed or canceled. In other cases, the company attributed missed payments to incomplete or inaccurate banking information provided by workers.
Approximately 264,000 Dashers will receive a payment under the settlement. That includes about 209,000 workers affected by missing or late payments.
DoorDash said roughly $6.6 million in payments never reached workers, while another $5.7 million arrived days or, in some cases, weeks late. The company said less than 1 percent of its payments to New York City Dashers were affected. Workers covered by that portion of the settlement will receive at least $10, even if the original shortage was smaller.
A larger share of the settlement stems from a disagreement over how DoorDash calculated compensation for “on-call” time, or the period when a worker was logged into the platform but not actively completing a delivery.
City officials said DoorDash excluded several categories of trip and on-call time when determining compensable hours under the minimum-pay rule. DoorDash maintained that workers were paid for on-call time but said its methodology differed from the city’s formula.
“We calculated on-call time differently than the City, and believe our approach was fair, practical, and legal,” the company said. “But rather than spend years fighting over whose method was right, we chose to pay Dashers sooner and use the City’s method going forward.”
The company will pay more than $83 million to resolve that part of the dispute.
The investigation began after dozens of workers reported that DoorDash either failed to pay them or did not pay them on time. The agency subsequently widened its review, analyzing billions of data points covering more than 152 million payment transactions and 110 million working hours.
Workers who did not receive timely payments will be compensated at approximately twice the amount they were underpaid, in addition to receiving the original unpaid wages. The city said a worker who was never paid $1,000, for example, would receive $3,000. Someone who received the same amount later than permitted would receive $2,000.
The agreement also establishes a three-year monitoring program. DoorDash must submit detailed monthly data to the city, update its software, adopt additional internal controls, and assign a compliance monitor to document and correct future violations.
The city is also working to develop software that will let couriers send trip and earnings data directly to regulators. The tool is intended to give the agency an independent way to identify potential violations rather than relying solely on information supplied by delivery platforms.
DoorDash said it fixed the technical problems that contributed to missing and late payments and strengthened its compliance program. It also said the full settlement amount was set aside in prior quarters.
“This settlement reflects the responsibility we take for falling short,” the company said. “We’re making things right by paying every impacted Dasher what they are owed and fixing what caused this so it doesn’t happen again.”
Source https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/doordash-agrees-to-131-5-million-settlement-over-worker-pay/
3 Big Numbers: How McDonald’s is investing in its Next playbook
The Golden Arches is targeting 250 basis points in restaurant-level efficiency gains, backed by major investments in equipment and processes.
At McDonald’s investor day last week, the brand’s executives laid out a high-level vision for drawing in consumers, improving operations and strengthening its menu.
The chain is working on everything from tiered loyalty systems and drive-thru artificial intelligence to chicken bowls and bigger burgers. But sustaining an ambitious growth plan at the store level requires significant investment, particularly in operations, equipment and store design.
McDonald’s Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden detailed the scale of McDonald’s investments in its Next strategy, outlined the per-store costs and shared estimates for its efficiency gains.
Here are three big numbers that show how McDonald’s plans to finance its next phase of growth.
$8.5 billion
The amount of support McDonald’s will provide for the Next program through 2036.
The headline figure from McDonald’s investor day was its massive partner investment with franchisees over the next decade. This money consists primarily of rent relief and capital support.
The Golden Arches typically rents real estate to its franchisees, and charges pass-thru rent to operators for sites where the brand itself is the lessee, per its franchise disclosure document. In 2025, McDonald’s revenue from the sale or lease of real estate and services to franchises was roughly $7.4 billion.
The chain has a greater ability to offer immediate relief and incentives to operators than competitors that do not own their real estate.
Borden said the bulk of the money — about $5 billion — would be invested by 2030 to “accelerate deployment of ArchIQ technology bundles, as well as kitchen and operations enablers.”
The investments will have a roughly four-year payback period for franchisees, and a five- or six-year payback period for the chain, Borden said. The extent of this partner support “will vary by market and be flexible and targeted to the realities that franchisees face locally,” Borden said.
$800,000
The expected per-store cost for traditional drive-thru locations for tech deployments and remodels.
Borden estimated the overall Next changes, from tech deployments to remodels, would cost about $800,000 per store for traditional drive-thru locations in the U.S.
“It’s the additional operational, kitchen and technology capabilities and design elements as well, that we believe unlock incremental growth and greater productivity,” Borden said.
The Next investments, which McDonald’s funds through the aforementioned partner rent relief and capital support, are incremental to required renovation expenses outlined in the brand’s FDD. Borden said that standard lobby remodels at representative U.S. restaurants cost between $400,000 and $450,000, which will be funded by the franchisee.
The incremental Next investments will be phased in over time, as technologies mature, Borden said, while design elements of the program will be timed to coincide with the regular remodel cycle.
250
The amount of basis points of efficiency McDonald’s expects at the restaurant level.
The goal of these investments, Borden said, is to realize about 250 basis points — or 2.5% — in restaurant-level P&L efficiency. This is expected to equate to $100,000 in gross annual cash flow, he added.
The chain’s AUV is “north of $4 million with operating cash flow of about $500,000” for its U.S. units, Borden said. The additional cash flow could go a long way for many franchisees.
McDonald’s hopes some of this increased cashflow will be put back into restaurants.
“We expect a portion of that will be reinvested to support Next growth initiatives, but that the majority will benefit the restaurant’s bottom line over time,” Borden said. “That’s real value creation at the restaurant level.”
Source https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/mcdonalds-next-franchisee-rent-relief-store-productivity-investment/831377/
Yard House becomes Darden’s third billion-dollar brand
The full-service concept, which posted 10% growth in same-store sales during fiscal Q1 2027, plans to open 13 new stores during the ongoing fiscal year.
Dive Brief:
Yard House reached $1 billion in sales for the trailing 52 weeks, Darden CEO Rick Cardenas said Thursday in a call discussing the company’s fiscal 2027 first quarter earnings.
Yard House is Darden’s third billion-dollar brand after Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse — the latter reached $1 billion in quarterly sales during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026.
Yard House also posted 10% same-store sales growth during the fiscal first quarter after seeing a boost from the FIFA World Cup. This event “presented a great opportunity for Yard House to deepen connections with their loyal guests,” Cardenas said.
Dive Insight:
The World Cup positively impacted Yard House’s same-store sales by 180 basis points, while weighing on the rest of Darden’s brands. Overall, the company faced an 80 basis-point headwind, CFO Rajesh Vennam said during the call.
The soccer tournament also boosted brand awareness and introduced new customers to various menu enhancements such as burger, pizza, taco and pasta platforms that have been rolled out in recent years, Cardenas said.
“Yard House has made a huge focus on their food,” Cardenas said, noting the chain has improved value and service.
Yard House has high potential for growth and is Darden’s top-performing brand within its “Other Business” segment, Cardenas said.
Darden is planning to open 13 Yard Houses during the fiscal year, five of which will be conversions of Bahama Breeze restaurants. Half of the other openings will use a new design prototype that lowers construction costs and opens up new site opportunities while allowing the chain to sustain its $10.5 million average unit volume, Cardenas said.
As of the end of August, Yard House had 95 restaurants, up from 89 in the year-ago quarter, marking a 6.7% increase, according to an earnings release. Darden is also seeing strong unit growth at Olive Garden, which grew to 953 units at the end of the fiscal quarter compared to 933 a year ago, and at LongHorn, which reached 624 units, compared to 595.
Cardenas said that while Yard House is ramping up new unit growth, it will likely stay within a single-digit growth rate annually. If brands go above 10% new openings, it becomes more difficult to find people needed to run the restaurants and understand the brands.
Source https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/yard-house-third-darden-billion-dollar-brand/831313/
Starbucks to Shutter 250 Stores in North America This Week in 2nd Wave of Closings
The coffeehouse chain’s COO said it is still committed to growing its store count.
