Food & Food Equipment News

Toast Announces $101 Million in Additional Funding

Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform has received a commitment for an additional $101 million in financing led by new investors Generation Investment Management and Lead Edge Capital. Existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in the oversubscribed round. Toast plans to use these new funds to continue building its guest experience cloud platform for restaurants of all sizes.

“The restaurant industry has historically been slower than others to adopt technology, leading to operational inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Advances in hardware, software and cloud computing are shifting that dynamic,” said Greg Wasserman, Partner at Generation Investment Management. “Toast is leading this digital shift with its powerful, yet easy-to-deploy platform that is democratizing access to best-in-class technology. With Toast, all restaurants can maximize revenue, optimize operations, digitize paper processes, reduce food waste and other costs, and ultimately deliver a superior dining experience.”

Innovation

Toast will use this funding to build on its track record of innovation, including:

• Investing further in Toast Online Ordering, enabling a best-in-class ordering experience across various devices and channels 
• Enhancing key areas of the platform such as self-ordering kiosks, handheld pay-at the-table experiences, CRM and marketing tools, advanced reporting, inventory, loyalty, and more 
• Creating the industry’s most robust cloud-based restaurant platform, including modern, commercial grade hardware
• Leveraging the immense amount of data restaurants collect to enable a more personalized guest experience and improve labor and food cost profiles

"We’ve rapidly expanded our business over the past year by delivering on our mission and promise to be obsessed with customer success," said Chris Comparato, CEO of Toast. "We plan to accelerate our growth even faster in the year ahead with strategic investments that will help our restaurant customers focus on delivering great food and guest experiences."

Toast Customers and Partners

“We found that the Toast POS system is fast and intuitive for our cashiers to use. During peak times, we can process about 20 percent more transactions after introducing Toast to our restaurants,” said Jeff Jacobson, COO of Costa Vida. “Our team has been with Toast since 2015; they are a true partner and a key factor in our ability to focus on excellent service and great food.”

Joe Guenther, the owner of O’Maddy’s, an iconic Florida-based restaurant and bar, echoed, “We never expected that we could bring the ‘Apple Store experience’ to our restaurant. Handheld tablet ordering resulted in faster table-turns and increased revenue by 20 percent. At our restaurant, this equates to a potential increase in revenue by $1 million.”

In addition to Costa Vida and O’Maddy’s Bar & Grille, Toast’s 50+ midmarket and enterprise-level customers include Pieology, Beef 'O' Brady's, Bareburger, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, b.good, The Human Bean, Protein Bar and Sticky Fingers Ribhouse. The Toast API Partner Program boasts integrations with companies like Grubhub, Samsung Pay, Paytronix and LevelUp. Toast continues to add local restaurants to its growing customer list from small coffee shops to fine dining.

"From its differentiated, all-in-one restaurant management and point of sale solution, to its explosive growth and world-class team of cloud technology engineers with a passion for restaurants, we know Toast is the future of restaurant technology," said Brian Neider, Partner at Lead Edge Capital. "Out of all the feedback we gained from key players in the restaurant and food technology space, Toast customers and partners had an overwhelming sentiment of excellent product and customer success feedback.”

Growth and Hiring

The investment will also support the company’s hiring plan to double year-over-year; key appointments thus far include Hugh Scandrett, Vice President of Engineering, formerly of IBM and Kronos, as well as John Morrison, Vice President of Services, who joins Toast from Oracle MICROS. Toast currently boasts more than 500 employees nationwide, and is on track to hire nearly 1,000 more in the next 18 months.

Attorneys Aid Food Companies with Recalls

Food safety is a public health priority — and at Recall Ready, an association of foodborne illness attorneys, it is the association's primary focus and expertise.  Since Recall Ready launched in 2012, the association has assisted more than 100 companies with their recall needs as well as provided professional assistance for managing recall events.

The association has identified three steps to success for averting and surviving product recalls:

• Prevention: Soil, water and product testing, along with food safety audits and reviews of procedures, all help avert potential problems.
• Planning: A sound recall plan — along with team training — is critical, allowing your company to build the resources needed to handle any situation.
• Response: A recall requires immediate response in order to reduce product loss, customer erosion and litigation claims.

