June 10, 2003 | WSJ | By CAROL HYMOWITZ. Panera CEO's Recipe: Learn From Past, Anticipate Trends

March 22, 2012 | WSJ |By JULIE JARGON

The recipe involving boiling/freezing.

You've befriended them on Facebook, followed them on Twitter. Now download the app. Getting a wee bit sad...

PD Dr. med. Thomas Ellrott
Institutsleiter

Ernährungspsychologie, Spezialgebiet Fast Food

The state of fast food is absurd. None of these companies have any pride in their product.

Dec 14, 2011 |Financial Post |By Kim Bhasin

NOVEMBER 14, 2011 | WSJ | By ANGUS LOTEN. Smaller Franchisers Expand Their Horizons
A Smashburger in Kuwait? Here's why it makes sense.

Now, take a look at this sloppy chart I’ve taken the liberty of making. The blue line is the price of hogs in America over the last decade, and the black lines represent approximate times when McDonald’s has reintroduced the McRib, nationwide or taken it on an almost-nationwide “Farewell Tour” (McD’s has been promising to get rid of the product for years now).

Why does the McRib appear and disappear at seemingly random intervals? An excellent post at The Awl has a plausible answer:

The McRib’s unique aspects and impermanence, many of us believe, make it seem a likely candidate for being a sort of arbitrage strategy on McDonald’s part….

If you can demonstrate that McDonald’s only introduces the sandwich when pork prices are lower than usual, then you’re but a couple logical steps from concluding that McDonald’s is essentially exploiting a market imbalance between what normal food producers are willing to pay for hog meat at certain times of the year, and what Americans are willing to pay for it once it is processed, molded into illogically anatomical shapes, and slathered in HFCS-rich BBQ sauce.

…The blue line is the price of hogs in America over the last decade, and the black lines represent approximate times when McDonald’s has reintroduced the McRib, nationwide or taken it on an almost-nationwide “Farewell Tour” (McD’s has been promising to get rid of the product for years now).

See the post for other theories.

By Louise Kramer
Published: April 4, 2004

Restaurants are notoriously challenging to run. An owner must juggle customer service, logistics, management, accounting and other tasks. In franchising, entrepreneurs buy into existing concepts and follow strict guidelines for operation in exchange for a fee and royalty payments on sales.

For three weeks in Italy:

The “Vivace” (vivacious) is a burger topped with bacon, salted spinach, marinated onions and mayonaise with mustard seeds.

The “Adagio” (slowly, like the musical term) is also a hamburger, topped with sweet-and-sour eggplant strips, sliced tomatoes and salted ricotta, all between a bun covered in sliced almonds.

There’s also a tiramisu.

January 12, 2000 | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | By JENNIFER ORDONEZ

The heavy user accounts for only one of five fast-food patrons -- but about 60% of all
visits to fast-food restaurants. By this definition, the heavy user accounted for roughly $66 billion of the
$110 billion the National Restaurant Association says was spent on fast food last year in the U.S.
Definitions of the heavy user vary, but by any measurement, Mr. Sheridan stands out. He spends as
much as $40 a day at fast-food restaurants. He sometimes visits them more than 20 times a month -- a
qualifying number for heavy-user status, according to a survey done by marketing firm Porter Novelli....Unlike frequent fliers and preferred shoppers, heavy users get little in the way of special treatment or
freebies. At fast-food restaurants, they stand in the same lines as everyone else, indistinguishable from
light users.

I thought I'd seen a lot in my 24 years on this planet. Some shocking things. Startling things. Things that've given me a home, then taken it right away. But I've never seen anything like this: the Popeyes Dip'n Chick'n. Revolution. More »

8/2011 | Bright Side Of News | by: Jeff Hastings.

Arcata has been notably progressive in its political makeup, and was the first city in the United States to elect a majority of its city council members from the Green Party. As a result of the progressive majority, Arcata capped the number of chain restaurants allowed in the city.[2] Arcata was also the first municipality to ban the growth of any type of Genetically Modified Organism within city limits

2003 wurde in Arcata ein Gesetz erlassen, welches den örtlichen Behörden die Zusammenarbeit mit US-Bundesbehörden wie dem FBI, der CIA oder der Einwanderungsbehörde verbietet, falls diese Überwachungen, Verhaftungen oder Abschiebungen im Sinne des USA Patriot Act-Bundesgesetzes vornehmen wollen. Die Stadt boykottiert damit den 2001 erlassenen Patriot Act