Starbucks plans to close 250 North American stores later this week.
It is the second big round of store closures under Starbucks Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol, who joined the company in 2024. Last September, Starbucks closed 627 stores in North America and Europe and laid off 900 non-retail employees.
In a letter to employees, Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said the locations targeted either aren’t delivering acceptable financial results or can’t provide the kind of experience that Starbucks wants for customers and employees.
The company didn’t say Thursday which coffeehouses will close or how many are located in the U.S. It also didn’t say how many of the affected coffeehouses are unionized. More than 700 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late 2021, but Starbucks doesn’t support the unionization effort and the union and the company have yet to reach a labor agreement.
Grams said Starbucks is continuing to retrofit its North American coffeehouses to make them cozier and more inviting. The company expects 1,500 stores will be retrofitted by Sept. 30, which is the end of Starbucks’ fiscal year.
“This progress has given us a clearer view of the performance of every coffeehouse,” Grams said in his letter. “While most are benefiting from this overall momentum, some coffeehouses continue to underperform despite the hard work and commitment of all of you.”
Grams said Starbucks is still committed to growing its store count in North America.
Starbucks said it will transfer employees to other stores if possible or provide severance support if it’s not able to place an employee in another location.
In May, Starbucks laid off an additional 300 corporate employees and closed some underused U.S. offices.
Starbucks shares rose less than 1% Thursday in premarket trading.
Source https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/facility/news/22975138/starbucks-to-shutter-250-stores-in-north-america-this-week-in-2nd-wave-of-closings
FOODSERVICE EQUIPMENT & SUPPLIES
Middleby’s Taylor Co. Announces Promotion
The individual has served as SVP of sales (the Americas) and global marketing since May 2025.
Rachel Mago has been promoted to senior vice president of global sales and marketing at Taylor. Co., where she has worked since 2019.
In this expanded role, she will assume responsibility for the sales teams in Europe, APAC and India. Service and sales employees in EMEA and APAC also will have a reporting relationship with Mago.
“We are thrilled to be promoting Rachel into this expanded role,” says Korey Kohl, Taylor president, in the release. “Rachel’s passion, deep knowledge base and ability to connect with customers has allowed her to quickly advance through our sales organization. In her new role I am confident she will lead Taylor global operations to future growth and success.”
Source https://www.fermag.com/articles/middlebys-taylor-co-announces-promotion/
Lone Star Bakery brings together family ownership, manufacturing scale, and investment to drive growthnationwide
When Tracy Fletcher was 16, she spent her summers working at the family bakery, rotating through dif-ferent departments. Now, three decades later, Tracy is the third-generation President of Lone Star Bakery (Lone Star). She leads a company with nearly 700 employees working across two manufacturing facilities in China Grove, Texas. The business her grandfather bought in 1956 now serves restaurant chains, retailers, distributors, and food companies throughout the US and abroad.
Lone Star Bakery
When Tracy thinks about the operation built by the first generation of her family, the Morrises, she says they’d be amazed by how far the company has come. “Back in the 1950s, they probably had about 30 em-ployees. Today, our reach extends nationwide and internationally. And the technology—well, the tools and systems we use now just weren’t around when they were building this business.”
Technology shapes the business today, but Tracy’s leadership roots go back to those early days on the production floor. “Working on the floor in different departments gave me the chance to learn from people who were true experts. They mentored me and showed me how every piece of the business works. That hands-on experience, and watching how our teams work together, really shaped me as a leader.” Her ap-proach still reflects those lessons, even as the workforce has grown far beyond what it was when she started as a teenager. Tracy adds, “I try to lead with compassion and remember that we’re all human. It gets harder to keep that family-business culture as we grow, but we’re committed to it.”
That family spirit even has four legs. Harvey, Lone Star’s unofficial Chief Morale Officer, spends his days at the front desk with the receptionist, greeting guests and delivery drivers and offering employees a quick dose of therapy whenever they need it.
Product innovation
After more than 20 years with Lone Star, Director of Sales Dave Sumner has built a network of customer relationships that keeps opening new doors. Many opportunities come their way because customers al-ready know how the company operates. Dave notes, “There’s not a lot of red tape here. We have a small team involved in decisions, so we can get to the key issues quickly and figure out if we can move forward with a project.”
Rather than leading with a product idea, Lone Star starts by understanding how its customers operate. Dave explains, “We’ve gotten in the habit of learning what equipment our customers use. That helps us design products that fit their format and make things easier for them.”
Biscuits remain Lone Star’s largest product category, but fried pies continue to drive menu innovation, new flavors, and creative applications. Interest is growing beyond just sweet pies. Dave adds, “We’ve started developing savory flavors like sausage and gravy, and chicken and vegetable pies. These products are cre-ating new opportunities for us and generating interest right alongside our sweet varieties.”
When it comes to the fried pies, the options for fillings are virtually endless. Execution for the operator, however, stays simple. “The pies come frozen and ready to fry,” Dave says. “The handler simply takes them out of the freezer, drops them in the fryer for six minutes, and they’re ready to serve. They can even hold under a heat lamp for up to two hours.”
Enhancing efficiencies
Expanding the product range is only part of the challenge. Testing, adapting, and scaling those products is
just as important. Since joining Lone Star in 2012, Chief Engineer Mike Brehm has built a team that handles maintenance, fabrication, refrigeration, automation, programming, and equipment development for both facilities. Mike notes, “When new opportunities come up, our internal departments can step in, even if we don’t have exactly what we need on hand. Our machine and fabrication shops let us create what’s needed quickly, so we can test or run new products right away.”
Those resources are now focused on a series of investments meant to increase output and reduce manual processes. Lone Star is automating two production lines and increasing pie production with a new EasyMac sheeting line. The investments also include upgrades to refrigeration, packaging, freezing systems, and support equipment across both facilities. Mike points out, “The main reason for the second pie line was simple: we were out of capacity.”
That same thinking is guiding changes in Lone Star’s frozen dough operations. Mike continues, “We’re working to streamline it all. The frozen dough pucks will come out of the spirals frozen and go straight into packaging equipment vs how we have to currently bulk pack, then next day load to a bagging machine for retail.”
The investment program spans both Lone Star facilities and requires coordination far beyond engineering. Having two plants just a few miles apart gives the company real adaptability as production demands shift. Tracy explains, “We share resources across both sites. Mike oversees engineering at both facilities, and our manufacturing and maintenance teams work at both locations. It gives us visibility across the whole opera-tion and lets us schedule employees between plants to keep them cross-trained and ready to support production wherever demand is highest.”
Mike shares, “We meet weekly to keep everyone up to speed on projects, new items, and scheduling. We also meet daily at both plants. We talk about what’s needed and what’s running at each facility so we can make sure the right people are in the right place. Someone might be based at one site, but that doesn’t stop them from helping at the other whenever it’s needed.”
Physical changes across the plants are matched by changes in how information flows through the business. One of Lone Star’s biggest initiatives has been implementing Redzone. The platform began as a way to track production and downtime, but now supports quality processes, sanitation, employee training, safety, and communication throughout the company. Tracy remarks, “It’s a huge communications boost for us.”
And there’s more investment on the horizon. Lone Star is preparing to build an 8000-square-foot R&D and pilot facility while adding capacity and growing its workforce. These projects keep Tracy, Dave, and Mike working closely together. Customer demand sparks opportunity. Engineering determines how quickly those ideas become reality. Leadership chooses where to invest next. But for Dave, the goal is simple: “Fill up the production lines Mike is building.”
www.lonestarbakery.com
Erin Flock
Erin is a marketer with three years of experience writing news, features, and listicles across a range of B2B industries. She covers the latest business developments, industry trends, and innovations, delivering clear, engaging content for professional audiences.
Source https://foodchainmagazine.com/lone-star-bakery-brings-together-family-ownership-manufacturing-scale-and-investment-to-drive-growthnationwide/
TriMark Announces Karen McCain’s Retirement
McCain served the dealership for 15 years and most recently was executive vice president-category management and marketing.
