Got Chocolate? Mondelez Makes a $400M Cacao Investement

Major snack-chocolate maker Mondelez has unveiled “Cocoa Life” – the company’s largest, most comprehensive cacao sustainability effort to date.  As the world’s largest chocolate company, it will invest $400 million over the next ten years to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of more 200,000 cacao farmers and about one million people in cacao farming communities.  Cocoa Life will bring a $100 million new investment to Cote d’Ivoire — the world’s largest cacao producing country — to help 75,000 farmers double their productivity.

Cocoa Life will collaborate with governments, civil society and suppliers with a mission to transform the cacao supply chain.  The company works with third party experts such the United Nations Development Program, World Wildlife Fund and Anti-Slavery International to develop a robust set of principles for success and ways to measure progress.

Cocoa Life is based on Mondelez International’s Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Ghana, India and the Dominican Republic.  In Ghana, the Partnership has helped create a 20 percent increase in cocoa yields, a 200 percent increase in household incomes and an 80 percent increase in government-backed development projects in the first phases of the project between 2009-2011.  The company continues to expand its reach to more communities in Ghana and extended the partnership to the Dominican Republic in 2011.  In India, the company has been working directly with cacao farmers for 50 years.

Urbanspoon Goes Global

Urbanspoon, the online local restaurant guide, announced international expansion yesterday. They are partnering with online reservation services Dimmi and Livebookings.  Now, Urbanspoon diners worldwide will have the ability to book reservations at nearly 7,000 restaurants with the addition of Livebookings and Dimmi reservation inventory.  In the US alone, Urbanspoon is now seating over 2 million US diners per month, a number that has doubled in the last 6 months.

“Our goal is to give diners the best tools along every step of their dining experience, from finding the right restaurant, to making a reservation and giving feedback on their meal,” said Kara Nortman, Senior Vice President, Consumer Businesses, CityGrid. “Partnering with other great companies, like Dimmi and Livebookings, extends our reservations coverage to millions of Urbanspoon diners internationally.”

“Partnering with Urbanspoon highlights our commitment to provide our restaurant customers with access to more traffic,” Guy Halfhead, Vice President of Sales, Livebookings. “Urbanspoon’s user base represents high-quality diners looking to find and book reservations; matching them with our reservation inventory makes perfect sense to our business.”

Dimmi’s goal is to provide our restaurant customers with access to the best diners in the region and driving new reservations through Urbanspoon allows us to deliver even more value to our restaurants,” said Stevan Premutico, founder and CEO of Dimmi. “Urbanspoon is a popular source of premier restaurant content in Australia and we’re excited about integrating our high-quality reservation product with their website and mobile app.”

Urbanspoon’s expansion into the international market also began with coverage in Ireland, putting information and reviews on more than 2,000 restaurants at the fingertips of Irish (and lucky visiting) diners.

Urbanspoon aggregates restaurant content from across the Web including newspapers, professional food critics, bloggers and diners. It allows diners to make restaurant reservations through its online booking service, both on the Web and mobile. Urbanspoon also offers restaurants Urbanspoon Rezbook – a reservation and table management system built to run on the Apple iPad.

Is Mobile Money Green?

Nation’s Restaurant News reports on mobile payment technology.

A growing number of large-scale brands are attaching their names to mobile platforms. Where do you stand?

 A Look at a divided market on mobile payments.

Tea Picks Up More Steam

We had written earlier this year about Starbucks’ search for tea, it ends and begins with a purchase of Teavana for $620 million cash.

Adding to the list of Teatailers in New York this week is Palais du Thés, a French tea importer and retailer, started in 1987 by François-Xavier Delmas. The chain has 28 boutiques worldwide. The 29th is its first in the United States and the first outside France that is not a franchise.

FastCasual.com gets up close and personal with 4 Hospitality Tech CEO’s

Restaurant operators are always looking for the latest solutions to help them cut costs and provide better and faster service. Technologies claiming to do all three emerge daily, so FastCasual.com sat down with the CEOs or founders of four such companies — FrontFlip, Breadcrumb, Irisys and GoPago — to find out if their solutions are worth the investment.

New Restaurant Technology to help your business manage its guests

Latin-themed restaurants update their menu with national trends

There is so much popularity around Latin cuisine– from fast casual to fine dining. Now, many of these restaurants are incorporating other trends into their summer menu, from authenticity to superfoods and better-for-you ingredients.
For example, Chevy Tex Mex has updated their kid’s menu to offer Chicken Fajita served with carrots, celery sticks and apple wedges and water for beverage in addition to many other healthy options

Crumbs Bakeshop will serve Starbucks beverages at all locations

The cupcake bakeshop chain with 51 locations has just partnered with a dominant coffee company, Starbucks, of course! Crumbs will be the largest chain to serve Starbucks beverages outside the coffeehouse’s 17,651 store locations.
New York City will be first to debut the new duo in September

An Etsy-like site for food

Founders Rob Spiro and Alon Salant launched a site called Good Eggs which connects people directly to local handcrafted food producers. Currently, the site features 40 food vendors from the Bay Area.
The company plans to expand to Portland, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn

Restaurants increase traffic with more units

The NPD Group, a NY-based market research firm, highlights that the total number of restaurant units increased by 2,872 in a 12-month period ending in March 31, 2012. The increased units has given the restaurant industry a 1% increase in traffic and a 2% increase in spending.
How are you optimizing your space for your guests?

An interview with Ronald M. Shaich of Panera Bread

Ronald M. Shaich of Panera Bread says good companies flex two kinds of muscles — a delivery muscle to accomplish its work, and the discovery muscle of innovation in a recent interview with The New York Times. Mr. Shaich discusses how he’s able to maintain the company culture in light of growth and expansion by providing examples. He has a great insight on the food business which can be useful to any entrepreneur or small business owner.
What lessons would you take from this interview for your food enterprise?