Alexis From Texas, American Express Restaurant Trade Program

American Express Restaurant Trade Program - Day 2

Day two in Aspen brought more sun, slight hangovers, and more great panels at the trade program. Below is my recap of the day and top tips.

T300: It Is Easy to Be Green: Feasible Farm to Table Practices with Joe Bastianich, Sam Beall, Jeff Harvey, Michel Nischan, and Cindy Pawlcyn

After late nights out all around, Saturday morning at 9:15 came earlier than desired for most but the Jerome was full again of trade ready to learn about farm to table practices in their restaurants.

Sustainability Tips:

Remember the importance of sustainability, not just local products. To achieve this Sam Beall of Blackberry Farms participates in a seed exchange program and purchases from surrounding farmers in addition to growing as much as they can themselves.
Sustainability is all about relationships, Cindy Pawlycn reminded us. She gets her meyer lemons from a local farmer in exchange for lunch at Mustards.
To make local scale across a chain, Jeff Harvey of Burgerville sources locally, then uses Cisco for distribution. He then brings in farmers to highlight their products in store and make consumers more aware.
Bring the farmers to you. Michel Nischan started a weekly farmer’s market in the restaurant parking lot. Consumers come to purchase and he gets his produce delivery for free while they’re there!
Similary, Joe Bastianich founded a weekly farmer’s market in his warehouse in Las Vegas called “Bet the Farm” to allow locals access to the same great produce he purchases for the restaurants and encourage the farmer’s success

Cut up your old menus to use as cocktail napkins and lower waste levels, suggested Cindy Pawlcyn.
Michel Nischan reminds the audience of the connection between hunger and obesity. “Good food” is much more expensive, especially when living of $3/day per family for food stamps. For example for $2 you can buy 1 bunch of broccoli or a 4 pack of cup o’noodles. What would you choose?
Another example, $1 can buy 1200 calories of chips, 700 of soda, or 170 calories of fruit. Learn more about food costs at Wholesome Wave

T400: What’s Next: Navigating the Near-Term for Long-Term Gainswith JJ Buettgan, Tim Curci, Thomas Keller, Malcom Knapp, and Dawn Sweeney

The afternoon continued, again with full bellies from the trade lunch covered below, with the last panel of the weekend on growth over the near-term. With a slightly different format, Malcom Knapp shared key data points which the panel then reflected on.

Key Takeaways & TIps:

Recession means opportunity: more developers, rents, and suppliers open to negotiate to lower costs overall (from JJ Buettgen).
Thomas Keller explains how his restaurants defined their private dining targets during the recession to target consumers beyond big banks, which helped keep their dining rooms full.
After 18 years of growth, Restaurant Performance Index shows uptick in April 2010 for first time in 27 months, Dawn Sweeney shared.
When do you open a new location? Chef Thomas Keller waits until he has a 8-10 person team ready to move that will not dilute talent at his existing operations. The value of human capital - despite a 25% decline in Q3-Q4 ‘09 revenues in Vegas, Keller choose to make no layoffs to avoid losing strong talent.
Dawn Sweeney of the National Restaurant Association recounts how Oprah’s show recommended that viewers stop eating out for a month to save money during the session - if they had done so over 57,000 restaurant jobs would have been lost.
Malcom Knapp argues that brand loyalty is “dead” in that consumers will not give a brand 2-3 chances to get something right. Loyalty must truly be earned.
JJ Buettgen of Darden argues that brand loyalty is not dead, just harder to earn as today’s consumers become more demanding.
Darden donates 8.7 MM pounds of food a year - enough to feed 1 million families 3 meals a day! An unadvertised fact that would cause me to be more brand loyal for sure.

Power Lunch: Moto-fuko with Morimoto and David Chang

Saturday featured the second trade only power lunch on the Jerome courtyard. With the band “American Beauty” playing a tribute to the Dead and Morimoto and Chang at the stoves, it was hard to imagine a better setting to mingle with fellow members of the business. Below are a few images to sum up the afternoon.

The invitation:

Morimoto serving guests and schmoozing the crowd:

Lunch specialties provided by both chefs:

Full disclosure: I recently worked for the Restaurant Industry Development group at American Express, attended as their guest, and had a hand in planning this event.

Thank you to Peter Niessen for many of the pictures seen here and on the Day 1 recap above.