TriMark USA has announced the retirement of executive leader Karen McCain after serving the dealership for 15 years. Most recently, she served as executive vice president-category management and marketing. She also held the role of executive vice president-Southern Region, and CFO and executive vice president of operations.
“I’m grateful that I could influence careers—and not only careers, but how people think about themselves,” McCain says in a social media post. “Those are the things I’m most proud of.”
McCain was a part of FER’s 2023 Women in Leadership Panel, where she pointed to her role in launching Engagement 360, a program aimed at improving the culture at TriMark’s Southern Region.
TriMark says McCain is a trusted colleague, dedicated mentor and passionate champion for women in leadership.
Source https://www.fermag.com/articles/trimark-announces-karen-mccains-retirement/
Kamran & Co. Appoints James Dinardi as CFO
The company also named Matthew Harlan as its chief sales officer, and promoted Danny Rios to vice president of project operations.
Kamran & Co. has named James Dinardi as its new CFO.
Dinardi brings more than 20 years of financial and operational leadership experience in construction and specialty contracting to the role. He has held multiple CFO roles across specialty infrastructure, commercial building and heavy civil construction.
Dinardi also brings experience in kitchen construction, giving him valuable familiarity with the industry and the work done by Kamran & Co.
“His combination of financial expertise, operational understanding and construction industry experience will help support the company as we continue to grow,” the company says in a social post.
Meanwhile, Kamran & Co. confirmed via email that it has named Matthew Harlan its new chief sales officer, and promoted Danny Rios to vice president of project operations.
MathewHarlan DannyRios
Matthew Harlan and Danny Rios
Kamran & Co., based in Santa Barbara, Calif., provides custom foodservice equipment and integrated fabrication solutions.
Source https://www.fermag.com/articles/kamran-co-appoints-james-dinardi-as-cfo/
TABLETOP & FRONT OF HOUSE
A look at KFC’s new Open House restaurant prototype
The restaurant, located outside of Dallas, will serve as a learning lab to fuel the chain’s U.S. comeback plan.
KFC’s new Open House prototype opened outside of Dallas this week to serve as a learning lab for the chain’s U.S. comeback plan, put into place last year after President Catherine Tan-Gillespie came on board.
Conceived after determining the brand is “loved but latent,” Open House features modern design, flexible seating, breakfast, new beverages like boba refreshers and Krunch shakes, catering, and a swag bar. There are also plenty of sauces for customization and snacks served in a “Go Bucket,” as well as signature bone-in chicken, tenders, and sandwiches.
The concept also balances digital and hospitality, with self-order kiosks and dual drive-thrus alongside lobby hosts providing table service. While corporate-funded initially, executives said some franchisees are already showing interest. KFC will stage-gate effective elements for a broader rollout, and Tan-Gillespie said success will be defined by “America seeing KFC differently.”
Source https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/a-look-at-kfc-s-new-open-house-restaurant-prototype
The Case for Making Quick Service More Experiential
Competitive socializing venues offer QSR chains a playbook for making in-person visits more memorable—and giving guests a reason to return.
It’s been a tough few years for QSR chains. Traffic to venues is declining (for example, nearly 40 percent of Americans spend less at restaurants than a year ago), while operational pressures are multiplying. Spikes in fuel, energy and commodity prices have forced many chains to hike menu prices, steadily turning consumers off.
No surprise, then, that an in-person restaurant visit now needs to offer something extra, something delivery or home dining can’t match. Younger generations especially are seeking higher-quality experiences when they go out (74 percent of consumers would choose a venue for a more ‘elevated’ experience).
This cultural shift is reflected in the growth of competitive socializing venues like Flight Club, F1 Arcade, Level99 and TOCA Social. In the U.K., real estate specialist Savills has tracked a 58 percent increase in competitive socializing venues to 800 since it began measuring the sector in 2018. In the US, the category has grown by 84 percent since 2023, with more than 900 locations now spread across the US and Canada (White Hutchinson, 2026).
These venues include QSR offers, but what makes them so popular goes beyond the food and even the activities themselves. It’s about the communities they build, the stories people want to join, the reasons they have to return. They offer a useful playbook for traditional quick service.
Finding touchpoints for theatre
The lessons here aren’t about handing floorspace to F1 simulators or putting greens — convenience will always drive QSR. The takeaways are more conceptual. They’re about seeing the whole customer journey, imagining the visit as an experience rather than a functional sequence of events.
For QSR, that means looking hard at the moments usually treated as operational necessities: the entrance, the queue, the order screen, the wait, the pick-up point. Can each one do more brand-building work? More to engage, delight and stick in the mind. If competitive socializing shows us one thing, it’s that every touchpoint can be treated as theatre. Working with Level99, we knew, for example, that the arrival area had to change—from a one-dimensional sign over the door into an experiential portal. It’s now a spectacularly lit, sensory threshold that builds energy before guests even enter. F1 Arcade does something similar with its grid lighting, pit-lane cues and track-inspired details.
In a QSR environment, the same principle could turn dead time into time for brand narrative. Instead of asking customers to stand below a screen waiting for their number to be called, brands could use sound, motion, language and visual storytelling to build anticipation around what is being made, where it comes from and why it matters.
A reason to stay
QSR can also do far more to design reasons to stay, not just facilitate ordering and collection at speed. If in-person visits now compete with delivery, grocery and eating at home, the physical venue has to offer what those channels cannot: atmosphere, connection and a sense of occasion.
For Level99, we designed a central social destination bar that amplified the insight that the venue’s energy comes from its players not its technology. The new ‘Energy Core’ bar has become a place for players to recharge, reconnect and become part of the wider social experience – a piece of immersive storytelling that transforms the space into a meaningful part of the brand narrative.
Boda Borg is another good example, as it deepens engagement by feeding visitor preferences and gameplay data back into scores, feedback and final wrap-ups. That makes the experience feel personal and connected, rather than simply using data to push offers.
QSR venues could experiment with such different approaches. Through in-store content and narratives, by making more of the spaces they have or even by finding a way to interact with visitors via their phones, rather than losing their attention to the hand-held screen.
Use all the senses
The key is to think about the wider brand world, not just the menu or product. Many QSR brands have strong logos, colour palettes and hero products, yet do little to expand those into a multi-sensory experience. Competitive socialising concepts work harder. They create a world people want to be a part of.
The opportunity is to find the story that already sits inside the product and make it visible, through menu language, in-store rituals, soundtrack, lighting, packaging and staff interaction. If you’re one of the many high street chicken joints, why not make more of your founder story, your provenance, your local connections or a unique point of view, and infuse it into every brand expression?
Memories over transactions
The most important takeaway, perhaps, is to think in terms of repeat memories, not repeat transactions. Discounts may drive footfall in the short term, but they do not build affinity. Competitive socialising succeeds because it gives people something to talk about, photograph, compare and improve on next time. A QSR visit can become more memorable through engaging rituals, shareable moments, playful challenges, community nights or partnerships that extend the brand world rather than simply adding another product to the board.
The challenge for QSR today is that it has to go beyond speed and convenience. Those still matter, but when everyone can be fast, the greater differentiator is meaning and immersion. Competitive socializing shows what happens when operators design for anticipation, participation and memory. For QSR brands under pressure, that may be the shift that turns a quick meal back into a reason to visit.
Rory Sutherland is the Creative Director at LOVE, a brand design agency based in England and New York.
Source https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/the-case-for-making-quick-service-more-experiential/
FOOD & BEVERAGE NEWS
More Than a Cup: The History of National Coffee Day in the U.S.
For millions of Americans, coffee is more than just a beverage – it’s part of the daily ritual that fuels mornings, sparks conversations, and brings comfort in every cup. That’s why every year, National Coffee Day is celebrated across the United States, giving coffee lovers a reason to raise their mugs in appreciation of their favorite drink. But where did this event come from, and why do Americans hold it so dear? Let’s dive into the origins, fun facts, and the cultural impact of National Coffee Day.
