Times, they are a-changing, and that’s a good thing when it comes to the restaurant business lately: More people are going out to eat recently, in numbers that haven’t been seen since before the recession hit in 2008. [More]
restaurants
FDA Giving Businesses Another Year To Comply With Rules Requiring Calorie Counts On Menus
By 7.9.15
Restaurants and other businesses that were living under a deadline to include calorie counts on menus and displays will get a bit of wiggle room to comply with the rule passed by the Food and Drug Administration last fall. The agency now says food purveyors will have another year to get their acts together, extending the previous deadline from Dec. 1, 2015 to Dec. 1, 2016. [More]
One Of World’s Most Expensive Restaurants Caught Keeping Tips From Waiters
By 7.2.15
Celebrity chef Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant in Manhattan is one of the world’s most expensive eateries, with diners paying a minimum prix fixe of $310 each for dinner. And yet the restaurant has been caught charging certain customers for “service charges” that didn’t go to pay the people performing that service. Now it faces having to pay $500,000 in restitution to employees who should have received this money. [More]
Ranch Lovers Rejoice: There’s Now A Restaurant Devoted To The Creamy Condiment
By 6.24.15
Saying Americans love ranch dressing is like saying humans need oxygen to live. I mean, we’re dumping that creamy condiment on everything. To see how far the obsession with the sauce has come, one only needs to look at a new restaurant opening in St. Louis. [More]
Why Have Restaurant Waiters Become Plate-Grabbing Vultures?
By 6.23.15
People eat at different speeds. That’s just how eating and people work. Yet there’s a disturbing trend in restaurant dining that some people have noticed: servers lurk, ready to grab your plate whether everyone else at the table is done eating yet or not. Why would they do this? Rushing the whole table makes economic sense for a restaurant, but why snatch away plates when other people are still eating? [More]
New Yorkers Will Soon Be Able To Dine With Their Dogs At Restaurants With Outdoor Areas
By 6.19.15
It’s one thing to have your furry best friend underneath the table at home waiting for scraps to inevitably fall, but once you try to take a dog to a restaurant at meal time, it’s not always acceptable or even legal to have your pet accompany you as your dinner date. In New York, however, canines will soon be welcome with their owners at restaurants with outside space. [More]
NYC May Become First U.S. City To Require High-Sodium Warning Labels At Chain Restaurants
By 6.10.15
The health war wages on in New York City, where the ghost of the failed ban on large sodas is said to still haunt city hall, moaning the name of a certain former mayor. This time, city officials are taking on sodium, proposing a requirement that chain restaurants put a label on menu items that are high in salt. [More]
Local Dunkin’ Donuts Owner Decides He Can Be Cool With BBQ Place Selling Breakfast Tacos Nearby
By 6.4.15
Though from the consumer perspective having more choices is always a good thing, businesses don’t particularly like it when competitors move in on what they see as their turf. So went the ballad of a local Dunkin’ Donuts and its BBQ restaurant neighbor, where the two businesses found themselves at odds over who was allowed to serve breakfast in the shopping center. [More]
Police: DNA Analysis Proves Chili’s Waiter Spit In Customer’s Drink
By 6.4.15
Many of us have had that moment where something about a food or drink order at a restaurant doesn’t feel quite right when it comes, especially if you’ve had any kind of negative encounter with the wait staff. But in one case, police say they were able to prove which waiter at a Chili’s restaurant had spit into a customer’s takeaway drink, using DNA analysis. [More]
Loosen Your Belt, It’s Time For The 9 Most Calorie-Filled Restaurant Meals Of 2015!
By 6.3.15
While fast food gets a lot of negative attention for serving up less-than-healthy burgers, fries, chicken, and McRib meat, Whoppers and Big Macs have nothing on many of the meals you’ll get at a typical chain restaurant. Just about every item on the latest list of casual dining calorie bombs would be enough for a full day on its own. [More]
Olive Garden’s Board Of Directors Waited Tables To Experience Life As An Employee
By 6.1.15
Not even a year ago, the activist hedge-fund investors at Starboard Value were making headlines with their 300-page report criticizing Olive Garden management for being wasteful with the free breadsticks, overly generous with the salad dressing, and not selling enough booze. Since then, Starboard has ousted board members at Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants and replaced them with their own nominees who have ushered in menu changes like turning those breadsticks into sandwiches. In an attempt to ground the new board members’ decisions in the real world, they all got to spend an evening on the foodservice front line. [More]
Customer Grateful For D.C. Restaurant’s Gumbo Leaves $2,000 Tip On $93 Bill
By 5.28.15
It’s always nice to be appreciated for your hard work in any form, but when someone goes out of their way with a hefty chunk of change, you better believe it makes people excited. Thus was the case with a regular customer at a D.C. restaurant who loved his gumbo so much, he tipped $2,000 on a $93 lunch bill. [More]
Facebook Will Include Critics’ Reviews On “Select” Restaurant Pages
By 5.26.15
In what appears to be another effort to keep its users inside the social media site’s loving embrace, Facebook is reportedly going to include critics’ reviews of restaurants on the pages of “select” establishments in the United States. [More]
Family-Owned Frisch’s Big Boy Restaurants Sold To Private Equity Fund
By 5.22.15
Marking the first time since Frisch’s Big Boy started its first drive-thru in 1939 that the chain won’t be under family ownership, the Cincinnati-based restaurant company says it’s being sold to a private egquity fund for about $175 million. [More]
New Orleans Restaurant Says It Fired Server For Adding Racist Slur To Customer’s Receipt
By 5.22.15
Every time we see a receipt that has some kind of slur, insult or otherwise awful language on it, we hope as hard as we can that it’s the last time. Sadly, yet another instance of humans being horrible to each other has surfaced: A New Orleans restaurant says it’s fired a server accused of adding the “N” word to a customer’s receipt yesterday. [More]
Art Collector Leaves His Two Favorite Steak House Servers $50K Each In His Will
By 5.11.15
Being appreciated in your profession is always a good feeling, but when a tip comes in the form of a very generous bequeathal from a grateful customer, it can be staggering. Two waitresses at a Manhattan steak house received $50,000 each in the will of an art collector who’d frequented their place of work for decades. [More]
Police Arrest 3 Suspects In Restaurant Burglary After Finding A “Steady Trail Of Macaroni Salad”
By 5.11.15
In the culinary justice system, restaurant thefts are not taken lightly. Luckily for the officers investigating a burglary at an Upstate New York establishment, there was a literal trail of evidence that wound up leading police to arrest three suspects. [More]
Restaurant Owner Apologizes For Asking Breastfeeding Mom To Cover Up Or Move
By 5.6.15
We support many things here at Consumerist. One of them is the right of parents to feed their infants however and wherever they choose, which includes the right to openly breastfeed in business establishments. State law in Illinois also supports this right. We also support proportionate responses when a business wrongs you. After a mother shared her grievance against a local restaurant on Facebook, the owner claims to have received threats of death and property damage. [More]
