Just as the foodservice industry is removing the silos that have historically separated the segments (more about that on p. 6), so too are individual companies. At CSP Business Media, our foodservice editors—covering the restaurant, convenience-store and non-commercial segments—have long worked side by side, but it wasn’t until this year’s Foodservice Handbook that we’ve fully collaborated to create a comprehensive look at the industry. We wanted to emulate the channel busting that’s happening across foodservice to provide an obstruction-free view of the state of our industry.
The Foodservice Handbook is, in a word, a keeper. We’ve taken the most important data and insights from the past year and brought it together into one convenient book. Restaurant Business’ ranking of the best places to open a restaurant; CSP magazine’s exclusive c-store consumer study; FoodService Director’s annual Big Picture operator study—all that and much more is right here in one place.
We also wanted to provide fresh content exclusive to the Foodservice Handbook, so we conducted an expansive study across our readership. We heard from nearly 600 restaurant, retail and non-commercial operators about what’s on their minds; comparing their responses allows for a rare cross-segment perspective.
Perhaps most important, this issue is a reflection of our FARE conference, which for the past eight years has been bringing together operators from across the foodservice industry to connect and share ideas. It’s one of very few venues where you’ll see a college foodservice director talking pain points and opportunities with a c-store operator, or a restaurateur chatting up a hospital operator. The cross-segment insights of the Foodservice Handbook reflect that experience, and that’s why it’s the official publication of the FARE conference.
That’s what the handbook is. Now, how to use it. The issue is broken into five parts. We start at the macro level with the State of the Industry and the above-mentioned State of Foodservice study (p. 8), encapsulated in the “Top 10 Takeaways” found in the foldout after p. 16. We then dive into segment-specific sections, focusing on restaurants (p. 21), non-commercial (p. 37) and retail (p. 53). From there, we dig into some of the biggest trends across all the segments in On the Menu (p. 69).
For easy navigation, the book is color-coded by segment. Any data or insights that are specific to restaurants, in the State of the Industry or the entire restaurant section, are in red. Orange means retail, and green means non-commercial.
As channels blur and silos burst, you can no longer afford to have a myopic definition of the industry. Our hope is that you can reference the Foodservice Handbook throughout the year for not only that quick inquiry into, say, smoothie sales at fast casual, but also to make a holistic analysis of the entire industry and how it affects you.
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