National Coffee Day September 29 banner with coffee mug illustration
Origins of National Coffee Day
National Coffee Day in the U.S. is celebrated annually on September 29. While its exact beginnings are a bit hazy, it gained traction in the early 2000s as coffee culture exploded nationwide. Around this time, specialty cafés, coffee chains, and artisanal roasters started using the date to highlight coffee’s role in everyday life and offer promotions to encourage people to celebrate.
Globally, different countries mark their own coffee days, often around the same period. For instance, Canada also observes National Coffee Day on September 29, while the International Coffee Organization officially declared October 1 as International Coffee Day in 2015. The U.S. observance remains a uniquely American twist, blending coffee culture with marketing campaigns and community events.
Why Americans Celebrate Coffee
Coffee has long held a special place in U.S. history and culture. From the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when colonists protested British tea taxes and turned to coffee as a patriotic alternative, to the rise of the modern café as a social hub, coffee has been intertwined with the American way of life.
Timeline infographic showing origins of National Coffee Day in the USA and International Coffee Day
Today, more than 60% of Americans drink coffee daily, according to the National Coffee Association. It’s not just about caffeine – it’s about ritual, connection, and identity. National Coffee Day taps into this sentiment, reminding people to savor their cup and celebrate the global journey of coffee from bean to brew.
Infographic showing 60% of Americans drink coffee daily, average 3 cups, 400 million cups nationwide
Fun Facts About National Coffee Day
Free Coffee Galore: Many national chains, like Dunkin’ and Starbucks, celebrate by offering free or discounted coffee, making it one of the most anticipated “food holidays” of the year. Coffee by the Numbers: The average American coffee drinker consumes about 3 cups a day, which adds up to more than 400 million cups nationwide daily. Local Celebrations: Independent cafés often use the day to showcase unique roasts, host tastings, or highlight sustainable and fair-trade practices.
Coffee Beyond the Cup
National Coffee Day isn’t just about drinking coffee – it’s also about recognizing the farmers, roasters, baristas, and innovators who make the industry thrive. It’s a chance to appreciate the global effort behind every sip, from smallholder farms in Colombia and Ethiopia to the barista down the street perfecting your latte art.
Final Sip
Whether you’re grabbing a free cup from your favorite chain, experimenting with a new brewing method at home, or simply enjoying your usual morning ritual, National Coffee Day is about more than caffeine. It’s a celebration of history, culture, and community – one cup at a time.
So, on September 29, raise your mug high. After all, coffee isn’t just a drink in America – it’s a way of life.
About Us
Wabilogic™ is the official licensee of Melitta®’s products. For the last 50 years, we embrace breakthrough concepts for products with timeless design. Don’t miss the chance to explore exceptional coffee makers.
Source https://www.wabilogic.com/fr/blogs/did-brew-know/more-than-a-cup-the-history-of-national-coffee-day-in-the-u-s
Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Del Taco, and Krispy Kreme
Plus innovation at Cousins Subs, Grimaldi’s, Jollibee, la Madeleine, Piada, STK, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and more.
Taco Bell is always innovating, but it might be doing that even more than usual this month, with yet more Crunchwrap variations available nationwide and various tests in Cleveland, Nashville, Charlotte, and Houston, plus a Salt & Straw collab at its Live Más Café locations.
Speaking of collabs, Del Taco has one with Cheetos Flamin’ Hot, Paris Baguette has one with Dancing with the Stars, and Round Table Pizza has a co-collaboration with The Dairy Alliance and Dr Pepper.
Smalls Sliders has new Dr Pepper drinks, too, and if you think that’s the only drink innovation going on this week, you would be mistaken.
La Madeleine has a new espresso program, Chagee has new chamomile tea (and Ceylon black tea), Grimaldi’s has new energy drinks, Tropical Smoothie Cafe has a caffeinated smoothie, Juice it Up! has non-caffeinated ones, and Robeks has a pumpkin one.
STK has a Pumpkin Espresso Martini and a Pumpkin Spice Margarita.
Jollibee is highlighting its Philippine heritage with calamansi lemonade.
Fuzzy’s Taco Shop has introduced its latest Halloween-themed options, and Chester’s Chicken has garlic-Parmesan chicken that might deter vampires, if they existed.
Cousins Subs has new miniature wraps and Krispy Kreme has miniature doughnuts (i.e. holes).
Piada has a new mac & cheese line, Jet’s Pizza has cinnamon bread for charity, and Velvet Taco’s Weekly Taco Feature has chicken, coconut, and crispy peas.
Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@informa.com
Follow him on TikTok and Instagram: @foodwriterdiary
Update: Sept, 28, 2026: An earlier version of this gallery used an outdated name for Velvet Taco’s current Weekly Taco Feature.
Source https://www.nrn.com/menu-trends/menu-tracker-new-items-from-taco-bell-del-taco-and-krispy-kreme
Cheez-It flexes with protein-loaded cheese cracker
The Mars-owned brand is the latest to add the nutrient to mainstream snack brands, joining Goldfish, Eggo and Doritos.
Cheez-It is leveraging America’s protein craze with its latest innovation.
The Mars-owned brand is introducing Cheez-It Protein Original, which has 7 grams of protein while maintaining the cracker’s signature cheesy, crunchy and salty flavor profile. The offering, which reaches shelves in October, is designed to give consumers a new way to enjoy the popular cracker while boosting their protein intake.
“We’re always looking for new ways to innovate with Cheez-It,” Nicole Sorensen, vice president of marketing for Cheez-It, said in a press release. “This new offering brings their needs together in one delicious cracker, delivering 7g of protein per serving alongside the bold, cheesy flavor and satisfying crunch of Cheez-It.”
Nearly half of U.S. adults are seeking to get more protein in their diets, according to Circana’s Eating Patterns in America report.
It’s also the top product attribute consumers want in snacks, an Innova Market Insights report found last year. The data showed 63% of people looked for protein in their snacks.
Inflation-weary shoppers are cutting back on spending, and an uptick in GLP-1 use has led to a pullback in food consumption, including snacks. Adding protein to mainstream brands provides companies with a way to not only remain competitive, but rejuvenate sales by heightening the value proposition of their snacks with functional ingredients.
The Campbell’s Company last week said it would add protein to Goldfish, joining PepsiCo’s Doritos, Kraft Heinz’s Mac & Cheese, J&J Snack Foods’ Super Pretzels and Mars’ Eggo waffles in launching extensions with the nutrient.
Source https://www.fooddive.com/news/cheez-it-flexes-with-protein-loaded-cheese-cracker/831469/
HVAC & PLUMBING
Plumbing Skills Take Center Stage at WorldSkills Competition
Competition in Shanghai highlights workforce shortages and the need for expanded vocational training worldwide.
Key Highlights
Plumbing workforce shortages are becoming a global infrastructure issue: LIXIL cites major labor gaps in the US, Europe, Australia and Japan
Training is central to expanding the skilled workforce: LIXIL’s GROHE GIVE and TradeUp programs provide plumbing training and help bring new workers into the trade
WorldSkills puts technical skills in the spotlight: The Shanghai competition showcased young plumbers from around the world, including US apprentice Charles Goede, who earned a Medal for Excellence
TOKYO, JAPAN — The 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai, held Sept. 22–27, brought together 1,400 competitors from 68 countries and regions across 64 skill competitions, showcasing the next generation of skilled trade professionals. As the Global Industry Partner of WorldSkills International, LIXIL sponsored the Plumbing and Heating competition and supplied GROHE fittings and fixtures for competitors.
The event also highlighted a growing workforce challenge facing the construction and infrastructure industries: demand for skilled professionals is increasing as communities expand and transition toward greener infrastructure, while the available talent pipeline remains constrained.
