Flatiron Plaza Food & Beverage Kiosk RFPs

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The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership (BID) is seeking proposals from qualified firms to manage and operate an outdoor food or beverage kiosk (“Kiosk”) in the Flatiron North Public Plaza, located at 23rd Street, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue, and the Flatiron South Public Plaza, located on Broadway between 22nd and 23rd Streets, adjacent the famed Flatiron Building.

Created by the by the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) in 2008, the Flatiron Public Plazas have become town squares, where countless residents, employees in the neighborhood, and visitors from around the world converge each day. The BID has a concession license agreement with DOT for the operation, management, and maintenance of the Plazas which allows for the operation and management of subconcession(s).

It is the goal of the BID to draw customers to a successfully-branded food or beverage kiosk that is successful and enhances the atmosphere and experience of the Flatiron Public Plazas and this vibrant neighborhood.

A nonmandatory pre-bid conference will be held on Thursday, January 24th at 10 am at the office of the Flatiron BID (27 West 24th Street, Suite 800B). The pre-bid conference will include a site visit to the Flatiron Public Plazas. Questions related to the RFPs should be submitted in writing to the BID no later than Friday, February 1st at 5 pm. All proposals are due by 5 pm on Friday, February 22, 2019.

See more here.

Benno, Proudly Out of Step With the Age

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“Dated was the word one friend used after going to Benno, and if you’ve eaten there, too, you’ll know why. It’s as if the past 15 years in food never happened. The menu seems to be stuck in some time between 1994, when Thomas Keller bought the French Laundry, and 2004, when he opened Per Se with a young Jonathan Benno leading the kitchen.

The restaurant will probably be a tough sell to those diners who expect all restaurants to fall on a continuum between Noma and the Salt Bae place. But I prefer it to any number of newer, self-consciously modern restaurants, some of which are so determined to be of the moment that they might as well have a time stamp. Benno is not trying to be contemporary. It’s trying to be delicious. And it is, from start to finish, almost without exception.”

Read more here.

U.S. FDA Says It Will Try to Resume Some Food Inspections

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“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be restarting high-risk food inspections as early as Tuesday — a process many Americans may not have even known was halted.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced via Twitter the plan to resume high-risk probes on Monday afternoon, adding that “we started sampling high-risk imported produce in the northeast region today. We’ll expand our footprint as the week progresses. Our teams are working.”

The work is “being done by an inspectorate that’s largely going unpaid,” during the government shutdown, he added.”

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Impact of Min Wage Increase / NYCHA Survey & Results

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See here NYCHA Survey and Results on Minimum Wage Increase

Word-Of-Mouth Recommendations Still Effective Among Diners

“When it comes to choosing a restaurant, it seems good old-fashioned word of mouth is not dead, according to a recent survey by reservation platform SevenRooms.

More than half of American diners (54 percent) turn to friends and family for restaurant recommendations. About 30 percent consult review sites like Yelp, and 25 percent were influenced by something they saw on TV, according to the survey, conducted with research firm YouGov.”

Read more here.

 

Different Types Of Restaurant Menus

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“Menu is essential for all restaurants and it plays an important role in promoting the business. A menu not only provides information about the food articles available at the restaurant along with prices, but also tempt the customer to order the food. Menu should be attractive and informative as in not long but it should be able to provide the necessary information.

Different restaurants have different approaches on serving the food and fixing prices for each item. Similarly different restaurants follow different menu styles. Here we are going to talk about the most commonly used five different types of restaurant menus.

Static Menu

This is the most common type of menu which has been accepted widely. Different food items will be categorized into different groups and subgroups such as appetizers, entrees, salads, soups, desserts etc. This type of menu will be kept laminated for easy cleaning and will contain several pages. Most of the fast food restaurants use this type of menu.

A’la Carte Menu

When different food items are sold individually, this type of menu will be the best. For example, when you order a steak, it will not accompany salads and potatoes. You will have to order them separately. In such restaurants, the prices of each item should be shown individually.

