And now a word from our sponsor

June 15,

As you may know, Food Writer’s Diary is a product of Nation’s Restaurant News, the great mother ship of restaurant trade magazines, the Death Star (in a good way) of reporting on the restaurant industry.
The magazine’s biggest event of the year is MUFSO (MUFF-so), a conference for multi-unit foodservice operators, being held this year on October 4-6 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.
This year the event is dedicated to Norm Brinker, a mentor to many, many people in the restaurant industry, who passed away last week. Plans are in the works for ways to honor him.
Last week we also confirmed some great speakers for the conference, to wit:

•William Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company and one of the shapers of the global conversation about how to compete, innovate, and succeed in modern times. He’ll be speaking as well as moderating our Hot Concepts panel.

• Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan:The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which is about how unpredictable, one-off events shape our world. He’s a much sought-after speaker on financial topics, having predicted the current crisis. He’ll be speaking and then running a question-and-answer breakout session afterwards.

• Frances Frei, Harvard Business School’s resident expert on service management, whose ideas on operational strategies have influenced some of the most competitive companies in the world. Her course on managing services operations is one of the most popular classes at her school, and our publisher, Tom Larrañaga, a man who is not easily impressed, says he was “blown away” by a talk she gave a few weeks ago.
“She will send folks home with ideas,” he said in a message he sent to NRN staff.

We will also have a panel featuring the winners of our “Golden Chain” awards, which go to multi-unit restaurants that have staged successful turnarounds or otherwise behaved impressively. We have six winners, and I’m going to tell you five of them (because, I mean, come on, we have to keep you guessing a little bit): Burger King, McAlister’s, Bruegger’s Bagels, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants and Burgerville.

Our editor-in-chief, Ellen Koteff, will be moderating a Q&A session with Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden et al.) chief executive Clarence Otis and Domino's chief executive Dave Brandon.

So register now. Come on, it’ll be fun!