Young Plumbers Demonstrate Skills on Global Stage
The Plumbing and Heating competition provided competitors with an opportunity to demonstrate their technical skills using GROHE fittings and fixtures.
Matthias Steiner captured the gold medal in the Plumbing and Heating Skill. Representing the United States, Charles Goede, a 20-year-old plumbing apprentice from Connecticut, earned a Medal for Excellence for his performance.
LIXIL also recognized global winner Yuhao Fu and Japan’s representative Hayato Ikari in the Wall and Floor Tiling Skill. The competition reflects the 35-year legacy of the INAX Institute of the Tiling Arts in Japan.
Data Centers, Renovation and Infrastructure Increase Demand for Skilled Trades
“The escalating skilled labor shortage poses a direct risk to our business, and our ongoing investment in addressing it is vital to ensuring the long-term resilience of our business and the wider sector,” said Erin McCusker, Chief Impact Officer at LIXIL. “Our purpose of making better homes a reality everywhere relies closely on the women and men who build and maintain our communities. Without a network of professionals to implement these modern systems at scale, we cannot advance our Impact Strategy goals in Water Conservation or Global Sanitation and Hygiene. By championing vocational training and opening the trades to underrepresented demographics, we are activating our Diversity and Inclusion commitments and ensuring LIXIL’s innovations reach society to drive meaningful change.”
The need for skilled workers is particularly evident as construction expands across infrastructure, renovation and energy-related projects. In Europe, an estimated 3 million additional trained professionals will be needed by 2030 to meet climate and renovation targets across a broad range of trades, technical fields and industrial roles.
Germany alone is expected to face a shortage of 60,000 plumbers by 2030 as the country works toward the objectives established in its new heating laws.
Workforce Shortages Are Creating Project Bottlenecks Worldwide
Labor shortages are not limited to Europe. In Australia, an estimated 83,000-worker trade deficit, including nearly 12,000 plumbers, is contributing to housing delays and putting pressure on the country’s target of building 1.2 million new homes.
Japan faces a similar demographic challenge. Workers age 55 and older account for more than 35% of the country’s construction workforce, while workers younger than 29 represent just 11%. At the same time, Japan’s domestic renovation and retrofitting market is projected to reach 9.2 trillion yen by 2040.
In the United States, LIXIL’s “Blocked Pipes” economic study, conducted by John Dunham & Associates, projected a shortfall of 550,000 unfilled plumbing positions by 2027. The study also found that plumbing services are essential to 519 of 544 US industry sectors, including healthcare, aerospace and manufacturing.
With approximately 90% of plumbing-related spending currently tied to new construction, the study noted that resources for everyday maintenance and infrastructure upgrades are becoming increasingly stretched.
Training Access Remains a Major Workforce Challenge
LIXIL also points to gaps in vocational training and credentials as another barrier to expanding the skilled-trades workforce.
In China, the host country for this year’s WorldSkills Competition, the State Council has introduced a guideline aimed at providing skills training to more than 30 million people by 2027 to meet demand for talent in modern manufacturing and key technical sectors.
In Europe, just 39.5% of adults participate in training each year, compared with the European Union’s target of 60% by 2030.
Across developing ASEAN markets, fewer than 25% of active trade workers hold formal credentials, according to LIXIL. The company said the credentials gap can slow construction productivity and delay sanitation and infrastructure projects, making expanded access to standardized technical and vocational education and training programs important to workforce development.
LIXIL Expands Plumbing Training Programs
LIXIL is addressing the workforce challenge through several training and workforce-development programs.
In Europe, the GROHE Installer Vocational Training and Education (GIVE) program establishes modern plumbing training facilities and trains more than 2,500 installers annually. In the Americas, LIXIL’s TradeUp initiative is designed to attract and support new demographics entering the plumbing profession.
These programs complement LIXIL’s broader involvement with WorldSkills and its efforts to expand access to vocational training.
David Hoey, CEO of WorldSkills International stated: “The global shortage of skilled labor presents a critical challenge for sustainable infrastructure. LIXIL and its GROHE brand have played a vital role alongside WorldSkills in empowering young plumbers and raising vocational standards worldwide. Looking ahead to WorldSkills Aichi 2028, we anticipate working closely with LIXIL, the Japanese industry, and government partners to showcase the transformative power of skills on the global stage.”
WorldSkills Aichi 2028 Connects Trades to LIXIL’s Japanese Roots
The WorldSkills flag will next pass to Japan and the host prefecture of Aichi for the 49th WorldSkills Competition in November 2028.
The event has particular significance for LIXIL because Aichi is home to Tokoname, a pottery-producing town where LIXIL’s founding brand, INAX, was established in 1924 to produce ceramic tiles and terracotta.
LIXIL said its participation in WorldSkills Aichi 2028 will build on that century-long legacy of Japanese craftsmanship while continuing its efforts to support vocational training, expand the skilled-trades workforce and prepare professionals to build and maintain infrastructure in communities worldwide.
To learn more about WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 visit worldskills2026.com.
To learn more about LIXIL’s Skilled Trades Initiatives visit newsroom.lixil.com/future-skills-campaign-page.
Source https://www.contractormag.com/training/news/55408394/plumbing-skills-take-center-stage-at-worldskills-competition
Cooling Towers Facing New Water Reality
Under growing pressure to conserve more water, large facilities are exploring alternative treatment technologies to reduce both blowdown and water use without disrupting operations.
Key Highlights
Cooling towers naturally lose water through evaporation and blowdown, which can be optimized for conservation without impacting core processes;
Advanced oxidation process (AOP) technology helps increase cycles of concentration, reducing blowdown and water discharge while maintaining system stability;
AOP systems generate reactive oxidants externally, allowing treatment without shutting down facilities;
Real-world case studies show AOP can reduce water consumption by more than 25%;
AOP also enhances operational stability, reduces chemical usage, and extends equipment lifespan.
By GREG RANKIN
Data centers continue to attract much of the scrutiny over rising water demand in North America. While that focus is warranted, similar pressure is building across oil and gas, food processing, manufacturing, and power generation, where operators are also being pushed to find meaningful water savings without disrupting uptime.
One of the most practical targets is the cooling tower, and more specifically, the treatment strategies used to keep those systems running.
Cooling towers are inherently designed to lose water through evaporation as they expel heat. That makes them a logical target for conservation because facilities can often reduce water loss within these systems without replacing core capital equipment or altering primary production processes.
While some evaporative loss is unavoidable, there is also the issue of blowdown, or the intentional discharge of water to prevent mineral buildup, scaling, and corrosion. In fact, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) identifies reducing blowdown as one of the most effective ways to lower a facility’s overall water footprint.
In conventional treatment programs, blowdown is part of the balancing act. As pure water evaporates, dissolved minerals stay behind and become more concentrated. To prevent that buildup from damaging equipment, operators flush out some of the concentrated water and replace it with fresh makeup water. If a facility can safely operate at higher cycles of concentration, it can reduce the amount of water that has to be discharged and replaced.
Alternative Treatments Gain Momentum
As scrutiny around industrial water use continues to build, the reality of where that water goes is becoming clearer. A recent report, Data Centers are Facing Scrutiny over Water Usage, from the Houston Chronicle noted that while data centers have drawn headlines for their water demands, thermal power plants, including nuclear, coal, and natural gas facilities, place an even larger burden on water systems.
That challenge is pushing more facilities to look beyond conventional treatment programs and consider whether a different approach can reduce blowdown without disrupting operations. One category gaining more attention is advanced oxidation process, or AOP. This approach uses reactive oxidants to reduce contaminants and treatment burden, helping facilities operate at higher cycles of concentration and lower blowdown.
“Cooling towers use a tremendous amount of water, so if you can add something to the system that has no impact on production but a major impact on water use, that becomes a very meaningful place for a power plant to look for savings,” said Shawn Ewer, Water Treatment Specialist at Aquagy.
