FSR

01/24/2025

First Watch Restaurants CEO Chris Tomasso thinks it’s safe to say the breakfast, brunch, and lunch segment has transitioned from emerging to fully emerged. With roughly 575 restaurants, First Watch remains the leader in the accelerating food segment.

First Watch CEO Chris Tomasso thinks it’s safe to say the breakfast, brunch, and lunch segment has transitioned from emerging to fully emerged.  There are numerous concepts in the category that have built scale, like Snooze A.M. Eatery, Keke’s Breakfast Cafe (bought by Denny’s in 2022 for $82...

01/24/2025

Chef Jilan Hall, founder of The Sassy Biscuit Co., believes food should be prepared as it should be eaten. The dining experience at this special restaurant is quite a unique one with Hall’s goal of turning every customer visit into a one-of-a-kind food adventure with divine-tasting biscuits accompanying every meal, writes Tenyse Williams in her latest column:

At The Sassy Biscuit Co. in Billings, Montana, every item tastes sensational from the bacon, sausage, biscuits, bread, waffles, and hot sauce to the Sassy spice mix, which is an all-purpose seasoning used on their home fries and fried chicken. And while owner and chef Jilan Hall makes sure every tab...

01/23/2025

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers is two years into its “North Star” turnaround plan. The chain is seeing improvements in guest sentiment and traffic, but more work is ahead.

Red Robin is two years into its “North Star” turnaround plan. There are a lot of metrics CEO GJ Hart can use to explain how much progress has been made, but arguably the most compelling result is coming directly from customers. The chain now has a spot on its website where it posts handwritten l...

01/22/2025

Introducing The Coaching Connection—a new biweekly column by Jason E. Brooks, author of "Every Leader Needs Followers" and founder of HospiVation - Speaking, Coaching, Leadership. Check out his first two articles below, and stay tuned for more:

📖 Read "Why Onboarding is Your Secret Weapon for Long-Term Employee Retention" here: https://www.fsrmagazine.com/feature/why-onboarding-is-your-secret-weapon-for-long-term-employee-retention/
📖 Read "Master Your KPIs: The Recipe for Restaurant Success" here: https://www.fsrmagazine.com/feature/master-your-kpis-the-recipe-for-restaurant-success/

01/21/2025

A critical part of Texas Roadhouse's success for the past 32 years is the brand's managing partners, says CEO Jerry Morgan.

While Texas Roadhouse CEO Jerry Morgan was in Orlando for the ICR Conference earlier this month, he and his team stopped by a restaurant in Lakeland, Florida, to see a familiar face. The restaurant’s managing partner served under Morgan as a bartender in Grand Prairie, Texas, 25 years years ago wh...

01/17/2025

Olive Garden will complete its Uber launch at the end of February, months ahead of schedule.

Olive Garden’s pilot with Uber Eats is going well, according to Darden CEO Rick Cardenas. One of the biggest tells is feedback from operators. “As the pilot went forward, what we heard from our operators was this should be in every Olive Garden,” the executive said during a fireside chat at th...

01/16/2025

Sports bar chain Twin Peaks will officially go public in late January.

In 2011, Joe Hummel left a nearly two-decade career with Ho***rs to join Twin Peaks as a franchisee with several partners. The group saw an opportunity to grow a brand with a clean slate, unique assets, scratch kitchen, and 29-degree beer. When they signed up, there were 14 stores. Since then, Twin....

01/15/2025

Chef Donald Young incorporates playful twists on the Midwestern food he grew up eating, like the final course at his pop-up concept Duck Sel that harkens back to his first job—a riff on a Culver’s concrete mixer, served in a bag with Duck Sel’s logo.
https://www.fsrmagazine.com/feature/how-chef-donald-young-transformed-his-culinary-beginnings-at-culvers-into-michelin-stardom/

01/14/2025

Meet our Breakout Brand of the Year: Turning Point Restaurants, a NextGen Casual breakfast, brunch, and lunch concept with 45 locations on the horizon that has become the future of daytime dining.

Read more: https://www.fsrmagazine.com/feature/fsrs-breakout-brand-of-the-year-how-turning-point-became-the-future-of-daytime-dining/

01/09/2025

Wine experts share their predictions for 2025 trends and strategies to elevate wine programs, including insights from leaders at North Italia, Tavistock Restaurant Collection, The Wine Room Kitchen & Bar, and more.
https://www.fsrmagazine.com/feature/navigating-the-changing-world-of-wine/

01/08/2025

Cleveland-based casual chain Melt Bar & Grilled announced that it permanently closed its doors months after filing for bankruptcy.

Cleveland-based casual chain Melt Bar & Grilled announced that it permanently closed its doors months after filing for bankruptcy. The brand had four locations in Ohio when it filed in June. Three of those shuttered, with the intention of solely focusing on the original restaurant in Lakewood, Ohio....

01/06/2025

The segment approaching potentially the steepest hill in 2025? Casual sit-down dining restaurants, according to Tony Smith, CEO and cofounder of Restaurant365.

The restaurant industry is no stranger to having a crisis on its plate. That’s the nature of day-to-day, in-the-trenches hospitality and navigating macro battles for the country’s second-largest employer. But 2024 had a unique tilt that felt like the apex of years of post-COVID reactions. Pent-u...

01/02/2025

From nixing AI in restaurants to getting rid of gimmicky food presentations and repetitive designs, here are the fads industry leaders want to leave behind in 2024.

We asked operators from this year’s class of Rising Stars: What trend would you love to leave in the past, and what’s the next big restaurant trend you hope will gain traction in 2025?

12/31/2024

Olive Garden appears to have regained some traction thanks in large part to the Never Ending Pasta Bowl.

Olive Garden’s gap to the rest of the industry has narrowed as others brought forth significant discounting promotions, but the Italian chain appears to have regained some traction thanks in large part to the Never Ending Pasta Bowl. The promotion drove a positive sales gap compared to the industr...

12/30/2024

Both Perkins American Food Co. and Huddle House inked their biggest franchise agreements in history this year.

Perkins American Food Co. and Huddle House have been around for five decades, but the past few years are arguably some of the best in company history. Existing franchisees are reinvesting at a record pace. Not only that, but they’re agreeing to buy corporate restaurants in addition to building mor...

12/26/2024

The growing mini-golf brand is backed by one of the most famous athletes in the world.

Miniature golf, which has been around in some form since the 19th century, but was popularized in the 1920s by a Tennessee resort owner (the first actual dedicated course arrived in 1917 in Pinehurst, North Carolina), became a common roadside American attraction in the 70s, 80s, and 90s for its them...

12/19/2024

The NYC Italian institution Rosemary's is coming to Miami's buzzy arts district this January.

When Carlos Suarez was 26 years old, he set out to open his first restaurant armed with a Wharton education, a brief stint in finance, and a deep passion for food. Inspired by his parent’s Italian countryside garden and the transformative role of sharing food around the family table, he sought to ...

12/18/2024

Grubhub has allegedly been listing restaurants on its platform without permission since at least 2019.

The Federal Trade Commission ordered Grubhub to pay $25 million in settlement charges after being accused of deceiving customers about delivery costs and blocking access to their accounts and funds, lying to workers about how much they would make, and deceptively listing restaurants on its platform....