Coming off nearly a decade of robust expansion, about a thousand restaurateurs and their suppliers converged on New Orleans in September of 1989 to plan for the final decade of the millennium.
The Reagan-era boom was slowing and the foodservice industry, then predicting $234 billion in sales for the year, was declared over-saturated. Estimates for sales in 2009, by the way, are near $550 billion. Nonetheless, boom-economy topics were on the agenda at the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators conference, with labor top of mind.
Ann McLaughlin, who had left her job as President Reagan’s U.S. secretary of labor just months earlier, told the foodservice operators in attendance to be open-minded about such issues as paid child care and parental leave and to look for untapped sources of labor.
She said future success of businesses hinged on “making the unemployable employable and looking at nontraditional workers, prisoners, mothers on welfare, the handicapped and the older individual.”
The conference already was addressing at least one environmental issue: garbage. National Restaurant Association president Harris “Bud” Rusitzky warned that new government regulations threatened foodservice if the industry didn’t address the issue, and he suggested five approaches: source reduction, recycling, incineration, regulation of landfills and education of restaurant customers.
Marketing expert Al Ries warned companies against losing focus, criticizing McDonald’s for expanding its menu offerings beyond hamburgers with such items as McChicken and McPizza.
“Like alcohol, diversification is a short-term stimulant, but it’s also a long-term depressant,” he said.
Among other topics debated was sous vide, the low-temperature cooking that is currently popular among fine-dining chefs. Robert Kozlowski, president of the contract foodservice company Canteen Corp., in 1989 said that his company would use the process to reduce labor requirements.
Joe Lee—at the time president of General Mills Restaurants, the predecessor of Darden—expressed skepticism about the process because of the need for sous-vide items to be kept at controlled temperatures throughout the distribution process.
Conference panelists also predicted other trends. Comfort food wasn’t called comfort food yet, but restaurant operators saw a return to it, nonetheless, including IHOP president Richard “Kim” Herzer.
“There’s a lot of country cooking going around,” Herzer said. “There are a number of marketing firms saying that the 1990s are going to be a lot like the 1950s.”