The Recall Ready team offers a full range of services to put the needed steps in place, including:

• organization of a food safety team;
• creation of an emergency response handbook;
• technology assistance to implement recalls;
• review and implementation of procedures to accurately identify impacted product;
• preparation for meetings with regulators and plaintiff lawyers.

Recall Ready members can interact and work with regulators to assist a company with the management of a potential recall, focusing immediately on customer safety but also working to mitigate future litigation risk and claims.

Relay Foods Rolls Out Delivery Program in D.C.

Relay Foods, an online market for sustainable food and everyday groceries, has rolled out a new "Drop Spots" program, allowing D.C. area apartment buildings to provide residents with free concierge grocery delivery. The program offers real estate management groups a cost-free way to help residents avoid the challenges of grocery shopping in D.C. by offering on-site delivery. 

"In D.C., we all know that grocery shopping can be rough," said Graham Evans, Vice President of New Markets and DC City Manager at Relay Foods. "After a long, stressful day, no one wants to fight traffic to get to and from a grocery store or haul shopping bags on the metro. So, we're partnering with forward-thinking apartment buildings to bring fresh, local food and groceries directly to residents."

Launched in 2009 in Charlottesville, Va. and serving the D.C. metro area since summer 2012, Relay Foods provides a comprehensive selection of local foods and grocery essentials to online shoppers and delivers orders to convenient pickup locations or customers' homes. With Drop Spots, Relay Foods and apartment buildings establish a regular delivery schedule to ensure that residents can rely on Relay Foods for their weekly grocery needs. Relay's delivery teams ensure that groceries reach the Drop Spot by 4 p.m. Delivery schedules begin at one drop per week and can be increased to multiple days per week according to the needs of residents.

Six D.C. area apartment buildings participated in the pilot program.

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Online Food Marketplace Relay Foods Launches Beta Version of New Mobile Website

Online Food Marketplace Relay Foods Launches Beta Version of New Mobile Website

New $43 Million Wild Turkey Facility Sparks Jobs And Revenue For Commonwealth Of Kentucky

After a seven year hiatus, bottling of one of the most iconic whiskey brands in the world has flown home. Gruppo Campari (Reuters CPRI.MI - Bloomberg CPR IM) today celebrated the grand opening of its US$43 million Packaging Facility at the famous Wild Turkey® Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Commonwealth of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and Gruppo Campari CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz joined Wild Turkey Master Distiller Jimmy Russell to commemorate the opening of the new facility with help from local dignitaries and distillery employees. The Packaging Facility is part of a US$100 million overall investment that the company has made in facility upgrades during a three year time span.

"Kentucky's Bourbon industry has been growing at a rapid pace, with production of our native spirit up more than 120 percent in the last decade and 5 million barrels currently aging in the Commonwealth," said Gov. Beshear. "The significant investment Gruppo Campari has made at the Wild Turkey Distillery, including the $43 million Packaging Facility, will not only help grow that number through worldwide expansion of the Bourbon category, but will also create valuable jobs for the people of our great Commonwealth."

While creating more than sixty new jobs in the area, the facility provides full bottling and packaging capabilities for all of Gruppo Campari's U.S.-distilled spirits brands, including the Wild Turkey Bourbon line and the company's largest U.S.-based brand – SKYY^® Vodka. Both immediate and long-term benefits of the new facility include cost efficiencies; improved customer service; more efficient and accelerated innovation opportunities; and added production flexibility through in-sourcing the company's packaging needs.

With more than 145,000 square-feet of space, the Wild Turkey Packaging Facility will initially handle up to four million nine-liter cases of product annually, but has the design capability and capacity to support Gruppo Campari's North American packaging platform well into the future.  The new Facility immediately addresses the growth of Wild Turkey, Wild Turkey American Honey^®, Wild Turkey Spiced^®, Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit, Russell's Reserve^®, Rare Breed^® Bourbon, and SKYY Vodka domestically and around the globe.

