5 must-know restaurant news stories: May 27, 2014

Focus of campaign to boost the minimum wage shifts to the local level (Los Angeles Times)
Stalled efforts to raise the minimum wage at the federal level have shifted the action to state and local measures. Here’s an update on recent moves in California, which tends to be a bellwether state on such issues.

—Lisa Jennings

New addition: Menus for restaurant Facebook pages (InsideFacebook)
Facebook has added a new feature for restaurant-based Facebook pages: menus. Now, thanks to a partnership between Facebook and SinglePlatform (a Constant Contact branch), restaurants with a page can now have their actual menu right on their timeline for both mobile and desktop.
 
—Ron Ruggless

Dairy Queen tweaks marketing for summer LTO (The New York Times)
The frozen-treat chain is putting more focus on social media to promote its seasonal S'mores Blizzard.

—Marcella Veneziale

Riese restaurants getting kicked out of Penn Station (Crain’s New York Business)
One of the landlords for Penn Station, New York City’s giant transportation hub that serves the Long Island Railroad, Amtrak and the city’s subway system, has declined to renew the leases for KFC, Pizza Hut and eight other quick-service restaurants owned by franchise operator Dennis Riese. The chief executive of the Riese Organization said the spaces on the lower level of Penn Station adjacent to Long Island Railroad traffic had not been profitable for years, due to commuters in that area rushing for their trains and the high rents charged by landlord Vornado. Riese also owns restaurants on the upper level like TGI Fridays, which will also close. Penn Station landlords have hinted publicly that they have a “visioning study” to be published soon, which would have details about plans to spruce up the hub with more upscale retail outlets.

—Mark Brandau

Strange brews: The genes of craft beer (The New York Times)
Researches have mapped the genes of a wide array of brewing yeasts, which could help us understand how they impart the myriad (or at the very least 500) flavors they can give to beer

—Bret Thorn