During my first National Restaurant Association Show, fellow attendees were all but exclaiming hallelujahs over one of the products being hawked. An exhibitor who might have trained as a carnival barker was touting an advance certain to revolutionize the food away from home business, if not change the path of all mankind. His company had hit on a way to crystallize ketchup and package it like salt.
Now a burger could be garnished with a shake or two of a ketchup-crystal dispenser. Messy smears would be a thing of the past. And think of the inventory control!
Better yet, customers could be sent out the door with a flavoring packet to self-garnish their orders—a breakthrough in labor efficiency and customization rolled into one innovation.
As you might have guessed, this was a few years ago. Make that a few decades. Back in 1981, the industry’s big convention was a much different experience.
For one thing, the show was longer. If aching feet had you wondering by Tuesday if Dr. Scholl made house calls, consider that you would have had another day of slogging through the show before heading home. A day was lopped off the event by Herman Cain during his time as head of the restaurant association.
He would of course go on to run unsuccessfully for the presidency of the United States. He didn’t think to make shorter meetings a plank of his platform.
One aspect that hasn’t changed is the show’s ability to surprise. Indeed, as I learned while working for the show’s owner and operator, the possibility of aha moments is one of the major reasons why operators attend.
Nothing with the profundity of ketchup crystals came to my attention this year, but the show did serve up some jaw-dropping revelations. Here are a few.
A union had its meeting, too
While the food-away-from-home business was meeting in the upper levels of McCormick Place, one of the industry’s largest labor unions was having its own gathering two floors below. A sign near one of the shuttle-bus disembarkment areas indicated that Unite Here was holding a get-together in the bowels of the convention complex.
Yet there was no disruption of this year’s convention by union activists, as was the case a decade or so ago. Members shouting and waving protest signs would disrupt the keynote addresses, usually while the leader of the National Restaurant Association was at the podium, before they were ushered out by security officers.
Norman Brinker had a hand in Chili’s latest promo
No restaurant chain of scale has come close to matching the sales growth of Chili’s, the foundational brand of Brinker International. In successive quarters, it posted same-store sales gains of 31% and 31.6%, respectively. And that’s while most public restaurant companies were trying to convince shareholders that flat is the new up.
Turns out Brinker International namesake Norman Brinker, still a god in the industry 16 years after his death, is helping to maintain the momentum.
As current Brinker International CEO Kevin Hochman explained in casual conversation after collecting his Gold Plate award from IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Norman was the inspiration for Chili’s latest promotion. The casual-dining chain is running commercials that favorably compare its Big QP burger to McDonald’s Big Mac. The spot invites fast-food fans to order something far better at a sit-down restaurant that they’d get for about the same money at the Golden Arches.
Hochman said he got the idea from a book club he’s started at Chili’s headquarters. One of the books it decided to read and discuss early on was Norman Brinker’s autobiography, On The Brink. In there, Hochman and the other participants were reminded that Burger King had been one of Norman’s charges when he served as president of Pillsbury’s restaurant group, the lofty post he held before leaving to buy Chili’s and launch his namesake company.
While overseeing the Home of the Whopper, Brinker okayed an ad campaign that favorably compared BK’s flame-grilled burgers to McDonald’s flattop-grilled patties. The marketing blitz was a game-changer, and one of the first comparative ad campaigns that anyone in the restaurant business could remember. It brought BK as close as it ever would come to matching McDonald’s average unit sales.
And that was what gave modern-day Chili’s the idea of comparing its burgers to McDonald’s, according to Hochman.
Local sourcing is about to have a heyday
The convention was held during what several speakers characterized as one of the most difficult periods the food-away-from-home business has ever faced. The most-cited factor wasn’t the impact of Trump’s threatened tariffs, but the public’s worries about the potential fallout.
Still, a thread running through several experts’ presentations was the likelihood that restaurants will try to source more of their supplies locally to cut their reliance on imports.
The prediction was aired by two speakers who briefed the media on what trends were likely to be evident in the show’s miles of exhibit space. They predicted that traffic would be heavy in the area where domestic entrepreneurs showcase the food and beverages specialties of their home states.
Sure enough, the Taste of the States was one of the most crowded sections of the exhibit area. An organizer of the domestic showcase, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, said a record 160 small and medium-sized suppliers offered samples and information about their products.
David Henkes, Senior Principal of Technomic, revealed during the trends-previewing press event that the research company is about to embark on a major study of local sourcing and how it’s evolving as the threat of tariffs looms.
A different sort of attendee kicks
Once upon a time, the standard operating procedure for many of the exhibiting companies was to put their booth personnel in garb sporting the outfit’s name, logo or marketing slogan. Plenty of what’s known as logo wear was still evident at this year’s event, but a new means of designating the team seemed to be catching on. More than a few of the vendors, along with operators attending in a group, differentiated themselves with their footwear.
Matching sneakers in distinctive colors and designs seemed to be the preferred way of designating members of a team. Red kicks with white laces seemed to be the models of choice.
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.