Aquagy still provides conventional chemical treatment, but after more than a decade of working with AOP, it views the technology as another option for facilities looking to cut water and chemical demand without compromising system performance.
In public findings tied to one AOP-based system, GSA, the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported average water savings of 26%, along with 50% less maintenance.
How AOP Changes the Water Equation
In many facilities, conventional cooling tower treatment is built around control rather than prevention. Operators add chemicals to limit scale, corrosion, and biological growth, then use blowdown to keep dissolved solids from climbing too high as water evaporates. That approach works, but it also creates a familiar tradeoff: the more conservative the treatment strategy, the more water often has to be discharged to keep the system in balance.
AOP changes that equation by helping create more stable water chemistry. The GSA’s cooling tower guidance makes the relationship clear: high cycles of concentration are linked to lower blowdown, while low cycles are linked to higher blowdown.
According to the Cooling Technology Institute, AOP-based cooling tower treatment helps maintain cleaner, more stable water with fewer operational variables. By reducing the organic and biological load in the system, it can interrupt the chain of events that often leads operators to rely on heavier chemical feed, unstable cycles, and rising blowdown.
In many conventional programs, that burden is spread across core chemical categories such as biocides, biodispersants and cleaners, and anti-scalant treatments.
“Traditional chemical treatment is still a large part of what we do, but we never saw AOP as a competitor,” Ewer said. “We see it as another tool in the tool belt, especially for clients looking for measurable impacts on water and chemical savings.”
Proven Technology Finds New Opportunity
AOP is not a new concept. The category has been around for decades, and in cooling tower treatment, it has been used commercially for more than a decade. Its use in cooling towers can be traced back to a hospital facilities manager looking for a better way to address water quality and treatment risk in a sensitive environment.
That effort eventually led to the first industrial AOP water treatment platforms, originally launched as Silver Bullet and now Clear Comfort.
In an AOP system, reactive oxidants are generated in a separate unit and introduced into the circulating water as a gas, rather than requiring the water itself to pass through the treatment device. That distinction helps explain why this alternative treatment option has drawn interest in cooling tower applications: it offers a way to improve water conditions without replacing the tower itself or shutting down the larger process to install a new treatment approach.
Field results are another reason why AOP is getting more attention.
At the Denver Federal Center, a 600-acre campus housing more than 20 different federal agencies, public records show the Clear Comfort system reduced average annual makeup water by more than 527,000 gallons, equal to 26.3% water savings. The same project also reported cleaner condenser tubes and significantly lower maintenance costs.
A second example from a large Midwest food and beverage facility showed a similar pattern in an industrial setting. Using the same AOP platform, the site increased cycles of concentration from 7 to 10, reduced blowdown from 75 to 50 gpm, and saved roughly 36,000 gallons of water per day. And Aquagy has seen the same type of performance over a longer operating window at one Northeast U.S. natural gas-powered electric plant.
“After more than 10 years of using the Clear Comfort technology, we’ve seen the facility reduce its chemical footprint by more than 90% and cut water consumption by more than 25%,” Ewer said. “The fact that the system can be installed without shutting the plant down makes it even more attractive for facilities looking for savings without disrupting operations.”
Beyond Water Savings
Reducing blowdown does more than conserve water. When a cooling tower can operate at higher cycles of concentration with more stable water chemistry, operators can often reduce treatment complexity, lower dependence on chlorine-heavy and corrective chemistry programs and spend less time managing the side effects of instability.
In addition, cleaner condenser surfaces, less fouling, and fewer treatment variables can reduce maintenance burden and help protect heat-transfer performance over time. As facilities are pushed to conserve while maintaining uptime and controlling costs, cooling tower treatment is now moving from a maintenance issue to a more strategic operating decision.
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The author is a Houston-based freelance writer who covers industrial water use, cooling systems, and the technologies shaping more efficient operations.
Source https://www.hpac.com/technology/blog/55408326/cooling-towers-facing-new-water-reality
Ariston Partners with Keyline Sales
High oil prices tied to Iran conflict and recent trade friction with Canada have pushed input prices up 8.9% over a year ago, according to BLS.
Key Highlights
Construction input prices increased by 1.2% in August;
Material prices for steel, lumber, and metals have surged over 10% year-over-year;
Energy prices showed mixed trends: crude oil up 5.2%, natural gas down 11.6%;
Ongoing trade tensions and rising oil prices could further pressure contractor profit margins in the coming months.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — Construction input prices increased 1.2% in August compared to the previous month, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index data released today. Nonresidential construction input prices also increased 1.2% for the month.
Overall construction input prices are 8.9% higher than one year ago, while nonresidential construction input prices are 8.8% higher. Prices increased in 2 of the 3 energy subcategories last month. Crude petroleum prices expanded 5.2% and unprocessed energy materials prices rose 1.5%, while natural gas prices were down 11.6% in August.
“Construction input prices surged again in August, and the increases were widespread across materials,” said ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. “Prices for iron and steel, softwood lumber, switchgear, copper wire and cable, and several derivative metal products are now up more than 10% year over year. While contractors remain optimistic about their margins, according to ABC’s Construction Confidence Index, ongoing input price escalation is likely to weigh on profitability over the next several months. This is especially true given recent escalation in the trade war with Canada and the fact that oil prices have jumped back above $100 per barrel.”
About ABC
Associated Builders and Contractors is a national construction industry trade association established in 1950 with 67 chapters and 24,000 members. Founded on the merit shop philosophy, ABC helps members offer a robust employee value proposition, develop people, win work and deliver that work safely, ethically and profitably for the betterment of the communities in which ABC and its members work. For more information, contact Erika Walter, ABC director of media relations, at ewalter@abc.org.
Source https://www.hpac.com/government/news/55405724/construction-materials-prices-climbed-in-august
ENGINEERING, AUTOMATION, & IOT
Wonder details its plans for an autonomous food platform
At FSTEC, company leaders explained how they plan to use AI, robots, and drones to help produce and deliver food more cheaply.
As soon as next year, consumers in Texas will be able to have lunch prepared by a robot and delivered by a drone, with less than a minute of human labor involved along the way.
That’s the plan for Wonder, the food tech and delivery company that is aiming to develop a fully autonomous system for producing and delivering food. It even wants to use AI to generate customers’ meal plans, based on their tastes and dietary needs, with the goal of feeding them 21 times a week.
“We’ll be able to plan for them, cook for them, and deliver without them even thinking about it,” said Wonder CEO Tony Hoggett during an interview at the FSTEC conference on Friday. “In five years’ time, we’ll have areas of our businesses that will be very much on that journey.”
Elements of this plan are already in place, and Wonder will take another step forward next year outside Dallas, where a Wonder location will be outfitted with the company’s bowl-making robot, the Infinite Makeline, and plugged into a drone delivery network operated by Zipline. Customers in Wonder’s delivery zone will be able to decide whether they want to pick up their food or have it delivered by a human courier or a drone. Human employees will be responsible for finishing and labeling the robot-produced food before it heads out the door, a job that will take as little as 30 seconds, Hoggett said.
Wonder was founded in 2018 by Marc Lore, an ecommerce veteran and billionaire who has helped the company raise more than $3 billion to fuel its ambitious goals. In a wide-ranging interview with Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze during the annual restaurant tech conference, Hoggett and Wonder’s head of robotics, Michael Farid, talked about the company’s unique business model and its plans for the future.
Currently, Wonder consists of about 160 brick-and-mortar locations along the East Coast. Each one offers up to 30 different restaurants, all of them developed, licensed, or acquired by Wonder. Customers can order from these brands through the Wonder app, which allows them to mix and match items from across the entire catalog, or through third-party delivery apps DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub, which Wonder owns. The idea is to offer something for everyone, especially families and groups that can’t agree on what to order.
The company also owns Blue Apron meal kits, which it sells alongside its restaurant food. It categorizes the two segments as “food for later” and “food for now.” Hoggett said Wonder could eventually sell groceries as well.
