Restaurant Leadership Conference News

Darren Tristano felt the need to apologize for a key point in the data he presented to attendees of the Restaurant Leadership Conference.

It’s a little-known rule of physics: Put a group of restaurant leaders in a room and you’ll get an unvarnished picture of the business. Pull almost 1,800 of them together, as we did at the Restaurant Leadership Conference, and you quickly learn what they see as the opportunities and challenges, the hype and the real successes.

When it comes to landing business from the 38.1 million families in the United States, kids may be a restaurant's best allies, according to an education session presented at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. Co-moderators Ian Davidson of C3 Brand Marketing and Kevin Higar of Technomic used the breakout session to provide practical advice on capturing some of the $1.12 trillion kid-influenced spending that goes on in the U.S.

If you took a United or Delta flight to the 2012 Restaurant Leadership Conference in March in Scottsdale, Arizona, you had the option to forego a printed boarding pass, using a QR code sent to your smartphone instead. In a world where 80 percent of the population owns a mobile device (and only 47 percent own a toothbrush), cellphones and tablets are replacing pagers, wallets, credit cards and even keys. Here’s a round-up of mobile solutions from the floor of RLC to keep an eye on.

As WaWa expands south into Florida, it has redesigned its prototype, upgraded its menu and ramped up service.

A Murderer’s Row of industry dealmakers took the stage at the Restaurant Leadership Conference to air their widely different approaches to finding and profiting from restaurant acquisitions.

He took the stage like a victorious general and made it clear from the get-go that this would be no ordinary presentation. “I don’t do speeches anymore,” former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi barked to a packed ballroom at the Restaurant Leadership Conference. “I rant.”