"After a seven year absence, we are pleased to bring packaging capabilities back to the Wild Turkey Distillery for two of Gruppo Campari's biggest and fastest growing brands," said Bob Kunze-Concewitz, CEO of Gruppo Campari. "By owning the full production process for all of our Wild Turkey brands, we can be more nimble in meeting the growing worldwide demand for not only Wild Turkey, but also SKYY Vodka. We thank the Commonwealth of Kentucky for its cooperation in bringing this facility to life."

Since purchasing the brand in 2009, Gruppo Campari has made significant financial commitments to the distillery's operations and its employees that have surpassed more than US$100 million. In 2011, the Company unveiled a US$50 million expansion at the distillery, more than doubling the plant's production capabilities.  This was coupled with the opening of multiple new barrel warehouses over the past several years. In 2014, Wild Turkey will open a new state-of-the-art Visitor Center.

Prima Supply Unveils "Try Before You Buy" Beta Program for the Restaurant Equipment Supply Industry

Prima Supply, an online retailer of restaurant and foodservice equipment located in Louisville, KY, is beta testing a "Try Before You Buy" program throughout the month of July. The program is the first of its kind in the foodservice industry as it has not been tested on large business to business purchases in the foodservice industry. Participants in the Try Before You Buy program may try out the equipment for 14 days from the date of shipment before purchasing the equipment. If they do not like the equipment they can return it for free to Prima Supply.

Try Before You Buy enables the purchaser to provide a credit card number and then try out the equipment without having their card charged. At any point during the 14 day trial period the customer may cancel the order and have the equipment picked up from their location at no cost to the purchaser. If the purchaser does not request a cancellation within 14 days then their card will be charged for the sale price of their order.

The Try Before You Buy beta program by Prima Supply will be available on certain pieces of equipment manufactured by Bunn, Vitamix, Manitowoc, Ice O Matic, and Scotsman starting July 1.

Prima Supply is an online retailer of restaurant and foodservice equipment. You can find out more about the Try Before You Buy Program at: http://primasupply.com/tb4yb.

Introducing DAR PRO Solutions

Darling International Inc. and Griffin Industries LLC, the oldest, largest and most innovative recycling solutions company in the country, recently announced the launch of DAR PRO Solutions^TM, a Darling/Griffin brand. DAR PRO Solutions is an exhibitor at the National Restaurant Association Show in booth 7857 offering premium recycling services to the food service and restaurant industries in all 50 states, repurposing inedible meat and cooking oil by-products into globally-marketed animal feed nutrients,
renewable fuels, and ingredients used in a diverse range of commercial and industrial applications.

In addition to announcing a new brand, DAR PRO Solutions is also introducing the BOSS Fresh Oil Management Solution providing the most effective fresh and used cooking oil management solution available. This system increases employee safety while helping restaurants manage fresh and used cooking oil usage.

The DAR PRO Solutions brand brings a streamlined efficiency and unified identity to the products, services and expertise that Darling and Griffin have been providing their rendering and restaurant industry customers for over a century.

FCSI-The Americas Recognizes Top Performers, Products at Spring Conference

FCSI-The Americas, the only consulting society dedicated to serving independent foodservice design and hospitality management professionals, has named its 2012 award winners, representing the best and brightest individuals, products and professionals in the commercial foodservice market. The award winners were announced during FCSI-The Americas spring conference.

 

Two new members were inducted into the FCSI’s Council of Fellows: Char Norton, FFCSI and Ruby Puckett, FFCSI. Membership is offered to the FCSI's most distinguished, dedicated and involved members.

 

Norton, who is principal of The Norton Group, has served the foodservice industry for nearly 50 years, and has been an active member of FCSI since becoming a professional member in 1995. Norton is a recognized expert food safety and disaster planning, having authored several books, chapters and numerous articles for professional and trade journals on the subject.

 

Puckett has been a professional member of FCSI since 1996, and is a recognized specialist in foodservice systems management, developer of training programs for staffs and educational programs for college foodservice students. Puckett is the author of 12 books, 435 articles, and co-author of six books and six chapters in other books on commercial foodservice. Puckett has served on the FCSI-The Americas Board of Trustees and led many divisional committees. She is also President of the FCSI Educational Foundation.