Table d’hote Menu

In some restaurants where food items are sold as multi course meals. Here the choices will be less and the charges will be for the meal not for individual items. Customer will not have a choice to order individual items. In such restaurants “Table d’hote” type of menu will be the best choice. This is also known as “Prix Fixe Menu”.

Read more here.

Why Did NYC Lose 15 Kosher Restaurants In 2018?

Why Did NYC Lose 15 Kosher Restaurants In 2018? by the Forward

“Everyone knows opening a restaurant is a tricky business. Only 21% of restaurant start-ups survive past 15 years, the average restaurant lifetime is 4.5 years, and 17% of restaurants fail within their first year of business. In the kosher community, all of those percentages are a whole lot higher.

2018 was a particularly terrible year, with 15 kosher restaurants closing up shop. Veteran Manhattan kosher restaurants — midtown’s Cafe K, the Upper East Side’s Italian restaurant Va Bene, and Amsterdam Burger on the West Side — shuttered their doors this year. The gourmet kosher supermarket, Seasons, on the West Sider; Basta, an Israeli artisanal pizza spot in midtown east; Maoz, a vegetarian falafel chain throughout Manhattan — all closed.”

Read more here.

Key Ingredients For Successful Organizational Change

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As we approach the end of 2018, many of you are probably planning business transformations for the New Year. However, the loftier the goals, the more care needs to be given to the process in achieving them. All organizations today face the need for more frequent and ongoing change in order to maintain their competitive advantages and relevance in the the marketplace. But change is exceedingly difficult in today’s more complex business battlefield. In the Navy SEAL Teams, we operated in what we referred to as VUCA environments: volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. Sounds just like modern business doesn’t it?

Five Key Ingredients

Successful change formulas involve (1) vision, (2) benefits, (3) sponsorship, (4) resources and (5) methodology. If any of these five ingredients are left out, the outcome won’t taste all that great. For example, if aligned vision is lacking confusion sets in quickly. The key word being aligned. If senior leaders have varying ideas of what success looks like, things get messy really fast. When the benefits aren’t clear (or not clearly communicated), ambivalence occurs. Without full sponsorship from leadership, resistance spreads. Without resources, frustration. Without a clear methodology and approach, procrastination becomes the norm.

Read more in Forbes article here.

The Biggest Surprises in NYC Dining in 2018

A dinner spread at Le Sia

“Serena Dai, editor of Eater NY: I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised by this because the world is such a garbage fire, but it was interesting to see how quickly powerful people (and a lot of media) were to embrace the return of the Four Seasons Restaurant seemingly without any caveat. I guess I’m an optimist, which means I will always be a little bit surprised at how naive old-school power is. Did the 40 investors really think that Julian Niccolini’s past behavior wouldn’t impact perception of the restaurant among the new audience they were reportedly aiming to attract? Did they really think amazing food and a $30 million build-out could overcome years and years of baggage — now newly visible in the age of #MeToo — when nobody from the restaurant came out front to address the fact that the face of the restaurant is an admitted sexual assaulter? People can’t move forward without an apology, but here, there wasn’t even really that. Yes, it’s legendary; yes, it’s hugely influential. But we live in a different world now, and sometimes it is okay to pay our respects, and then lay a restaurant to rest.”

See more here.

The Absolute Best Rugelach in New York

Orwashers Bakery

“Amidst the many delights at this iconic New York bakery — sour-cherry-jelly doughnuts, sticky-bun babka, black-and-whites — the rugelach more than hold their own. The twisted nuggets of shortbread pastry glisten with mouth-puckering raspberry or apricot jam — arguably the preeminent jam in the rugelach oeuvre. And they come packed with chewy bites of raisins, a scattering of sunflower seeds, and, if you’re making your rugelach run at the original Upper East Side location, a sultry dip into melted baking chocolate.”

See more here.