Wonder’s food is still largely prepared and delivered by humans. But it is rapidly introducing more automation into the process. The Infinite Makeline, developed by a company formerly known as Spyce and acquired earlier this year from Sweetgreen, can now produce bowl-based meals from several of Wonder’s restaurant concepts. It went live earlier this month in a Wonder location in Manhattan.
Wonder is also using robotic arms to sort orders before they are bagged, and it is developing other bots to help manage its massive library of 700 menu items and 1,000 SKUs. The Infinite Mise robot will pick ingredients off shelves and bring them to the prep area, and Infinite Sauce will be able to make an array of sauces for different menu items.
An AI-powered kitchen display system, meanwhile, helps orchestrate incoming orders from Wonder’s many restaurants so that employees know what they should be doing and when. The goal is to have all of the items from each order ready to go at precisely the same time, which can be “quite a complex puzzle,” Hoggett said.
Wonder won’t be able to automate everything immediately, said Farid, who co-founded Spyce and joined Wonder with the acquisition. Tasks like cooking and assembling burgers, for instance, will still be done mostly by humans in the near-term.
“Maybe one day, we’ll address those,” he said. “But we’re starting with the core challenge of true authentic variety, which is handling hundreds, thousands of SKUs.”
Of course, the company hopes that automation will also bring down its operating costs, including labor costs, allowing it to pass those savings on to customers in the form of lower prices. But Hoggett declined to share details about Wonder’s labor cost percentage or its unit economics.
“What I can tell you is that across 30 restaurants, because of the way we built both the hardware, with robotics and automation, but just as importantly, the software through our sequencing algorithm, it allows a multi-skilled workforce to cook whatever is in front of them, super accurately, and importantly, to your question, incredibly cheaply,” he said.
Wonder hopes automated delivery vehicles like drones will help lower costs further, while also speeding up deliveries and expanding Wonder’s radius. You don’t have to tip a drone, Hoggett said. And because they can travel at up to 70 miles per hour directly to their destination, they could double the number of households a Wonder location can serve.
Doing all of this will not be cheap. Hoggett acknowledged that building a Wonder is “a bit more expensive” than a standard 3,500-square-foot restaurant, mainly due to all of the automation.
But, he said, because Wonder is putting 30 restaurants under that roof instead of one, the unit economics are different.
“We know in the way that we’re growing those locations, they’re comping year on year, is that you can take that bet on the capital that we put down, because we are growing into it very quickly,” Hoggett said. “And we have an appetite for risk and betting on ourselves.”
Source https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/wonder-details-its-plans-autonomous-food-platform
How Disconnected Systems Slow Down Restaurant Teams
Switching between ordering, loyalty, scheduling, and reporting tools can cost restaurant teams valuable time and make it harder to act on the information they need.
To the average consumer, a restaurant’s success may appear to hinge on one simple factor: the quality of its food. In practice, the success of a restaurant is driven by a much broader set of variables, including staffing, process design, and increasingly, technology infrastructure, all of course in addition to food quality.
Today’s restaurant operators rely on an expanding ecosystem of digital tools to manage everything from online ordering and loyalty programs to guest communications and financial reporting. It’s reasonable to think that this shift occurred as a result of the pandemic, but even prior, adoption was quite widespread. Looking to Toast’s 2019 Restaurant Success Report, a mere 3 percent of restaurants reported to have operated without technology vendors. In the seven years since, digital tools have become even more central to day-to-day operations, largely though the form of POS Systems and Online Ordering at the bare minimum. Looking outward, the restaurant technology space has begun a wave of M&A, with brands (take DoorDash for example) purchasing smaller solutions to build a larger unified platform. While partnerships display a commitment to interoperability and the flexibility of a platform to their customer’s custom stack, unified platforms have begun to grow in appeal.
While individual solutions often deliver measurable value, a growing challenge has emerged: fragmentation across multiple systems. As operators deploy three, five, or even more platforms to support their business, they introduce complexity that can offset the efficiency gains those tools promise.
This has come to take on the name “toggle tax”, capturing the time and cognitive cost associated with switching between applications, re-entering data, and manually reconciling information across systems. A study on the US hospitality industry by Access Hospitality and Paytronix found that 46 percent of restaurant businesses use between two and four systems across their entire suite, with 36 percent of respondents managing at least five systems to run their business.
In restaurant environments, where speed and real-time decision-making directly impact revenue, the consequences can be even more pronounced. Fragmented systems can delay access to critical data, reduce staff productivity, and increase the likelihood of errors, particularly when teams must manually bridge gaps between tools.
Industry trends suggest this complexity is widespread. Operators today are often managing multiple systems across POS, ordering, loyalty, scheduling, and analytics platforms. When these systems do not integrate effectively, employees spend valuable time navigating between dashboards instead of focusing on guest experience or revenue-generating activities. In some hospitality segments, disconnected systems have been shown to result in significant time losses and operational inefficiencies, ultimately affecting profitability.
The impact extends beyond lost time. Context switching research indicates that frequent task switching can reduce productivity by as much as 40 percent and significantly impair decision quality. For restaurants operating on thin margins, even incremental inefficiencies can have outsized financial consequences. In the Access Hospitality report, it was found that 35 percent reported spending one to two hours a day just switching between systems, and just over 27 percent reported spending 30 to 60 minutes a day.
At a strategic level, this introduces a critical consideration for restaurant leaders: technology decisions are no longer just about feature sets, but about how effectively systems work together. Meanwhile At the ground level, this gap in implementation impacts not just your ability to make decisions, but impacts your ability to make widespread changes across all your locations, the availability of certain orders in your inventory software, or add certain loyalty offerings to your POS or Kiosks. As the industry continues to invest in digital capabilities, operators must evaluate whether additional tools are driving meaningful returns or compounding operational friction.
The next phase of restaurant technology adoption will likely be defined not by the number of tools in use, but by the degree of integration between them. Interoperability is no longer nice to have, but rather a must have, in the growing digital guest engagement space. The ability to quickly transfer and unify data and reduce the need for constant switching is mandatory in the modern technology stack. Both vendors and operators must take steps to choosing technology partners that support their goals and give them the best chance to maximize productivity.
In an industry where margins are tight and execution is everything, limiting toggle tax is not simply an efficiency initiative it is a competitive imperative. Great hospitality has always been dictated by consistent experiences, with rapid, positive service with minimal interruption and disruption – why wouldn’t we expect the same from our software?
Nonita Verma is Senior Vice President of F&B at Access Hospitality & General Manager at Paytronix
Source https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/how-disconnected-systems-slow-down-restaurant-teams/
The Ferri Group, Miso Robotics Partner Up
The manufacturers’ rep firm will make Miso’s fry station robot available to operators in the Northeast.
The Ferri Group has added Miso Robotics to the list of brands it represents in the Northeast. It will make Miso’s AI-powered fry station robot available to operators.
“Adding a prestigious partner like The Ferri Group is exactly the kind of growth we’re focused on at Miso as we expand the avenues through which restaurant and hospitality operators can access our signature Flippy Fry Station robot,” says Bruce Friedman, chief revenue officer of Miso, in the release.
Joe Louis Ferri, principal of The Ferri Group, adds, “The restaurant kitchen of the future needs to be equipped with smart products that can adjust in real time, save on unsustainable labor costs, and make the hardest jobs in the kitchen easier and safer for workers. Flippy has proven itself to be that solution at the fry station and to deliver new profits.”
Also at The Ferri Group, Michael Kalajian recently joined as culinary sales associate.
Source https://www.fermag.com/articles/the-ferri-group-miso-robotics-partner-up/
Walmart Says It’s Not Using Personal Information to Set Prices as It Expands Digital Shelf Labels
The retail giant is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology.
NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores.
