This article in Mobile Cuisine magazine warns food truck owners about the importance of having a grip on their financials. With all the other hats the owner must wear: buyer, manager, janitor, etc. it's important to have an easy to use resource for managing every penny that goes in or out of the business.  The author recommends QuickBooks because of its simplicity and reliability. 

How-to and Why instructions on restaurant accounting software packages. A step by step of how to install the software and getting operational in a restaurant setting. 

Mobi Munch is an LA-based company that designs and builds food trucks. They have recently begun adapting and implementing digital age systems for their clients.  Among the innovations are POS systems built to survive the stresses of heavy transit, GPS systems for reporting of truck locations, and sophisticated video displays for customers. The Micros Simphony POS is now part of its food truck technology suite. Perhaps the most important upgrade is credit card authorization via the 4G/3G network because for many the norm was handwritten tickets.

A "what-to-look-for in a PMS" guide for any hospitality company planning to make the switch to cloud.  The article advises to insist on flexibility, multiple interfaces, and a system that allows for phone and even mail reservations. 

The National Restaurant Association has implemented a new "green" restaurant initiative to persuade owners of the US's 945,000 restaurants to adopt measures to control energy use and waste. They have some celebrity firepower in billionaire Ted Turner, who owns Ted's Montana Grill causal dining chain. His restaurants use straws made from biodegradable paper, and the menus are printed on recycled paper, among other initiatives. The NRA makes recommendations like using LED lights, composting, installing low-flow valves, and using recycled materials. In practical terms, however, going green doesn't necessarily mean "making green." In a tough economy, most people won't pay for the extra costs of green initiatives. In a poll, just 29% of consumers said they would be more likely to go to a green restaurant. Those numbers make it difficult to convince a restaurateur to make that extra investment. 

UK-based Diet Chef delivers ready-made low-fat meals to some 25,000 customers. With current sales of around 30m dollars in 2011, founder Kevin Dorren is planning an aggressive expansion into Italy, France and Germany.  Issues of payment methods (Germans don't use credit cards online), where to source ingredients, shipping to and from the UK, and whether or not it's blasphemous for an Italian to eat lasagna made in Britain are proving to be quite challenging. 

As it happens, the restaurant industry is leading the way in IT innovation. A UK-based online reservation provider called Livebookings will soon be rolling out a software package that will allow restaurants to manage their bookings, promotions and customer feedback in real-time. This allows restaurateurs instant data analysis of customer trends and behaviors, and gives them the ability to develop timely strategies to draw in new customers.  Before cloud computing, the need for a significant investment in IT meant restaurants were hesitant to use computing to interact with their customers. Now all they need is access to the internet. Going hand in hand with this new infrastructure is the development of mobile apps, which ultimately put the power in the customer's hands, or pockets, as it were.

Two former restaurant servers have developed software that provides an end-to-end point-of-sale (POS) system that allows taking and submitting orders, printing kitchen slips, customer receipts and processing payments-all using an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Ambur does not require a computer on the back end. Instead the hand-held device is the hub. The program can be loaded up by any iOS device and run on a wireless network. Waiters can easily fulfill customer requests right at the table. One drawback is that some customers have complained because they thought the waiter was texting on their iPhone.