 

FCSI Worldwide Service Award: Eric Norman, FCSI, is a vice president with MVP Services Group and was named the 2012 FCSI Worldwide Service Award recipient for his years of active participation in the society, including his fundamental role in helping create FCSI’s electronic resource library and as chair of FCSI The America’s ICON group for young and emerging consultants.

Lack of Traceability Makes Product Integrity—and Profits—Disappear

With the growing number of product recalls, industries such as food and beverage, pharmaceutical and consumer goods, have all been under intense scrutiny like never before. Recent years have involved a number of serious—and even deadly—safety incidents, which means the need to protect your supply chain is the key for survival. Any weak link in the supply chain, no matter how obscure and (seemingly) insignificant, can inflict million-dollar damage, not to mention threaten public health.

“We are in an age when consumers are too savvy to rely on brand loyalty anymore,” said John DiPalo, Chief Technology Officer for Acsis Inc. “People want more than just reassurances that their medicine and food products are safe. They want to know where their food originated and are demanding a safer drug supply chain. Companies who fail to answer this call will ultimately get left behind as consumers turn toward those can give them access to this precise type of data.”

An estimated 76 million Americans are sickened each year by foodborne illnesses, with 5,000 fatalities annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This costs the U.S. economy $152 billion a year in health care and related expenses. In fact, 94 percent of large food and beverage companies  put "health and well-being" at the top of their consumer trends list. This suggests that anything that even smells of a food quality issue is one of their biggest nightmares. "Freshness" is the next issue on the list of what matters. Although the food industry has started to take steps to implement new technologies to reduce the impact of issues caused by a comprised supply chain, there is still more to be done.

To keep products and profits from disappearing, organizations need a software suite that tracks and traces products at the item level through the entire supply chain. (Photo: Acsis Inc.) With more companies outsourcing for raw materials and distribution, having end-to-end visibility in a supply chain is an absolute necessity in order to ensure public safety, as well as brand protection. While branding is the proven means of gaining consumer loyalty, there is downside ... the stronger the brand, the greater the risk. A global brand's strength can become a liability overnight if tainted with a product quality issue such as a food or medication scandal. That’s why many organizations are evaluating how item-level serialization can benefit their traceability initiatives to support return and recall management, thus reducing lost revenue.

“A traceability solution is only as good as the data it provides,” DiPalo said. “The data itself is an integral part of the product quality, so it needs to provide an accurate picture of where your products are at any given time in your supply chain. A food traceability system is effective in mitigating risks only if it meets specific requirements—both technological and regulatory—meaning it can track and trace every component of every product.”

What companies need is complete product traceability, from source to store. This is where Acsis comes in with its ESS—Enterprise Serialization Solution. Acsis’ ProducTrak solution suite links valuable production data, such as ingredients, production batch, etc., with the unmatched ability to deliver real-time product visibility—anytime, anywhere.

ProducTrak provides the infrastructure so that in the event of a food crisis, such as a recall, the process is streamlined.

“One of the major short-comings with many traceability solutions today is the lack of ability to provide technological compatibility among different systems, especially within a specific supply chain,” DiPalo continued. “Acsis ProducTrak brings real-time connectivity to every point in the supply chain, from incoming materials, through processing, warehousing and distribution. It does this by providing the infrastructure to manage any number of monitoring sensors, label scanners, PLCs, label printers, and a host of other real-time devices right there where the action is, on the shop floor and in the warehouse.

“With ProducTrak, the enterprise gets the second-by-second data it needs for effective management: what went where, how much of it went there, when, and what exactly was going on in the plant at the time,” DiPalo continued. “This is truly granular data, the key to quality assurance and damage control, brand image and corporate performance.”

For more information, www.acsisinc.com, or visit Acsis, Inc., at the SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, May 14-16, Booth # 2817, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Fla.