In a statement posted on the company’s website, Walmart Inc.’s CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn’t using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer’s willingness to pay to set prices, and it won’t be doing so in the future either.
“We don’t set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” Furner wrote Friday. “Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”
The pledge from Walmart comes as concerns are mounting from some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers skeptical about the rollout of digital price labels by the discounter and other stores. Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets and let stores change prices instantly from a central computer instead of having workers swap out paper labels by hand.
Furner noted that Walmart is also holding its artificial intelligence shopping assistant Sparky to the same promise and won’t be using the bot to raise a customer’s price or hide lower-priced options that meet their needs.
Furner said such practices would violate the company’s “every day low prices” business model.
He also noted that prices can change: Walmart lowers them when it can pass savings along, or sometimes raises them because an item costs more to buy or to transport, he said.
Walmart said in March that 2,300 Walmart U.S. locations already use digital shelves, and it expects this technology to be chain-wide within the next year.
Walmart executives have repeatedly said it uses electronic shelf price tags to help the retailer change prices consistently and match what rings up at checkout. It also saves workers time and reduces labor costs by replacing paper tags.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission said that it’s putting companies on notice that the practice of personalizing pricing could violate consumer protection laws. The agency said it does not have the legal authority to ban personalized pricing in all circumstances, but it issued a new bulletin that warned companies that they must disclose to customers how the personal information is being used to set a price.
Source https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/consumer-trends/news/22975296/walmart-says-its-not-using-personal-information-to-set-prices-as-it-expands-digital-shelf-labels
JAN/SAN AND DISPOSABLES
ISSA Applauds Bipartisan, Bicameral Introduction of the Safer Choice Program Authorization Act
ISSA, The Association for Cleaning & Facility Solutions, applauds the introduction of the Safer Choice Program Authorization Act of 2026 in the House of Representatives by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA). Companion Senate legislation was previously introduced by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Jon Husted (R-OH). These bills would formally authorize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Safer Choice Program, a voluntary, science-based certification program that helps identify cleaning and consumer products formulated with ingredients that are safer for human health and the environment.
The legislation builds support for a program providing manufacturers, institutional purchasers, cleaning professionals, and consumers with clear, reliable information to guide product selection. The bill would codify the program’s structure, establish transparent procedures for product certification, authorize qualified third-party profilers to support technical evaluations, and require annual reporting to Congress on program performance.
The bipartisan, bicameral introduction reflects growing recognition of the Safer Choice Program’s value to the cleaning and facility solutions industry, purchasers, and the public. It also follows sustained advocacy by ISSA and its members, including the 140+ industry leaders who participated in the association’s Clean Advocacy Summit fly-in event in Washington, DC last March. Authorization of the Safer Choice Program was a top legislative priority during more than 150 Capitol Hill meetings, where ISSA members made the case directly to congressional offices across both chambers.
For the cleaning and facility solutions industry, the stakes are significant. Cleaning professionals in schools, hospitals, office buildings, and public facilities rely on Safer Choice-certified products as a trusted benchmark for both performance and safety. Formal authorization would provide manufacturers with regulatory certainty, encouraging continued innovation in safer chemistry and investment in product development aligned with the program’s rigorous standards.
“San Diegans and families across the country rely on safe, effective products every day, and they should know if these products have been vetted against the highest health and safety standards,” said Rep. Peters. “Our bipartisan bill would permanently give consumers that peace of mind and provide American producers the competitive advantage of a trusted, nationally recognized label. I’m glad to lead this bipartisan effort to ensure the Safer Choice Program benefits consumers and producers for years to come.”
“American families shouldn’t have to be chemists to know whether the products they buy meet high standards for health, safety, and performance,” said Dr. Miller-Meeks. “This bipartisan legislation gives consumers clearer information while encouraging manufacturers to develop safer products, all without creating a new mandatory regulatory regime. As a physician, I’m proud to support a voluntary, science-based approach that gives Americans more confidence in the products they use every day.”
“The introduction of companion legislation in the House is a major step forward for the EPA Safer Choice Program and the businesses, workers, and purchasers who rely on it,” said John Nothdurft, Vice President of Government and Public Affairs at ISSA, The Association for Cleaning & Facility Solutions. “For decades, Safer Choice has helped raise the bar for cleaning products that deliver performance while using ingredients that are safer for people and the environment. By putting this proven, voluntary program on firmer statutory footing, Congress can give manufacturers the certainty to keep innovating, give purchasers a trusted federal benchmark, and give families confidence in the products used to clean the places where they live, learn, work, and receive care. ISSA thanks Representatives Peters and Miller-Meeks for their bipartisan leadership and urges Congress to advance this bill this year.”
Take Action: ISSA strongly encourages industry members, cleaning professionals, and stakeholders to contact their congressional delegation today and urge swift passage of the Safer Choice Program Authorization Act of 2026. Send a message directly to your U.S. Senators and Representative in ISSA’s Voter Voice Action Center.
For questions regarding the Safer Choice Program Authorization Act and ISSA Advocacy, contact John Nothdurft, johnn@issa.com.
Source https://www.issa.com/industry-news/issa-applauds-bipartisan-bicameral-introduction-of-the-safer-choice-program-authorization-act/
Georgia-Pacific advances to final four of ‘Coolest Thing Made in Arkansas’ competition
The company’s Clark County manufacturing operation is among the four finalists in the fifth annual competition, which recognizes products manufactured in Arkansas
Georgia-Pacific’s manufacturing operation in Clark County has advanced to the Featured Four stage of the fifth annual “Coolest Thing Made in Arkansas” competition, the Arkadelphia Alliance and Area Chamber of Commerce announced.
Organized by the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/AIA and Arkansas Business, the competition highlights Arkansas’ manufacturing sector and recognizes products made in the state. Following a public nomination process, Georgia-Pacific was selected as one of the four finalists in this year’s edition.
The company’s Clark County operation contributes to the local and state economies and has been recognized for its role in the manufacturing sector.
“We are incredibly proud to see Georgia-Pacific represented in the Featured 4,” said Shelley Short, CEO of the Arkadelphia Alliance. “It’s a badge of honor for all of Clark County and a reflection of the strong businesses and people that make our region special. We’re ready to rally behind Georgia-Pacific and bring home the #1 spot.”
With Georgia-Pacific among the four finalists, the competition now moves to a final public voting round to determine the winner. Voting is open once per day for each email address through Friday, Oct. 2, at coolestthinginarkansas.com.
The winner is scheduled to be announced on Nov. 17 during the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting.
Source https://tissueonlinenorthamerica.com/georgia-pacific-advances-to-final-four-of-coolest-thing-made-in-arkansas-competition/
Plane Crash Tragedy Highlights Cleaning’s Complexity
A recent tragedy has brought frontline workers to the forefront of American discourse.
Following an eight-hour shift at Miami International Airport, a work van full of Professional Ocean Service Corp. cleaning crew members was struck by an Amazon cargo plane. Five employees— Rolando Alemán León, Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo, Julio C. Pineda, Carlos Acosta Fajardo, and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo—passed away from the crash, while two others—Ridoel Averhoff Diaz and Roosevelt Sebastian Perdomo Torres, survived with injuries. The incident has highlighted the workers who clean and the complexity of their role.
The contracted cleaning crew enhanced airline operations by cleaning and maintaining planes. From disinfecting touch points to removing hazardous waste, these Professional Ocean Service Corp. employees maintained healthy plane environments and kept air traffic moving. Situated in Miami, staff members often face extreme heat, work alongside moving aircrafts, and can be exposed to different chemicals.
While the job is demanding and dangerous, friends and family members of the five victims share that the men took pride in it. The devastating loss has left Professional Ocean Service Corp. “heartbroken.” In a company statement shared by NBC 6 South Florida, the organization says employees are like family, offering its condolences and ongoing support.
Source https://www.cleanlink.com/news/article/Plane-Crash-Tragedy-Highlights-Cleanings-Complexity–33063
