The Nation’s Restaurant News website has a lot of great resources for the restaurant operator.  Today, I discovered that they not only cover breaking news in the industry, but they also offer audio files on various topics.  In perusing NRN’s podcasts, one in particular caught my eye.  Richard Young of the Food Service Technology Center (FSTC) discusses restaurants “going green” for about 15 minutes.  He highlights the practical benefits of energy-efficient restaurant equipment.  You can listen to his podcast on Serv-U's Efficiency Page under the heading "Featured Resources."  If you’d like to get a little background on FSTC and other major organizations within the efficiency movement, see our list of efficiency links here.

Compared to podcasts, webinars are unique in that you can actually interact with the speakers via the web—IF you are online when the webinar is happening.  But if you come too late, you can still listen to previous webinars.

I just listened to part of a December webinar called “Kitchen Currents,” including input from Enodis (manufacturer of such trusted names as Frymaster, Garland, Ice-O-Matic, and more).  The speakers even mention the consumer trend of sensory appeal, which echoed what I found in the list of foodservice trends on QSRMagazine.com (“Tools for Texture”).

So if your eyes are getting a bit tired of the computer screen, turn the monitor off and the volume up.  There’s a lot to be heard.