KNG Launches End-To-End Restaurant Uniform Program

Leading restaurant supplies manufacturer KNG Inc. has unveiled significant enhancements to its restaurant uniform program (http://www.kng.com/uniforms) for restaurant chains and foodservice operators. The service helps multi-unit operators leverage their consolidated buying power, eliminate logistical headaches, and ensure every employee presents a consistently branded image to customers. The addition of new agile manufacturing processes and in-house apparel design services further strengthens KNG’s robust uniform program.

“Our expanded capabilities allow us to create truly unique uniform programs for our hospitality clients,” KNG CEO Matt McDonagh says. “Whether you have hundreds of employees or thousands of them, KNG can design, manufacture, imprint, inventory, and fulfill all of your uniforms in a quick, easy, and cost-effective manner.”

The company recently hired a seasoned apparel designer, Tim Brodesser, to manage the program and help foodservice operators create compelling, restaurant uniforms (http://www.kng.com/wholesale/servlet/cat/en/kng/Restaurant/Server-Uniforms) that fit their unique brand for all the various roles throughout their organization. “We’re excited to have Tim on board as our in-house apparel designer,” McDonagh says. “He brings with him more than two decades of experience in apparel design and construction, color and trend research, fabric and trim development, supply chain management, and merchandising with such leading sportswear brands as Adidas, Nike, REI, and Vans.”

The company manages uniform programs for a growing array of restaurant and hospitality operators. Chief among them is Guest Services, which provides hospitality management services at more than 250 locations nationwide, including government agencies, national and state parks, resorts, and universities.

Guest Services named KNG its exclusive uniform supplier three years ago, and the hospitality operator’s director of purchasing, Bob Douglas, couldn’t be happier with his decision. “We enjoy several advantages with KNG’s uniform program,” he says. “They give us excellent pricing, and their customer service is the best. They also have an exceptionally wide range of products, which is ideal for Guest Services since we have a lot of units with different uniform requirements. It’s nice to be able to find so many different options from a single source, and if they don’t carry a particular item, they can easily source it.”

Technology savvy is another point of differentiation for KNG, Douglas notes. “They’ve made it very easy for us to order our uniforms by creating our own customized online company store,” he says. “Now individual locations and employees can order directly for themselves without getting my team involved. Our sites end up getting what they need quicker, and all the billing and expense allocations happen automatically.”

Douglas says product quality—especially the embroidery—is another key KNG advantage. “Our employees always look like they’re well turned out,” he says. “KNG helps us look good, and when we look good we feel better, we treat our customers and coworkers more kindly, and we come across as more caring and self confident.”

Visit http://www.kng.com/uniforms for additional details about KNG’s uniform program.

Cintas Expands Floor Care Offering with New Machine Rental Program

Cintas Corp. has launched its floor machine rental program for foodservice operations. A part of its Safe Floor program, the rental service includes TASKI floor machines from Diversey and is backed by a preventative maintenance program and 24/7 service support. This allows foodservice operators to improve floor cleanliness and safety for a flat weekly rate.

“Foodservice operators want clean and safe floors, but they often don’t have the budget for large capital investments like an equipment purchase,” said Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President, Cintas Facility Services. “Our new machine rental program offers access to product and maintenance support at a fixed cost.”

The Cintas floor machine rental program includes training, a preventative maintenance schedule, emergency service calls and parts and labor, including replacement brushes and squeegees. The units are designed to clean and maintain floors after a restorative deep clean to keep floors looking like new and offset replacement costs.

A centerpiece of the program, the TASKI swingo 350B is ideal for use in the front or back of the house in larger restaurants and institutional foodservice settings. It is a walk-behind, battery-powered scrubbing machine that is small enough to maneuver around tight spaces such as food preparation aisles, yet powerful enough to clean large areas quickly. With the ability to clean areas as large as 3,500 square feet per hour, it offers a significant cleaning advantage over traditional mop-and-bucket cleaning systems by improving efficiency and limiting the amount of chemical required. It also removes 99 percent of the cleaning solution, leaving floors dry and further reducing the opportunity for slip-and-fall accidents.

“Cleanliness is key to maintaining safe floors,” added Thompson. “This program offers foodservice operators the tools they need to improve the image and safety of their restaurant.”

For more information on Cintas’ safe floor solutions for foodservice, please visit www.cintas.com/foodservice.